Thanksgiving. Now and Past.

I wish you all a safe, happy Thanksgiving. I and my family are in good health. My wife and kids have jobs. The mid-term elections had much better results for Democrats and Progressives than was expected. That's all good.

During the 17 years I worked in corporate retail advertising for Montgomery Ward I saw an annual repetition of the same type of ads at specific times each year. The ads for Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays always looked the same and featured similar merchandise.

I mentioned to a senior VP how I thought the ads were redundant and he said, "While we may get tired of making them,  there are always new customers who will be looking for the merchandise we feature."

I feel the same way about my blog.

I've been writing this blog since 2005. I started sending e-Mail newsletters around 2002.  I sent print newsletters from 1993 until 2003.  They all followed the calendar with what I talked about.  

I featured volunteer recruitment in Aug/September; holiday giving around Thanksgiving, annual planning and process improvement in February, and  year-end celebrations and next-year planning in May-June.

So instead of writing a repetitive article today, I'm just going to invite you to read a few that I wrote at this time in past years.

In 2017 I wrote "My Life Since 2011 - Something's Missing" and talked about the tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 to 2011. 

I used this 2020 article to review my use of maps to focus attention and resources to tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty area of Chicago and other places. 

In this 2014 article and this 2019 article I encouraged people to support youth tutor and/or mentor programs via the annual Give Tuesday campaign, which this year is on Nov. 29.  

In this 2012 article I reviewed the 38th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, which I continued to host every six months until May 2015. 

This 2015 article was titled "Planning needed to fight war on poverty in big cities". 

This 2017 article's headline was "Stick your neck out and support a cause". 

Prior to 2011 I was still leading a two-part strategy of a site based Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program and the Chicago-wide focused Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Thus, this article from 2009 used a graphic created by one of our students to encourage Thanksgiving donations. 

This 2008 article included another graphic created by students from our tech club at Cabrini Connections. 

In this 2007 article the title was "Let's redefine Christmas by putting more Thanksgiving into it." 

You can see the pattern here. I suspect next year and following years  you'll see more of the same.  

All of these articles are part of a "local-global" strategy launched in 1993.

Our single, small, Chicago-based tutor/mentor program was able to help change the lives of a few kids while our Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy aimed to help change the lives of thousands of kids located in different high poverty areas of Chicago and the world. 

I've constantly encourage others to take on the same role, but due to continuing competition for scarce resources, very few have done that.  

I wrote this "Can't drain the swamp?" article in 2012 to visualize the futility of doing "business as usual".  

Your Giving Tuesday and year-end giving, plus on-going giving throughout the year, can build financial stability in more programs, thus freeing them to adopt this two-part strategy themselves.

That would give myself, and millions of young people, much more to be thankful for at this time in future years!

Thanks for reading.

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