Helping Tutor/Mentor Programs Grow - for over 30 years

 I've been digitizing my files so they will be available to more people, even after I end my time on this earth.  Last week I posted this article and pointed to an archive with letters and email correspondence that extends back to the 1990s and even earlier. 

Here's a 1998 article from the Southwest News-Herald, showing work I've done to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in more places.

I met with Willie Iverson several times in 1997 and 1998 and encouraged him to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy and Total Quality Mentoring idea to help programs grow in the Ashburn area of Chicago. This article is evidence that he made that attempt.

Here is another article from my archives. This is a letter I wrote for Streetwise in 2012. 

On this page, I've posted many of the news stories generated by Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies. Remember, our goal was to increase attention for volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago, to help them attract a more consistent flow of operating dollars and volunteers.  This collection of media stories and letters of appreciation shows we were doing that.

I've found many more media stories that are not on this "In the News" list on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website.  There are more than 180 in all.  I have put the entire collection in this file on my Google drive.

Click on any icon to enlarge, then you can view these like a slide show, moving from one to the next.  If there is someone else in America who has a similar collection of stories, created over 30 years, with the goal of helping connect K-12 youth in high poverty areas with mentors, tutors and extra learning, please share with me.

If you know one of the billionaires giving money away, show this to them. They could endow programs on universities where students, faculty and alumni duplicate my efforts to help kids in their own area. In 10-15 years they could have a collection like this, too.

In addition to media stories I've been digitizing letters. This is a note that I received from Minor Meyers, Jr, president of Illinois Wesleyan University.

President Meyers finished by saying he was sending my information to a Trustee in Detroit.  Minor was a huge supporter of my work from 1990 until he died around 2004.  I never was able to build similar support from other IWU President's who followed him.

Nor have I been able to build that level of trust and support from any other university, although my archives show many connections to local, national and international  universities over the past 30 years.

That's one of the sad challenges of doing this type of community building.  People who you've built trust relationships with and who are actively spreading news about your work to others, move to new places, or new jobs, or leave this mortal life for another.

That means intermediaries like myself are constantly rebuilding relationships and trust at organizations we've worked with for many years.  It's a reason why the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy should be embedded in universities and endowed with long-term funding.

Maybe there's a billionaire out there willing to take that role.

Learn more.

The image below shows what you'll see if you open this link to my letters to DBassill file. 

These are PDF files containing multiple letters and/or email messages. You'll see many "thank you" messages. 

If you look at who I was communicating with you'll see a wide range of people.  As I've digitized these I've reached out on LinkedIn to re-connect with some who I met 20-25 years ago. Some I cannot find. Others have accepted an invitation to reconnect.

You'll find two more folders with correspondence between myself and others at this and this link. Maybe you'll know some of these people and will add them to your own network.

Imagine re-connecting with all of these people in on-going, online, information sharing portals aimed at filling areas of persistent poverty with mentor-rich community and school-based youth programs.   

In a recent article I've pointed to dashboards created by the Economic Innovation Group, which show areas of persistent poverty and areas with economically distressed communities.  On the MappingforJustice blog you can find many similar examples.

These point to places all over the country where comprehensive, mentor-rich programs are needed to help youth through school and into jobs and careers and where an information-based intermediary like the Tutor/Mentor Connection could be created, borrowing from lessons you can learn from my archives.

Imagine some day in the future, ten, or 15 years from now, being able to point to a similar collection of letters and files, showing people you've connected with and people you've helped.

That is my goal. It's why I share this information.

I will help you as long as I'm still able. Just reach out to me on one of these social media platforms and let's start a conversation. 

Read these articles about starting a new Tutor/Mentor Connection and these showing what I've been trying to do since forming the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011. 

Finally, to enable me to keep this information available I need some of you to visit this page and make contributions to help fund my work.

Thank you for reading.  I've been honored to be part of so many lives. I hope you will enjoy the same experience.