It "takes a village"

Apply this thinking to preserving a democracy and creating equal opportunities for everyone.

In building the Tutor/Mentor Connection since 1993  (now Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC) I've borrowed from many sources.  One was Chicago's United Way/Crusade of Mercy, where I served as Loaned Executive from 1990 to 1993. 

Below is a concept map that visualizes the African proverb: "It takes a village to raise a child."  

If you click here, you can find 30 articles where I've used this "It Takes a Village" concept since I started this blog in 2005.  You can scroll back to 2007 to find an early version, hand drawn, before I created the concept map version.

I use the ideas as a strategy that needs to be growing in cities all across the country, and demonstrated with web sites that show a commitment visualized in the strategy map below.



When people in business, media, entertainment, politics, religion, education, colleges, and every other part of the "village" adopt this commitment, with themselves shown in the blue box at the top of the graphic, then we can begin to build the public will and long-term commitment needed to fill every high poverty neighborhood in a city with a wide range of supports needed to help kids move successfully and safely from birth to adult lives free of poverty.

When I was a Loaned Executive I collected donation history for 10-15 companies, showing per capita giving, percent participation, leadership giving, etc. within a company and within similar companies in the Chicago region.  I then briefed CEOs of major corporations who then met with CEOs who they did business with, or had an influence, (and were my accounts). The goal was to solicit campaign pledges each year that grew each company's giving history. 

I borrowed this strategy when forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

My goal since 1993 was that leaders in each industry (shown as clusters on the village concept map) would adopt a Chief Crusader role and would a) commit to recruiting volunteers and providing funding for youth tutor/mentor programs from their own company; and b) would recruit other leaders in their industry, or geographic region, to make the same commitments. 

Over time that would have led to consistent funding and volunteer support to tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty area of the region.  

That has not happened. Yet, to reduce violence and improve workforce readiness, it needs to happen. 

How to get started? Make a leadership commitment, as a teacher, a college professor, a Rabbi, a CEO, then appoint someone to take the lead. Start a learning process, where you open and close every node on the strategy map so you know the information it's sharing, and you know what your commitment involves.

Role of Leaders - How CEOs can help inner city youth from birth to work by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

View these presentations, created by interns, as part of their own learning between 2006 and 2015. Youth and adults could be creating similar presentations, focusing on their community and their strategies.

Create a version of the strategy map and share it on your website and blog. Teach others to use it.

Raising kids and helping them be healthy, productive, contributing adults who can keep America great, and keep this planet safe and nurturing of all of its different populations and resources...human, animal, plant... is something that everyone should be able to agree on.

It does take a village. But until we have responsible, on-going, commitments of time, talent and dollars from every part of the village, supporting youth in the most economically challenged parts of every city, these will just be empty words.

That means students, volunteers, college researchers, and others will need to learn to create maps that show who in the village is involved, and who is still not involved.  You can see some examples of event mapping of past Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, at this link. Many different forms of mapping are highlighted in articles on the Mappingforjustice blog.

Part of the learning that people do will need to include finding ways to map participation .

I've been posting ideas on this blog, on web sites and in printed newsletters since 1994. The tags on the side of this blog are shown in this graphic, and in articles like this,  in an effort to help people navigate through this vast web of information and ideas.

If you share this commitment, please share this and other ideas shared on this blog and my Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.  Help build the village in every part of the country.

10-28-2024 update - visit this article on LinkedIn to read about the cycle of networks.  

Thanks for reading.

Please connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.  

If you value the ideas I'm sharing, please visit this page and send a small contribution. 

Tell this story in your own words

In October 1992, this was the front page of the Chicago SunTimes. 

The headline said "7-Year-Old's Death at Cabrini Requires Action".  

I had led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program serving Cabrini-Green 2nd to 6th grade kids since 1975, so this hit hard.  I was in the process of creating a new program to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have similar support to help them from 7th grade through high school.  We called that program Cabrini Connections and launched it in January 1993. I led it until mid 2011.

However, this shooting was the catalyst for our creating a second program as we launched our site-based program.  That was the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC). It's goal was to help on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach K-12 youth in every high poverty area of the Chicago region.

As I write today's article, most attention is focused on the coming election and a variety of natural and man-made disasters taking place in the USA and the world.  

So how do we get a share of that attention focused on this issue?

Over the weekend I had a chat with a person on BlueSky after I accepted his request to follow him. He asked me to tell him more about my work and after a short exchange he observed,  "Your vision of empowering others to build on your work is a powerful one. By sharing your knowledge and experiences, you’re setting the stage for future leaders to step up and make a difference." 

That prompted me to look at a few past articles where I had explained what I was trying to do and encouraged others to create their own versions of my articles, visual essays and videos, and share them in their own networks.

This led me to three articles that pointed to the "execution death of 11-year-old 'Yummy' Sandifer in 1994".  

The first was written in September 2012.

It included this paragraph:

Today on page 2 of the Chicago Tribune was a story about the execution death of 11-year-old ‘Yummy” Sandifer in 1994. The writer reports “Since Yummy’s death, other child victims have fallen within walking distance of where he was killed.” He goes on to say “Neither I nor anyone else has an easy solution to the city’s gunfire.”

I wrote, I have a suggestion if anyone cares to listen.

My article described my use of maps to show where tutor/mentor programs were most needed and where existing programs were located and included this message.

I wrote, 

Yet, had Chicago’s civic, political, philanthropic and political leaders provided the leadership and funding I’ve asked for every year since 1995 when I sent this Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Directory to many of them, perhaps the Program Locator map that is now on my web site would show more “world class” programs in high poverty neighborhoods where kids could be connected with people, ideas and facilities that were inspiring them to learn and make the most of their lives.

It concluded with this message.

I have a clip file of dozens of editorials and newspaper columns written since 1990. I link to hundreds of blogs, research papers and other reports where people who are far more talented than I are sharing their ideas. 

My goal is that some of these writers look at my blogs and pdf essays and rewrite them using their own talents, but with a shared purpose of increasing the number of people who become involved and stay involved in this effort to help kids who need extra help for a long time.

I wrote about "Yummy" again in August 2019 after another Chicago Tribune editorial. I included copies of 1994 news articles about "Yummy's" death that I had saved. 

In that article I included one of the first maps the T/MC had created to show the Roseland area of Chicago where the shooting took place. 

I included this text.

Over the next 25 years our maps became more sophisticated yet the purpose remained the same.  I've been using maps in stories for 25 years, in my print newsletters, on my web sites, email newsletters and blog articles. If you read the stories about kids in poor schools, kids in gangs, kids in poverty and kids killing each other, and look at maps showing where these are taking place, you begin to understand that there is a need for solutions in many parts of the city.

I ended that article with this graphic and message.

What I started 25 years ago has left many footprints that others could follow, but as we enter 2020 I don't have any resources to go beyond maintaining an information base and posting articles like this to build on stories I see in the media and try to stimulate more strategic thinking by more people.

I followed that August 2019 article with another a few days later.  In it I wrote:

Since the mid 1990s I've been using visual tools to try to show "systems" of support that need to be available in every high poverty neighborhood, using graphics like the one at the right. I've embedded these in print newsletters, web sites and my blog articles, as well as in my own posts on social media.

I ended that article with the text below:

That's what I was trying to communicate in this graphic (which was created by an intern from South Korea, using the graphic shown below).  We talk about the "village" that needs to be involved in raising kids.  I show that the "village" consists of many groups.  Each needs to be looking at these graphics, and maps of their city, and asking "What can we do?" and "Where can we help?"

The graphic below shows this in two earlier visualizations.  The top one shows the network of support that helps kids grow from birth to adult lives. Where you are born determines the range of support and opportunities your network makes available to you. Kids born in high poverty don't have as diverse a network modeling hope and opportunity. 

I believe organized tutor/mentor programs can provide such support. They need to be available in every high poverty zip code.  Here's my list of programs that I'm aware of

The second graphic shows how any person can invite people she knows into a discussion using the graphics and articles I've been sharing.  Many need to be doing this. 

I mentioned that an intern from South Korea created the first graphic, using the second as inspiration. Youth from schools across the world could be looking at my graphics and then creating their own interpretations and sharing them via social media, YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc. with the same goals as I have.  If you're doing that, let me know!

Chicago SunTimes 4-7-1997

While weekly media stories focus on one killing, there have really been thousands over the past 30 years.  At the left is a story from 1997 with a map we created at that time.  We did not have the Internet then to communicate these. Now we do.

Now we're heading into 2025, with a new President and with me several years older.

The three articles I've pointed to are just a fragment of the articles I've posted in print newsletters, email newsletters, blog articles and list serve conversations over the past 30 years.  I've digitized many of these conversations for any researchers who'd like to learn what I was doing and teach others to duplicate it, using their own time, talent and resources.

Visit this blog where I've posted stories showing work of interns who created videos, animations, blog articles and visualizations to show their  interpretations of my articles and graphics.   A site like this should be available in every city with areas of concentrated poverty.  

I'd be happy to talk with any group and explain the meaning of my graphics or show how they could be creating and sharing their own.

Here are the links to the three articles I referred to

- September 2012 - click here

- August 26, 2019 - click here
- August 31, 2019 - click here

Thanks for your interest.  Visit this page and find links to social media sites where you can connect with me. 

And, if you can help me pay the bills, please visit this page and make a contribution.  

After the Election This Work Still Is Needed

The next 18 days until the November election are going to be stressful for me, and probably millions of others.  Billionaires are pouring huge sums of money into disinformation campaigns intended to turn voters away from Kamala Harris and the Democratic candidates at the state, local and Federal level.

The chaos that will accompany election day will be terrifying. Maybe even deadly.  It will take courage and stamina to go to the polls and vote, or to be one of the people who work at election sites.  

I voted by mail and have received a confirmation that my ballot was received, but today I saw a report from California of ballots found in a sewer.   What else will happen?

Even after November 5th, I won't feel confident until Kamala Harris is inaugurated as the 47th President in January 2025.... along with majorities in both the House and Senate.

Keep your fingers crossed. Keep urging people to ignore the lies and vote.

What's at risk? You may have heard of Project 2025, the radical right agenda to reshape America.  This site was created by comic book artists and writers to help people better understand what's in Project 2025.  Take a look.  These people won't stop with this election. 

But what comes after the election?  

Helping kids to careers

The issue I've been focusing on for the past 50 years is related to economic justice. If we help kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives with jobs and careers, and support networks, that enable them to live and raise their own children where ever they want, we do much to create economic justice. 

Since 2005 I've created a library of concept maps that visualize commitments, strategies and resources, with this one showing that helping kids to careers means providing a wide range of needed supports at each age level as they move from first grade through high school, college/vocational training into jobs.

View Mentoring Kids to Careers cMap

In the bottom left part of this cMap I show the role that volunteer tutors, mentors, coaches, etc. take, as "extra adults" to help kids access these resources and as a form of "bridging social capital" that provides expanded networks and opportunities for kids living in neighborhoods defined by concentrated poverty.

This is extremely important because if we don't find ways to get thousands adults who don't live in poverty personally connected to youth and families that are in high poverty areas, we'll never build the empathy, and public will, to invest in the long-term efforts I describe in posts like this.

Building such systems of support and making them consistently available for 20 to 30 years in thousands of locations will require a huge commitment of public will, something this country has little history of success in generating.

This is a graphic that I've used often over the past 20 years to show that the outcomes we all want for kids requires work done at the bottom of this pyramid.  You can find this graphic in this PDF.

Below I've created some images that focus in on different elements of this graphic.  The ideas apply in building systems of support for inner city youth, and for solving any other complex problem.

At the bottom of the pyramid is the knowledge that we draw upon to propose solutions to problems.   While we each have our own personal experiences, and some have studied an issue for their entire lives, most don't have a broad reference base that they draw upon to support where and how they get involved.  Building a knowledge base that supports the decisions of others who need to be involved in solutions to problems is an essential first step. Keeping this up-to-date is an on-going challenge.

I've been building a web library and directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs since the early 1990s. Initially I did this to support youth, volunteers and leaders in the tutor/mentor programs I was leading in Chicago. As I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I began to share this information more consistently with others throughout Chicago.  The knowledge collection role is Step 1 of the 4-part strategy I've led since 1993.  Read more about what I've been trying to do in this Tutor/Mentor Learning Network presentation.

Competing for attention.  Drawing users to library.  Building and sustaining a library of information and ideas is one thing.  Creating daily advertising and public education that draws a growing number of learners and users to the information is a very different challenge.

Most youth serving organizations don't have powerful marketing teams working to draw attention and resources to them on an on-going basis. Innovating ways that more people take roles in building public awareness and draw viewers to information in the library has been a priority of the T/MC since it was formed. This is Step 2 of the 4-part strategy.

I find too few conversations that focus on this step.  With the Internet we have a growing "Crisis of Attention", which is described in this 2017 article.

I keep looking for conversations where people are thinking about challenges of competing for people's attention in an environment where so many others have far more resources.  I've written many articles focused on "creating attention". Take time to read through them.

Building the network. Part of my web library focuses on "who needs to be involved" which includes a directory of non-school tutor and mentor programs in Chicago and around the country and a data base and collection of more than 2000 links that point to others who are involved in some way in efforts to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers.

Getting representatives of these organizations and resource providers together to learn, share, build relationships and innovate shared solutions to problems is what I focus on in this stage of the pyramid.  Unless people in business, philanthropy, faith groups, media, politics, etc. are coming together on an on-going basis, for face-to-face and on-line learning it will be difficult to create and sustain collaborations that help build and sustain high quality youth supports.

In this blog article I show that a "village" of people with different talents and networks needs to be involved helping every tutor/mentor program grow, as well as helping many programs grow in specific neighborhoods and entire cities.    This is part of Step 3 in the four-part strategy.

These first three steps need to be happening on an on-going basis, reaching people throughout Chicago, Illinois and the world. However, they are just the start.

Better information, read and understood by more people, creates a better understanding of what types of youth support programs have the best chance of having a positive impact on youth and volunteers. Better information also helps people understand the challenges involved, which are many.

When I talk about the need for "better information" read some of the articles I've posted about program design and how many programs are needed.   

This needs to lead to actions that support programs in more places. If more of the stakeholders, including resource providers, are looking at this information, they can develop a set of actions that generate a flow of on-going resources (talent, dollars, ideas, technology, etc.) into every high poverty neighborhood, to every tutor and mentor program operating in those neighborhoods.

T/MC map created in 2008

It is essential that maps be used to support this process. With a map leaders can focus on all areas of a city where kids need extra help. At the same time, neighborhood groups can focus on their part of the city. Many groups need to be doing this.  With a map we can add overlays that show indicators of need, existing youth tutor/mentor and learning resources, and assets (business, hospitals, faith groups, universities, etc.) who could be helping youth programs grow in different areas....because they are also invested in these areas!

I think this is the weakest link in this process. Most programs compete with others for scarce resources. Most foundations use requests-for-proposals and competitive grants and competitions to decide who gets funded. There are only a few winners and many losers. Often prizes and grants are one-time gifts, not repeated from year-to-year.  No business could grow to be great on this type of funding stream. Yet, I see few leaders using maps to show a need to draw resources to all poverty neighborhoods, and to all of the organizations working in these areas.  Few cities have a map based leadership effort, intended to help great programs grow in every part of the city. 

However, if we could solve this problem....

A better flow of needed resources to youth serving organizations (Step 4 in 4-part strategy) leads to more and better programs serving k-12 youth in more of the places where they are needed.  I can't tell you how often people ask about "outcomes" without talking about the work needed to build well-organized, mentor-rich non-school programs.

This leads to the final graphic.

It can take several years for a business to become profitable, or for a youth-serving organization to build the team of staff, leaders, volunteers, parents and youth that makes it a "great" program.  However, that's only the start. If a youth enters a great program in first grade, or 7th grade, it will still take 12 years for the first grader and six years for the 7th grader, just to finish high school!  It will take four to six more years for that young person to move on into adult lives and roles, and to jobs and careers that enable him/her to raise their own kids outside of the negative influences of high poverty.

Long-term; many places

I used this birth-to-work arrow in many other articles, such as this one, which is a discussion of the costs involved in a program intended to create jobs for 32,000 young men in a few Chicago neighborhoods.

I created this 'race-poverty' concept map to illustrate the many other factors that influence life outcomes for kids born or living in high poverty areas.  In 2017 I read an article titled "Why do we keep insisting that education can solve poverty?" It still applies.

Here's the challenge. As a nation we're not very good at keeping the focus (and flow of resources) on problems and solutions to the time it takes to actually begin to solve the problem.  While this 1993 Chicago SunTimes article includes a map, very few leaders in 2017 are using maps to emphasize all of the places where kids, families and schools need help to aid youth as the move through school and into adult lives. Read more about this.   Read this article about "building public will".

I started this article with this graphic, and pointing to this presentation from my library of visual essays.

Poverty is a complex problem, requiring many different types of resources in the same place at the same time.  If we want more youth to stay in school, be safe in non-school hours, graduate from high school and move on to jobs, careers and adult responsibilities, we need to do the work shown at the bottom of this pyramid.

Moving into 2025.  I'm  hopeful that a landslide election of Democratic candidates will blunt the rise of fascist and authoritarian groups in America, but know that this election is just one step in a long battle against super rich people who want to reshape the government and society in their favor.   

I don't want to imagine the alternative.  

I wrote an article a few weeks ago showing Governor Tim Walz's interest in map.  Maybe he will champion this type of thinking in the next administration, and the ones that follow.

I wrote an article in 2021 about "Learning from others. Don't re-invent the wheel".  This is the thinking behind the work I've done for so long. It is the reason for my library. I hope someone with higher visibility than I have will build an even larger library, and include links to my website in it. 

Finally, I wrote this article in January 2024 showing how one person was raising money for Democratic candidates throughout the country.  This is an example that could be duplicated to support youth serving programs in multiple locations.  

In my own work I've never been able to get enough people together for an on-going basis, just to talk about ways we create and share the knowledge I've been collecting with more potential users.    If you're interested in taking a role please reach out to me. You can find me on any of these social media platforms.  I'm available for an on-line conversation on a daily basis.

We need everyone's help.

Thanks for reading. I know this is a long article and the links take you deeper and deeper. So don't try to read it all in one day. Make it part of on-going learning.  

I've been critical of Project 2025 and the billionaires behind it, but what if a few billionaires adopted the ideas in this article and supported them for the next 50 years.  This needs continuous support beyond one President.  

Can you help me do this work? Visit my FUND ME page and add your support.  Thank you.

How will you feel on Nov. 6, 2024?

I'm not sure you've noticed, but there's a huge election coming in a few weeks.  I'm hopeful the winner will be Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and scared to death that it won't happen.  Or, that she'll win, but not have a majority in the Senate and the House, meaning gridlock over the next four years.

I already voted. I urge you to make a plan and vote. Don't sit this one out.

But, what comes next?  What issues does a Harris/Walz team need to address.  The photo above is from the official Kamala Harris for President website. Visit this page to look at the issues she is focused on. 

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article with this concept map.

I think many of the topics on my map are issues she plans to address.  I hope someone in her team will take a look and see if they are missing anything.  I feel that without creating maps like this, showing all issues that need to be addressed, and showing places where resources are needed, we end up doing the right thing at the wrong time, or for not long enough, or in too few places.  

That's the reason engineers and construction workers use blueprints. They show ALL of the work that needs to be done, in the sequence it should happen.

Without applying this thinking to solving complex problems, progress is slow, if at all.  

I'm going to try something new with this article.  I've posted some paragraphs from past blog articles that I hope someone from Harris/Walz will take time to read.  These are ideas I've been sharing since the 1990s.  Too few have ever seen them. Too few have adopted them. 

You can click the image to enlarge and read the graphic. Then I hope you'll use the link provided at go to the article. Read it. Think about it. Share it.

open link

open link

open link

open link

open link

I've only highlighted five articles.  I've written more than 1200 since 2005. Many have the same ideas and the same focus.  

In many of my articles I emphasize a use of maps to show where people need help, and to assure an even distribution of resources to EVERY area where help is needed, not just to the most visible or the most well connected.   Here's one example. 

open link

While I've addressed this article to the people who I hope will be our next President and Vice President, these ideas are for leaders in every city and state, both in the private and the public sector.  

Building interconnected web libraries that make "all that is known" available and easier to understand and apply, then an on-going public education campaign that teaches people to visit this information and use it to innovate solutions to complex problems, is a path forward. 

The big challenge is that too few have the resources, or motivation, to build such libraries and keep them updated for 20-30 years like I have.  This is an ideal project for universities to be doing, using a constant flow of student talent to collect and share the resources, then to use them during their alumni years.  

Most universities do some of this work already. But most don't connect to libraries in other places, and other universities, in an interconnected web of knowledge.  That's what I feel should be happening. 

If you know of examples where this is being done, please share the link in the comment section. 

Thanks for reading, and sharing my article.  Please reach out and connect with me on social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, etc.  Find links on this page.

Finally, please consider a contribution to help me continue this work. Visit this page.

Dave Winer - a blogger for 30 years!

One thing that constantly humbles me is that no matter how much I put in the Tutor/Mentor library, it is only a small fraction of what is happening in the world.

Here's an example. A couple of days ago I saw a post on Twitter from Harold Jarche, about Dave Winer, who started blogging 30 years ago.

I've followed Harold and other pioneers of Internet networking and learning for many years and include links to his website in my library.  However, I don't recall every seeing a post by Dave Winer.   I started following him, like I do so many others. 

Today I saw this post by Dave, pointing to an article on the Daring Fireball blog (another that I did not know about, which has archives dating back to 2002). 

The article ends with this praise:

"He has such a distinctive writing voice that is impossible to imagine in any medium other than the web. But I think that’s because he helped define what writing not just on the web, but for the web, even meant."

Here's a post on Twitter by Harold Jarche, who has been writing about "Personal Knowledge Mastery" for the 20 years I've followed him.  Many of my own articles about learning parallel some of Harold's ideas.

Since I'm doing shout-outs to some of the pioneers who I've learned from over the past 30 years, Howard Rheingold, should also be recognized.  Here's a post that Howard shared on Mastodon.Cloud, about creating online community nearly 30 years ago. 

He points to this page.

In another post Howard points to an archive of Whole Earth publications (open here) , started in the 1990s. 

If you visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor library you'll find links to blogs written by Harold and Howard, and many others who I've added over the past 20 years.  I added a link to Dave Winer's blog today.  This is one of four sets of blog links in this part of the library.  

That's a lot of information and ideas!

I've used this graphic for many years to illustrate the constant learning required of a volunteer, staff member and/or leader in an organized non-school tutor/mentor program.   These are habits we want to build in the kids we tutor and mentor, and to our own kids!

You can see it in this article titled "Building Personal Learning Habits - Solving Complex Problems".

If you read the article you'll see that it points to the work of Harold Jarche and shows how I've tried to create a learning culture in the tutor/mentor programs I led, starting back in 1973 when I first became a volunteer and started to seek out ideas.  

 I started this blog in 2005, so am a youngster, compared to Dave Winer. I think my writing style is choppy, learned through writing retail advertising for 17 years.  I also could have benefitted from some of the auto correct features now available.  I cringe when looking at some of the typos in past letters and visual essays.  

But, I keep writing because there are still thousands of kids living in areas of persistent poverty in Chicago and other cities, rural areas and reservations around the country.  In each place, if someone is building a library like mine, they create a wealth of information people could use to build and sustain efforts that do more to reach kids and help them through school and into adult lives free of poverty's grip.

I've been digitizing my files and am almost complete. Now I've a lot of organizing to do.  However, unless I find someone(s) to take ownership of my work and use it as a teaching tool, thought starter, and reminder of the persistence that is needed, it will be lost forever in just a few years.

Here's a presentation I was able to create, drawing from my archives. It shows my outreach to universities in Chicago, the US and abroad over the past 30 years.  It includes links to many original documents showing work student interns did to help me build Cabrini Connections, the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

It's an example of the type of presentation student researchers could be creating to show others what information is available in my library.

I saw another post by Dave Winer today saying "It’s time for people who make their online home on Twitter to find a new home in the social media world. This place is a haven for fascism. We really don’t belong here anymore."

That's sad, because without Twitter we might never have connected.  I've started accounts on other platforms (see links here) but it took me 15 years to build my small network on Twitter.  I don't have that much time to rebuild on another platform, but I'll try. 

If you value what I'm sharing please consider a contribution to support my work. Visit this page. 

Connecting networks. The Tutor/Mentor Conferences 1994-2015

I started connecting with other people beyond Chicago via letters, telephone, and the traditional media during the 1980s and by email and on-line list serves in the 1990s.  The first Tutor/Mentor Connection web site was built for me by the brother of one of my tutoring program volunteers in 1997 and a new version was built by another one of our volunteers in 1998, then rebuilt again in 2006 by a team from IUPUI. That site hosted the Tutor/Mentor library, which I moved to the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site in 2019.

I began participating in email list discussions around 1995 and have continued for nearly 30 years. Through this I have grown my connections and commitments to on-line learning, network-building, mapping and collaboration, even though many of the people who have the money to fund my work are not yet using the Internet the same way.

I started participating in cMOOCs that connect people and ideas in on-line, open and on-going efforts in the early 2000s.  In 2004 we hosted our first eConference, in partnership with IUPUI.  We repeated these in 2005 and 2006, in the same time frames as we hosted face-to-face conferences in Chicago.  

I joined a "connected learning MOOC" (#clmooc) in 2013 which encourages participants to learn new ideas and share what they are learning on blogs, and different social media platforms.  I've stayed connected to participants from that group since then. A few have become financial supporters of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

In 2016, as a result of participating in this type of learning for several years, I posted a conference history story map on the Tutor/Mentor Exchange site after seeing a similar map done by someone else.

Click here to see my version.

I shared this link with #clmooc friends via Twitter and Terry Elliott, who I've written about before (see story), put my presentation on YouTube and added music to it. You can see it below.



Every time I or someone else posts an article related to the mission of the  Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, my hope is that others will do what Terry did, and what student interns have done often between 2006 and 2015, and create their own versions and interpretations, which they share with their own network.

One group of people who played an important role during the late 2000s, who I've not featured often enough, were the Northwestern University graduates who served one year fellowships with my organization.  

I asked each one to write a blog, chronicling their experiences, starting with day one, and ending with a final reflection.  The first was Nicole White, who joined us in the summer of 2007. After her fellowship year we were able to employ her in 2008 and 2009 as a full-time Tutor/Mentor Connection coordinator, with a grant from the Lawyers Lend-a-Hand Program at the Chicago Bar Foundation.  

Since this article is about the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, I encourage you to visit Nicole's blog and scroll through the articles she wrote about the five conferences that she was part of.  

You can read the blogs of Nicole and our three other Northwestern University fellows (Chris Warren, Bradley Troast and Karina Walker) on this site, and you can meet other interns from various colleges on that blog, too.

I hope you'll take time to view these.  Making sense of what we're doing, or trying to do, is an on-going challenge. Blogs written by staff, students and volunteers add a deeper perspective to the work we do and hopefully motivate donors to not only support us, but to support other programs, in other places, who are doing similar work, AND, telling their stories via blog articles.

Furthermore, they enable leaders and volunteers from different programs to see our strategies and borrow ideas that they might put into their own programs.  Learning from each other has been the goal of my networking and web library since the 1970s.

I've put together a concept map that aggregates links to blogs of people who have helped amplify and shape the ideas I've been sharing.  I'd like to be adding others. Just send me a link to any stories you create.

While I've not had the funds to host a Tutor/Mentor Conference since 2015, I'm still connecting people and ideas to help youth tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

This photo was taken in 1994 during the second full year of creating the Cabrini Connections program in Chicago.  It shares a vision of adults and kids connecting in on-going programs that I continue to spread through this blog, my website, email newsletter and social media.

I hope you'll connect with me. Share your own stories and links to your blog and visual essays. Visit this page to see where you can find me on social media.

Finally, I hope you'll consider a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  Visit this page for information.