Below is a passage from the report's introduction:
I highlighted the part that said "A striking data point from the study's survey showed that most funders want to invest in long-term positive changes (71%), yet none expected outcomes to take five to ten years. Instead, the majority of funders said they expected to see outcomes in just one to two years."
I've used the graphic below for many years to show that kids in middle school require four to six years of continuous support just to finish high school and another four to six to get through college. Even then, if they don't have people in their network who can help open doors to jobs, that degree may not be enough to help them reach their full potential.
I could not have convinced donors in the mid 1990s that this was the long-term outcome we wanted. Thus we struggled each year to patch together the funds needed to operate. Ultimately, this was the fundamental reason I left Cabrini Connections in 2011 and formed the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to try to continue supporting the city-wide strategies of the T/MC.
If you read the MENTOR report you'll see that many other programs, in 2023, are struggling the same way.
This entire blog, written since 2005, and the www.tutormentorexchange.net website, launched in 1998, offer ways to change how programs are funded, and how this can lead to constantly improving non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach kids in more high poverty areas....which is where long-term, mentor-rich programs are most needed.
This graphic was created by an intern from South Korea nearly 10 years ago, who was prompted by a similar graphic in articles like this from 2009.
The goal is that groups of people gather regularly, like people in faith groups do, or people in high school or college classes, or in business, to look for ways to solve problems, using information that I and others aggregate in web libraries and share in articles like this.
That's just about what the MENTOR report was saying.
As you do your learning share your understanding and ideas with your own graphics, concept maps, videos, etc.
The question is, will you say ENOUGH, and begin to take actions so we're not having this conversation again in 25 years?
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