Still judged by the color of their skin

For the past few years I've delighted at seeing alumni of the tutor/mentor programs I led sharing photos of their own kids finishing high school, going to college and graduating.  That was what we hoped would happen. 

However, I'm continuing to see evidence that this success does not lessen the fear that these young adults will become victims of police violence and continued racism in the USA.

Below are two pages from my Sunday Chicago SunTimes, showing a story about how at "Illinois public universities, campus cops pull over Black drivers at higher rates."  Read it here.

This story was also on the WBEZ.org site.  You can find it here.  I found this link on my BlueSky feed. I hope you'll join me there. 

These articles show that "Black driver stops far exceed Black enrollment, population. At every Illinois four-year public college campus police department that reported stops in 2023, the share of Black drivers getting pulled over by campus police surpassed both the share of Black students enrolled in the institution in the fall semester of 2022 and the percentage of Black individuals in the surrounding community age 18 and up."

It is frightening to read stories of young Black men and women talking about being routinely stopped and ticketed by campus police and see the lack of response from police leaders. If you're a White parent, this is not something you worry about when you celebrate your child's high school graduation and college acceptance.

It should not be something Black and Brown parents fear either.  But is is.

My Sunday SunTimes also had this story showing how "Sports was a major catalyst in the drive for equity after George Floyd’s murder, but time has erased all progress.." 

A year ago I wrote a similar article to this one. It also pointed to athletes talking about racism.  I included the graphic below, in that article with the same headline as I'm using today. 

Last year's article also included this:

"This was reinforced yesterday when I watched baseball star, Reggie Jackson, talk about the racial discrimination that he faced when playing in the 1960s and 1970s.  You can view the video on Twitter  (x) at this link." 

I wrote, "These are among many things happening locally, nationally and globally that scare me."

Locally, I see stories daily showing Black and Brown kids and adults shot and often killed in intentional and random shootings.  I see growing evidence that our highest source of justice, the Supreme Court, is corrupt and under the control of religious extremists.  

I see growing evidence of other forms of hate, from antisemitism to growing attacks on the rights of LGBTQ individuals and families, too.  

Globally we're facing a range of complex problems from a climate crisis, to war and conflict and massive suffering. Yet, in too many places, including the USA, we're electing right-wing leaders who care less about the poor and the planet than they do about their wealth and privilege. 

Last June I wrote, "While we're hopeful that November's US elections will bring control of the US House back to Democrats and Progressives, expand the majority in the Senate, and keep the White House, that's no guarantee that any of the terrible things happening in the US and the world will change."

That did not happen. A radical, greedy, cruel and careless man was elected President, progressives lost control of both the House and Senate, and Drump (you know who) has filled the top levels of government with radical extremists.   

Read the rest of my June 2024 article at this link.

Expanding the choir of "those who care" and "those who speak out".

My own long term efforts to help well-organized, volunteer-based, non-school tutor and/or mentor programs grow in high poverty areas of Chicago, where adults connect with youth when they are as young as elementary school, then stay connected through high school, and into adult lives, has always aimed to influence what the volunteers do to get others involved, not just to be an effective tutor and/or mentor.

I created this concept map many years ago to show how volunteers who are recruited from a diverse economic-social-educational background to be tutors and mentors can grow their understanding of the challenges kids and families in high poverty, highly segregated, areas face.  For some, this can lead to a much greater use of their talents and networks to help solve the root-causes and lead to a much brighter future for our kids and families, and ourselves.

http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Vol-Growth-Cycle

This chart shows a cycle that takes place almost every day, in hundreds of locations throughout the country. However, it may be happening with less purpose and impact in most places, than is needed to change the flow of resources to tutor/mentor programs and the number of people who get involved in the broader issues.  

Read this article to see a full explanation of the concept map, and see how interns from universities created animated versions.

Create a learning organization.

I've been building the Tutor/Mentor library since the 1970s.  Over the past 10 years I've added more and more links to websites that focus on race, poverty, inequality, and prevention.  Here's a cMap where I point to that section of the library.

Each node on this concept map opens to a collection of websites with an extensive range of articles that I wish I had had when I studied history, social studies and political science in high school and college in the 1960s.

I point to several hundred volunteer-based youth-serving organizations on this page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website.  I don't find many showing a strategy aimed at educating their volunteers and turning them into leaders...beyond building support for their own program.   I'd love to have some look at my blog and website and see the value of duplicating my efforts.  

Maybe this is happening in more places and I just don't see it. Thus, I invite readers to look at the websites in my library, or in their own communities, and point out pages that show how volunteer-based organizations are systematically educating their volunteers and motivating them to become evangelists who reach out and educate others.

If enough organizations did this consistently for 20 or 30 years it would grow a movement of people that might be large enough to actually create needed changes. 

Thanks for reading this.

I hope you're saying "ENOUGH" and that you'll read and share my articles, and my library, with family, friends, co-workers, and others in your own network.  Until more people are personally connected to these issues too few will speak out or do the organizing work needed to innovate long-term solutions.

Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky, Facebook, Twitter and other sites (see links here). 

And, if you're able, visit this page and make a contribution to help me do this work.

Many leaders needed to help youth programs grow

It's almost June, which means most school based youth tutor, mentor and learning programs are celebrating the end of this school year and are in the early stages of planning for next year. 

I led volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago from 1975 to 2011, so repeated this cycle for 35 consecutive years.  In doing so, I constantly struggled to find volunteers and donors to help.  That's what motivated me to create the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 when we were forming the new Cabrini Connections program to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have continued support from 7th grade through high school.

In many of my blog articles and PDF essays I share the strategies I've piloted since 1993 and use maps to focus attention on supporting youth tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty area of cities like Chicago.

The strategy the Tutor/Mentor Connection developed in 1993 (and led through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) was to build an information base showing where tutor/mentor programs were most needed, why they were needed, and ways volunteers, donors and businesses could help each program grow.  We added to this a comprehensive list of Chicago area, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, and used maps to show where they were located, with overlays showing where they were most needed.

Then we built a year-round communications program intended to draw programs together and attract students, volunteers and donors to each program

Using this any corporate leader could make the commitment shown in the Concept Map below, putting the company name, or CEO name, in the blue box at the top.  

I started sharing those steps in the mid 1990s.  You can now see them in this Role of Leaders PDF. 

If you're involved with any youth tutor/mentor program, as a volunteer, student, alumni, parent or donor I encourage you to share the information I show in this blog and on my website and use it to help high quality, long-term, mentor-rich youth programs grow in your community.

Furthermore, I urge you to connect with myself and others on-line and share your strategies, while helping build awareness of the need for a wide range of youth serving programs that reach K-12 kids in all high poverty areas, as well as in other places where  kids need extra help.

I share this photo often because it shows a role anyone can take to point to places where concentrated poverty and systemic racism have made it more difficult for kids to move through school and into adult lives where they have jobs and careers and can raise their own kids free of poverty's grip.

With the current US President and his administration working to roll back support for people who need extra help it is more important than ever that individuals build their own information-based strategies to do this work.

I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. I hope you'll connect and share your own maps and strategies.  

Finally, I hope some of you will value what I'm sharing and visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills.

Remembering those who gave all

During this weekend America will honor the sacrifices of those who gave their lives to defend and preserve our freedom and way of life. 

Open the "Memorial Day" tag on this blog, you'll find many stories I've posted in the past. Rather than repeat the same message, I invite you to read my articles from past years.

Just click on this link, then scroll backward from 2024 to 2005.  

As you look at these, I encourage you to read this article about "Project 2025" which is the playbook Republican strategists have in place to reshape America. I included this in my May 2024 Memorial Day message, yet too many voters (and non-voters) still chose Trump and the ultra conservative groups who now are pushing this agenda.

Then, look at this resource, provided by Indivisible, "a grassroots movement with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump and Project 2025 agenda."

I include the Indivisible website along with many others on this page of my Tutor/Mentor library. There are many things we need to do to create a Democratic party that can WIN elections, and WILL push legislation that creates a better America for everyone, not just the wealthy and the privileged. 

Let's work to assure that future Memorial Day celebrations will be in a more progressive, open and democratic United States and not a clone of the fascist governments growing in North Korea, Hungary and Russia. 

"It takes a village" - please share

Last Sunday I shared some videos in this post. These show strategies I've developed over the past 30 years to build and sustain volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach kids in high poverty areas of cities like Chicago and help them through school and into adult lives, with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids free of poverty.

Below is another video that shows how the information and ideas that I collect and share are intended to be used by leaders and workers in many places. 

I'm showing work that was created five and 10 years ago and a strategy that I began developing over 30 years ago when we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago.  

That means, anyone, or MANY, could create new,  updated, improved versions of these, sharing the same information and motivating people in Chicago, or in their own community, to provide the time, talent and votes to implement these strategies.

The ideas I share come from my own experiences and from what I've learned from others.  I led volunteer-based programs from 1975 to 2011 and am now seeing posts on Facebook by alumni of those programs, showing their own kids finishing high school and college.

When donors asked in the 1990s "What are your results?" I could not have predicted this future.  Yet, that's what we were working to achieve.

You can see more of my videos on this page and my visual essays on this page.   Use them as teaching tools and as planning resources, to help you develop your own leadership. 

It takes more than a few leaders and workers and donors.  It takes a village.

I've led this strategy via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011 and have had only a trickle of dollars to support my efforts.  Yet, the daily news and research reports keep showing that there are millions of people living in areas of persistent poverty who need a "village" of long-term support to help them break that cycle.  Helping their kids through school and into jobs is one way to do that.

The graphic below is on page 21 of this visual essay.   The focus of this essay is how YOU can make a difference, using your own talents and networks.

This slide demonstrates how I've used concept maps to visualize the ideas I'm sharing and how interns from various universities have created their own versions.  Since many of these were created using Flash Animation, which is no longer supported, I've embedded some in my videos, so you can still see the work that was done.

My goal is that others will be inspired to create and share their own versions.  

Thanks for reading.  Please reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram and/or Twitter.  Find links on this page.

And, if you're able, consider making a contribution to help me do this work. Click here. 

Mapping Strategy. Ideas. Libraries.

I saw the visualization below last week. It was created using Kumu.io, which I've written about before. In the different nodes it shows places where students from many universities can do volunteer service in organizations working to help refugee, immigrant and LGBTIQ communities. I liked it because of the way it organizes and shares information.

Open the graphic at this link. In the center are three nodes showing the Columbia Global Emerging Scholars Fellowship, the Harvard Refugee Fieldwork Program and the Refugee Rights Clinic.  Click on the icon with any node on the map and you'll find information about that organization or resource. It's a fantastic way to share information and connect networks of people who focus on related issues.

I've been trying to harness ways to do this since I started leading a tutor/mentor program in the 1970s. Initially, I used type-written newsletters and a copy machine and distributed my information by hand to volunteers and students attending weekly tutor/mentor sessions, or by letters to corporate leaders and supporters.  

By 1993 when we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection I had an extensive library, but it was only available to people who came to my program offices in Chicago, where we held weekly tutor/mentor sessions. It wasn't until around 1998 when our first website was created, that I found a way to share this with a wider audience in Chicago, and the world.

This graphic was used on the home page of the first Tutor/Mentor Connection website and I've used the hub/spoke graphic for the past 28 years since then. The spokes represent the different types of information found on the website.  These linked to internal pages with lists of information and links to external websites.  I've tried to animate it, or make it interactive, like the Kumu maps I've pointed to, but not with consistent success.

Below are some examples of what I've been trying to share and ways I've been able to do it.

The goal: Open this link to view the map shown below. 

This shows a goal of helping kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs and starting careers by their mid 20s.  In the middle is the concept map shown below, witch outlines the 4-part strategy needed to achieve the goal.

Open the concept map at this link. Or, visit this blog article to see a description of the content of this map.

Below is a short video that describes the four-part strategy. 

 

Below is a graphic from a presentation created by Mina Song, an intern from South Korea, who created a five-part overview of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and its 4-part strategy.  Find the links to this and the other four Prezi slide shows on this page. 

Here's an earlier visualization, showing the goal and four-part strategy, created by in 2008 by one intern, then updated in 2009 by Alan Yoo, another intern from South Korea. The voice over is by Bradley Troast, our Northwestern University Public Interest Fellow. Since all of this was created with Flash Animation, I created and narrated this video a few years ago.

   

The Kumu map demonstrates one way to share information.  The other maps and videos show ways I've been able to do this with the help of many interns and volunteers.

I share this with one goal in mind.

I created this graphic in 2016 for this blog article and I've used it often since then. It shows my goal of helping teams of multi-talented people form and build, then sustain, constantly improving, volunteer-based youth tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach kids in all areas of persistent poverty and help them through school and into jobs and a life free of poverty.

The Kumu map illustrates how one team of people is visualizing ideas. My maps and videos show how I and interns working with me have visualized ideas, strategy and available resources.

Today's blog article shows how I continue to seek others who will duplicate my work, do it better, and spread it to more people in more places.

I invite you to share this with others so that teams WILL FORM in cities across the world, creating their own versions of my maps, graphics and blog articles, which they share with the same goals.

This is more important than ever. With the current administration burning books, deleting history from government websites, and cutting funding for many education, youth serving and social benefit programs, leaders are scrambling to find resources.

Non-profit and social benefit organizations are COMPETING against each other, harder than even before.

Why not devote some time, energy and creativity to working collectively to change how donors, volunteers, media and policy-makers support all programs in this sector, so that everyone has a more consistent flow of resources, not just a few?

Thanks for reading.  If you're sharing similar ideas, please connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, BlueSky and Twitter.  

I depend on contributions to fund the work I do. Please visit this page and help. 

Poverty and Racism in America - Understand the Issues

It's a new week, but with continuing problems based on past history and compounded by current leadership.  I don't know all the issues, nor most of the solutions.  However, while I've been trying to build my own understanding since I became a volunteer in a Chicago tutor/mentor program in 1993, I've also been sharing articles and resource links that I've found in a library that enables other people to find and use the same information.

Below is what I wrote in May 2023.  I've added a few additional links in the text.

--- begin ---

In early May I watched a presentation hosted by the Urban Institute, featuring Matt Desmond, author of a new book titled "Poverty in America".  Open this link to view the video of the presentation. 

In a follow up email the Urban Institute summarized some of the key points of the webinar.  They wrote:

While no one policy is a silver bullet, Desmond suggests keeping these ideas in mind:

• Social justice: “It’s impossible to write about poverty in America without writing about racism in America,” Desmond said. Black and Latinx families have lower incomes, a lower homeownership rate, less in savings, and ultimately less average wealth than white families. Therefore, any steps forward must come from the position of breaking down segregation and structural racism.
• Targeted universalism: Rather than targeting one solution to each group or each problem, Desmond recommended identifying the desired societal outcome, then implementing many universal solutions that could address it.
• Start with your own influence: “It’s easier to change norms than beliefs,” Desmond said, meaning that individual actions can build political will for larger changes. For researchers, influence can mean empowering communities, advocates, and journalists to tell their own story through data.

Then, on May 21, an opinion article in Politico, by Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University and author of several books on racial justice and American democracy, provided an in-depth analysis in an article titled: America’s Poverty Is Built by Design: How did the U.S. become a land of economic extremes with the rich getting richer while the working poor grind it out? Deliberately." 

I added links to Matt Desmond's website to the Tutor/Mentor Library. You can find them here, and here.

I also encourage you to skim through some of these articles. 

I and six other volunteers created Cabrini Connections (a site-based tutor/mentor program) and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in November 1992 following the shooting death of a 7-year old boy, in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago.  I've used this front-page story from the October 1992 Chicago Sun-Times as a reminder and motivation every year since then.

In the summary above Desmond is quoted as saying "individual actions can built political will for larger changes". 

This is not a new problem. However, it's a problem that our leaders can't stay focused on every day, because there are so many other problems.

That's why I think it's important for another level of leaders to emerge, who are totally focused on building a better community understanding, and response, to the problems and solutions.

I've been issuing this invitation for the past 25 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.

I've developed my own actions steps, and posted them on this blog in the past. Here they are again:

If we want to stop this violence, we have to act now, and keep acting to solve this problem for many years. We have to think spatially, that is, look at the entire city and suburban problem, not just one neighborhood. At the same time, we need to act locally, because none of us has the time, or the resources to help each of the kids in the entire Chicago region who live in neighborhoods where poverty is the root cause of the violence.

This animation was done by one of my interns after reading this article.

Here are some ways to remind yourself. Think of ENOUGH, is ENOUGH

E – educate yourself – most of us do not live in high poverty neighborhoods, so we only understand the root causes of senseless shootings from what we read in newspapers. We also only read negative news in the media, so we’re not really well informed on where these events are taking place most frequently. Finally, while there is a perception that there are plenty of youth programs, we really don’t have a good understanding of the distribution of different types of youth programs, to different age groups, in different zip codes. The only way this will change is if each of us pledges to spend one hour a week reading books, articles and web reports, that illustrate the root causes of these shootings, or of poor performance in schools. Through our learning we can draw ideas that we use in our own actions. We can also begin to contribute information that other people use to support their own decision making.

To help with your learning about race, poverty and inequality in America browse the different sections of the Tutor/Mentor library, shown on this concept map. 



N – engage your network – find ways to draw others who you know into this shared understanding. Recognize people who volunteer time and talent, or who help kids through the programs they operate. If you are a business leader, or a church leader, engage your corporation or your congregation. You can use your web site, advertising, point of purchase materials, etc. to point to web sites that show all of the agencies in the city who do tutoring/mentoring, such as www.tutormentorexchange.net. If you do this weekly, year after year, your friends, coworkers and customers will become involved in solving this problem with you.

O – offer help, don’t wait to be asked. As you build your understanding of where poverty is most concentrated, and what social services are in those areas, choose a neighborhood, and reach out with offers of time, as a volunteer, talent, help build a web site, do the accounting, or offer Public relations services, and dollars, if the web site of an organization shows they do good work, you don’t need to ask for a proposal of how they would spend your donation, you need to send them a donation so they can keep doing that good work

U – build a shared understanding. Form groups of peers to share reading and learning assignments, just as you meet every Sunday to read passages of scripture and build the group’s understanding of the Word of God. Use the many different resources of the T/MC Links library as the starting point for your search for wisdom, and understanding.

G – give until it feels good – people who generously donate time and dollars to causes they believe in feel good about their giving. If we’re going to surround kids living in poverty dominated neighborhoods with extra learning and adult mentoring networks, donors will need to give more than random contributions of time, dollars and talent.  

H – form habits of learning, and pass these on to your kids. Imagine how much more successful teachers were if youth came to school every day asking questions about where to find information, or how to understand information they had researched on the Internet the previous day? We can model that habit if we build it into our own activity. Keep a chart where you can document actions you take each week to same sure that this time ENOUGH, really means ENOUGH.

If you document actions, you can review what you’ve done at the end of each month, and each year, and begin to see a growing mountain of actions you have taken to solve this problem. Some of these will be actions that got other people involved, so that the good work you do is multiplying because of the good work others are also doing.

Through this process you help build this shared understanding, which will lead to better public policy. Without this habit of learning, and without learning to use the Internet to find good ideas from people in all parts of the world, we won’t be able to problem solve as well as we need to, and we won’t be able to teach this habit to our kids.

Share this post and the links I point to. Start discussions in your own circles of influence. Be the  YOU in the graphic shown above.

If we do this, we’ll not only reduce the root causes of youth on youth violence, we’ll also address one of the growing issues facing America in a global economy. We will begin to create a nation of learners, problem solvers, creative thinkers and innovators, who use learning and information as the basis of creating opportunity and keeping America great.

Read Leadership ideas here and here

--- end May 2023 --- 

In the above article I talked about "creating new leaders".  In one of the research articles I include this graphic, visualizing a strategy led by universities, funded by mega donors, that creates, and provides on-going support, for such leaders. 

You can find this graphic in this article. You can find more articles showing a sophisticated, long-term strategy, that universities could apply.  They just need donors to provide the motivation. 

Thanks for reading and sharing this article.

Find me on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, LinkedIn and Facebook (see links here).

If you want to help support my efforts please visit this page and send a small contribution to help Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. 

What are your volunteers learning?

I saw this post on Twitter this morning, from the Prison Policy Institute, which I point to from my newsletters and my library.

You can follow their posts on Twitter, or on BlueSky, at this link. If you don't live in a high poverty area you probably have never given a lot of thought to how the prison-industrial complex harms people in vulnerable situations and contributes to the on-going problems of persistent poverty.   Follow posts by Prison Policy Institute and others to expand your own understanding. Share these links with your network to increase the number of people who understand the problem and are willing to provide time, talent, dollars and votes toward solutions. 

I started collecting newspaper clips and research articles in the 1970s to expand my own understanding of why a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program was needed and how to lead a constantly improving program.  

I was digitizing some files yesterday when I found this 1994 opinion article by Mark Freedman, who wrote the book Kindness of Strangers.  It's titled "To Help the Young, We Need More Than Mentors". 

Click on this link to view the article in my Google Drive file.

I've built my understanding of the challenges facing kids and families living in areas of concentrated, persistent poverty over the past 50 years.   And, I've been sharing the resources I was learning from with volunteers in the tutor/mentor programs I led, so they could also expand their understanding.  

Because, mentoring alone is usually not enough.  And, volunteers who become informed and empowered can do much to remove many of the barriers, while also helping the tutor/mentor programs they serve sustain and constantly improve their efforts. Which means doing more to help the youth they mentor.

I created this concept map as a guide to articles in the Tutor/Mentor library. Anyone can access this map and dig into the library. Many of the links I point to are extensive resources themselves. 

You can find a link to the Prison Policy Initiative on this page along with many other related resources.

And, I created this concept map to show how volunteers grow over multiple years of involvement in well-organized tutor, mentor and learning programs. It shows my own efforts, and hopefully inspires the design and activities of other programs, in Chicago, and around the country. 

In this "Steps to Start a Tutor/Mentor Program" visual essay I quote Marc Freedman's comments about the potential and the difficulties of mentoring and his suggestion that without infrastructure and support for mentors and mentoring programs, the movement will never reach its potential.

Much of my work since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 has focused on helping programs get the on-going resources needed to provide that infrastructure.

I've used my website, print and e-mail newsletters and blogs to share this information and to try to motivate volunteers to spend time learning and building a greater depth of understanding of why tutor/mentor programs are needed, where they are needed, what types of programs are needed, based on who the mentee is, and what other issues need to be addressed.

The goal has been to build a greater public commitment to the actions that need to be taken, and sustained for many years, to solve the problems that Prison Policy Institute and others highlight in their own media.

View this set of articles to see how I've written about "building public will".   

I point to several hundred youth serving organizations in lists on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website.  I try to open every link, at least once a year, to make sure they work and to see what the program is doing to educate volunteers and donors.  Some point to research showing why their programs are needed. Very few point to my library, or show "educating volunteers" as part of their core strategies.  

That might change if donors looked for such information on a program's website.  

I actually created a visual essay a few years ago which I titled "Shopping Guide".  

This shows some, but probably not all, of the information you should find on an on-going youth tutor, mentor and learning program website.  Programs won't put this information on line unless donors, volunteers and parents are looking for it and unless they have staff and/or volunteers who can put the information on-line.  If you know of programs doing a good job sharing similar information, please share links with me.

Let's connect. You can find me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Treads, and Twitter (still).  Find links on this page. 

Thanks for reading. If you value the information I'm sharing, and the resources on the Tutor/Mentor website, please visit this page and make a contribution. 

Reaching youth in high poverty areas - distance matters

My blog articles aim to motivate readers to think of ways they can be strategically involved in helping kids born or living in high poverty areas move through school and into adult lives over a 12 to 20 year period of consistent support.

In the concept map below I show the logic model that I’ve developed over the past 30+ years and a progression of thinking that I hope you and others will follow.

If you read the concept map, from upper left and follow the 1-7 numbers you'll see the following:

1) Our attention is drawn to problems by negative news stories and new research.  Many stores point to the need for more youth-serving programs. 2) Much of the research shows the benefits of organized, on-going programs. 3) Organized programs provide a way for volunteers and youth to connect. 4) Someone needs to have a list of existing programs so while media attention motivates people to look for ways to get involved, they have a resource that shows them choices of where to get involved.  

5) Once it's accepted that organized programs are needed in many places, we need to recognize that each of them needs a constant flow of the same type of resources (ideas, talent, dollars, technology, etc.). 6) That leads to building an understanding of the challenges of existing funding systems, then innovation of new ways to generate a better flow of flexible dollars into every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

7) So, where are people meeting to talk about this?  What research is available to support these conversations?  

Most kids have a wide range of support from family, community and schools. Kids living in high poverty areas have fewer of these supports. Plus, there are many more challenges impeding their progress. The concept map shown below visualizes these challenges. 

Volunteers who kids meet in organized tutor/mentor programs can be extra adults who help kids overcome many challenges.  But if you look at the maps of Chicago you can see that there are challenges in connecting volunteers who model jobs and different learning opportunities with kids living in areas of concentrated poverty in the city and suburbs.

Distance matters. I write more about that below.

I pointed to a report from A Better Chicago in an article I wrote on April 5th. Pages 26 to 29 of the report focus on the need for community based programs, such as tutor/mentor and learning.

They show that high poverty areas have fewer programs and that “youth of all ages and races overwhelmingly want more access to programs in their communities.” 

I’ve shown this same information on maps since we published our first Directory of Chicago volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in 1994. 

I continue to share lists that people can use to find programs. You can find them here. 

If you’ve read many of my blog articles you’ll notice that I focus on Chicago and big cities. Mainly that’s because it’s where I lived and worked since 1973 and where I began leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975. 

You'll also see that I'm trying to draw attention and resources to every high poverty area, and every volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning program, not just those with the highest profile. Good programs are needed in every neighborhood. That means they need good leadership and consistent funding.

In this article I want to talk about distance, or the time it takes for a volunteer to go from work to a place where she can meet for one, or two, hours with a youth who lives in a high poverty area and attends a school in a high poverty neighborhood. And the three time frames where these connections need to be happening. 

I've used the two graphics shown below for many years. The first shows the role of volunteers from many backgrounds connecting with youth in organized tutor, mentor and learning activities.

The second shows that the non-school hours have two time frames. The traditional afterschool hours, from 3pm to 6pm, are a time frame when parents are still working and kids need supervision. Organized programs are needed in almost every neighborhood. 

The after-five PM hours are a time frame when volunteers are traveling from work to home and can stop for a few hours at a tutor/mentor program site in a high poverty neighborhood to serve as a tutor, mentor, coach, program leader or in other roles.

Both of these graphics emphasize the 12 years it takes for EACH child to grow from first grade to high school graduate, and the 4 to 8 years after that as young people finish extra education and start to find jobs and build careers.

I've used maps since 1993 to show the distribution of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. 

I’ve been trying to build a nuanced understanding of this since we started collecting information about programs. In our Directories we provided information by age group (elementary, middle school and high school) and by type of program (pure tutor, pure mentor, tutor/mentor).   In this article you can read about the interactive program locator that we built in 2004 and updated in 2008, which is now only an archive. It shows what we were trying to do and what others might build in the future. 

By aggregating and segmenting data about existing programs we can ask "How many programs are needed? and "Where are more programs needed?"    Below is a map created in 1997 that shows this question. You can see it in this article. 

When you first look at the map at the right you might say "there are a lot of programs". But when you segment by age group served and type of program you'll see far fewer, especially for older youth.  

We never reached a point where we could survey to learn about arts, technology, STEM, youth leadership, etc. forms of learning in non-school, volunteer-based programs but adding that would offer valuable insight to planners and funders.

We created the map below in the late 2000s. It shows the expressways and rail lines that bring people from the suburbs into the city every day (and from the city to the suburbs). 

Big cities like Chicago, with a large geographic footprint, are measured in miles. From North to South is a distance of about 25 miles.  From the LOOP area in central Chicago to the Oak Park border on the West side is 10.2 miles. Driving through congested areas makes this a long trip for any volunteer trying to leave work during the school day to go to a public school or after school program.  Doing this weekly for several years is a difficult commitment.

Yet, if that volunteer works in the LOOP and lives in Oak Park or further West, there are many places near the transit stops or off the Expressway where that volunteer might stop for a few hours, and keep participating for multiple years.  In the program that I led from 1975 to 1992, hosted at the Montgomery Ward Corporate office on Chicago Avenue, we welcomed volunteers who came from as far away as Naperville! 

Other big cities probably have the same geographic challenges.  Yet there is a huge pool of potential volunteers to draw from, due to the massive population of Chicago and other big cities. There are also huge numbers of kids living in high poverty areas.

So, if you looked at the concept map at the top of this article, are  you talking with people in your network about ways you and them might help tutor/mentor programs grow in Chicago or other cities?

So be the YOU in the graphic below. Share my articles and the resources in the Tutor/Mentor Library and grow the number of people who are thinking strategically, and long-term, about ways to build and sustain mentor-rich non-school programs that help kids in high poverty areas move from birth-to-work.

Every city just needs a consistent, year round communications program that draws volunteers and donors to every existing youth program and shows where more are needed.  Visit this page and see the event strategy developed by the Tutor/Mentor Connection between 1994 and 1998 that I continue to support. Borrow from these ideas to build your own year-round campaigns. 

Then, for all of you who don't live in big cities who are saying "What about us?", start building a library of information, with maps, showing where organized tutor/mentor programs are needed and where existing programs, and volunteer opportunities are located.  And build your own communications campaigns.

In smaller communities it might take less time to go from work to a school during the school day, so more volunteers might engage that way.  However, in rural areas where population density if far less and geography far larger, the problem is different. Mapping where kids live who might benefit from tutor/mentor programs, and places where they might connect with volunteers, is still a step toward a solution, because it provides a solid information base to work from.  However, building long-term, face-to-face connections with volunteers who model many different career opportunities may be more difficult.

In big cities and rural areas and reservations on-line mentoring and tutoring has a lot of potential, but it's long term impact on helping kids through school and into adult lives has yet to be proven.  I point to e-Mentoring and e-Tutoring programs in this section of my library. Learn from what they are doing.

What I'm showing in articles like this  is that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot more people need to be involved, in many ways, for many years.  So if this is something you've been thinking about, please introduce yourself and share your research and your ideas.

This is me in the mid 1990s with a map of Chicago in the background. This could be you in the next few years.  Hopefully it will be many people, not just one, or two.

Let's connect on social media. This page shows where you can find me.

And, this page shows how you can make a contribution to help fund my work. Your help is needed. 

Presidents' Summit for America's Future - 28 years later

In April 1997 representatives from 50 cities and every state gathered in Philadelphia for the Presidents' Summit for America's Future.

I was one of the 10 people representing Chicago and the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) was one of 50 "Teaching Example" organizations who was invited to have an information booth at the Summit.

With help from our Public Relations partner, Public Communications, Inc., we created a video to share.  Sadly we had limited funds for distribution so I doubt that many people ever saw it.

I embedded the video in this 2023 article. 

And, I wrote about the Summit in this 2017 article. 

I also wrote about the Summit in this 2007 article.

I hope you'll take a look and share the ideas with leaders in your community. Sadly, persistent poverty is still embedded in many cities, states and reservations across America.

For those who want to know more about the President's Summit for America's Future you might want to look at some of the media stories from 1997 and following years that I've collected and archived in my Google Drive.  Click here to open. 

Innovating new funding solutions

I wish peace, good health and happiness to all who celebrate any religious holiday this weekend.  However, I'm not sure any GOD is going to help us unless we do more to help ourselves.  Thus....

A few days ago I shared an article titled, "Funders, here's the blueprint for saving democracy", written by Vu Le.   I wrote about it in this article. 

I've used the term "blueprint" in many articles, to show a range of actions that donors, leaders, policy-makers, etc. need to be taking to help make sure well-organized, long-term, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are available in EVERY high poverty area of Chicago and other places with concentrations of persistent poverty.

I've been using this "Mentoring Kids to Careers" graphic, along with various versions, since late 1990s, to emphasize the same goals.

In the lower left corner is a map of Chicago, with high poverty areas shaded grey. These are the areas where mentor-rich programs are most needed BECAUSE of how they can expand social capital and aspirations and open doors to opportunity.  

What makes my work unique is that I don't just point to the research.  I maintain a list of Chicago volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and look for ways to draw volunteers AND donors DIRECTLY to each program, throughout the year.   My long-term goal has been that a program website serves as the "grant proposal" and donors use that, plus the information I share about long-term mentoring, and the need for such programs in high poverty areas, to make funding decisions.

In this article you can find my list of programs and see how I plot them on a map. This helps people find existing programs and hopefully is used by planners to determine where more are needed.

Below I've created another version, highlighting one stage on my career ladder.

Kids grow one year at a time. Support  needed for many years.

It's great to be able to provide a youth tutoring and/or mentoring activity that lasts for one, or two years, but it takes 12 years to move from first grade through high school and four to six more years beyond that to be starting a job and career. Expanding the "who you know" network is critically important for kids living in areas of segregated, concentrated poverty where "who they know" is not as extensive as it is for kids living in more affluent areas.

The challenge Chicago and other places face is building and sustaining k-12 support programs in every high poverty neighborhood.  I've written about this often since starting my blog.  

View in this article

I've been writing articles and sharing graphics like this for nearly 20 years, but as just one voice, I don't have enough impact to influence the massive changes that are needed in how such programs are organized, designed and supported.

Below is another graphic that I use to emphasize the need for continuous flows of flexible operating dollars to youth programs in every high poverty neighborhood.

View in this article

The benefit of long-term support of mentor-rich programs as a form of social capital was reinforced in this 2023 article which points to a report from MENTOR, titled "Opportunities to Invest in Long-Term Social Capital for Our Youth: A Philanthropic Agenda".    

View this group of articles and find more research that donors can use to support funding decisions.

Here's an article about philanthropy that I wrote about in 2018 after it was published by Open Impact. It's titled, "The New Normal: Capacity Building During a Time of Disruption"

I read the article and saw many ideas which I've been trying to implement via the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC since 1993. So I decided to put it on Hypothes.is and re-read it, highlighting relevant parts, and writing comments in the margin that show my own efforts.

In the paper's introduction the writers say "we hope this paper will spark and important conversation". I agree. 

In my comments I suggest that philanthropy would dramatically change if donors were shoppers and if non-profits and social change organizations would put enough information on their web sites for donors, volunteers and clients to make better choices of who they support, and in what ways.  I also emphasize the use of maps to support a better distribution of resources to all high poverty areas of the Chicago region and other places where help is most needed.

Read about Annotation

Thus, I invite you to read "The New Normal: Capacity Building During a Time of Disruption" with three purposes:

1) build a deeper understanding of what I've been trying to do, and to find reasons to support my efforts and help carry them into the future;

2) build a deeper understanding of the challenges facing all social benefit organizations, in the US and the world, and a commitment to draw others into this conversation; and

3) see how on-line annotation works and build a commitment to launch other articles and invite more readers and learners to join in.

I look forward to meeting you in the margins.

So far no one has joined me in reading the New Normal article.   Maybe that's because so few people actually see my articles.

I post on Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIN and occasionally on Instagram. I also have graphics on Pinterest.com.  If you do a Google search for "tutor mentor" my web sites will be on the first page (after paid advertising). Thus, if people are looking, they can find me.

If you're connected to any youth-serving programs in any way (student, alum, volunteer, board member, staff, donor) you can help them attract support by sharing what the organization is doing and making an effort to raise the organization's profile.

You can even write articles like mine.

Thanks for reading!  Enjoy your weekend.