Tuesday, May 07, 2024

10-Year Wish List from 2015 - Not Yet Achieved

In November 2015 I attended a brainstorming session aimed at generating ideas for where the Illinois Mentoring Partnership would be in 10 years. After that meeting I posted my own list of what I hoped would be a reality by 2025.     

Here's what I wrote:

----- begin 2015 post -----

I'm 68 now so don't know if I'll even be alive in 10 years. Thus, I don't have a self-interest in what happens, just a life mission that some of these ideas do come into reality.

Here's my list:

1) I hope that a map of cities like Chicago will show that every poverty neighborhood has several organizations offering volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and learning in the non-school hours.

2) I hope that more than 75% of the leaders, volunteers, donors, alumni and current students in organized non-school tutor/mentor programs are connected to each other in on-line, on-going learning and collaboration portals. I've pointed to the potential of cMOOCs. Who knows what this will look like in 10 years.

3) I hope that concept maps, like the one below, will be commonly used, like blueprints, to show all of the different supports kids and families in high poverty areas need over a 20-25 year period so kids have the opportunities to succeed in school and move into adult jobs and careers free of poverty.


4) A minimum of 5-10% of funding for tutor/mentor programs and intermediaries will be coming annually from unsolicited donors who have visited a program web site to shop and choose who to support, and how much they will give.

5) Funding of youth serving organizations, and other social benefit organizations, will be based on what the organization does, not on their tax status.

6) A minimum of 50-60% of all funding will be for general operations and for building and sustaining strong organizations and leadership teams.

7) Data maps will be consistently used by programs, donors, policy makers, etc. to a) understand where programs are most needed; b) understand the various types of programs needed in each zip code; c) understand the availability of needed programs in each high poverty zip code, sorted by age group served and type of program; and d) understand the distribution of Federal, state, city and private funds into each high poverty zip code.

8)Concept maps, like this, will be used to show involvement and commitment of leaders from every sector of a community, including business, professional, religious, educational, entertainment, political, etc.

9) Students in middle school, high school and colleges all over the country will be part of on-going groups who are learning to use data to understand problems and potential solutions, and are learning habits of leadership, visual communications, collaboration, innovation, volunteering and giving that support the flexible operations of constantly improving social benefit organizations in all places where data-maps show they are most needed.

10) One or more universities will host a Tutor/Mentor Institute, archiving the ideas I've collected and shared for past 25 years, and teaching students to be leaders and/or proactive supporters and leaders who take responsibility for making the first nine ideas on this list a reality in the cites where the university is located, or in the cities where their students come from.

In 15 or 20 years I hope the maps of Chicago and other cities show fewer high poverty neighborhoods as a result of the strategies and long-term vision adopted by leaders who read my articles and who I meet with on a regular basis.

I think that it will take leadership from many organizations to bring this list to reality. But that leadership should be evident by reading blog articles and reviewing web sites of those who are taking leadership roles.

What do you think? What would your list look like?

---- end 2015 article ----

Well, it's almost 10 years later. I'm still alive. Still sharing these ideas.  In fact, I've been sharing this vision for over 30 years.  But, too few have ever heard me, or read this blog.  That's why I keep sharing past articles on social media.  I want people to spread this information so more people see it and take ownership.

Here's just a few other past articles.

I used this graphic in this 2018 article titled "Building non-school support systems for kids in poverty".  As with many of my articles this focuses on building teams of people with various talents who will do the learning and on-going innovation that is needed to build and sustain constantly improving youth serving programs in every high poverty area of Chicago and other places. 

I used this graphic in this 2017 article, titled "What Do We Need to Do to Achieve This?"    That's the "big question" that teams need to be constantly asking. 

That graphic is also included in this article, titled "Creating Economic Justice - Opportunity for All."
In many of these articles I've shared a vision of having universities create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection-type programs that duplicate what I've been doing for the past 30 years and systematically prepare new leaders to operate the thousands of youth-serving programs needed throughout the country, and to provide the talent and dollars each of these programs need on a consistent basis, for many years. 

Here's one article where I shared that vision.   

Note: Since I formed the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to try to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection alive in Chicago and share it in other cities, I've used the two names interchangeably.  Thus, when I say build a "Tutor/Mentor Institute" on a college campus, I mean the same as when I say create Tutor/Mentor Connection-type programs.".

I hope that who ever takes ownership of my work in the next few years will figure out how to reduce this confusion.  

Thanks for reading this, and for sharing it.

I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other social media sites. I hope you'll follow me and introduce me to your network.  You can find links on this page


I'm also continuing to ask for your help, and contributions, to help fund this work. Visit this page and use the PayPal if you can help. 



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