Building Public Will. Changing the Future.

Today I attended the UIC Urban Forum: Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow and was actively Tweeting quotes until my phone battery went low. I took about 5 pages of notes, which I'll draw from in future articles.

During the last of three panel discussions I created the sketch below.

I'll put this on Power  Point and add some color, but the box at the left represents the vast wealth that has been created over the past few decades and is in the hands of less than 1% of people in the world. The panel discussions from today, and much of what I write about on this blog and the MappingforJustice blog, focuses on the negative results of this "wealth-creation" and calls on people with this wealth to be much more proactive in what they do to reduce the negatives they have inflicted upon the world, while creating greater hope, opportunity and well-being for people in the US and other countries.

Unfortunately, as my sketch shows, this is not happening on a voluntary basis, or at great scale, which is why many people call on government to take a role. Except, our political leaders are failing us.

Thus, in 2016 we have Donald Trump...and Bernie Sanders.

As with other events I attend, many of the panel members and attendees are people I've met over the past twenty years, but who for what-ever reason, don't make much of an effort to draw me into their conversations or use the ideas I share in their work (that I know of).  I think Terry Mazany of the Chicago Community Trust rolls his eyes every time he sees me.

For instance, the moderator of the first panel this morning was John McCarron, who wrote the story above in 1995, describing the work of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I launched in 1993, and which I now continue to lead via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  John also included me in this 1996 article.

Today's first two panel discussions created a sort of momentum, or volcano of interest, which was topped off by Clarence Page, and his concluding quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" speech, which I found on this web site

“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the fires of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until they who live on the outskirts of Hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heap of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into the bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.” 
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

That was 50 years ago! While much has changed, there is still too much to be dissatisfied about.

I created this graphic in the 1990s and have used it often. It illustrates how each one of us needs to be "dissatisfied" with the wrongs in the world, and how we need to be reaching out to try to engage other people in efforts to overcome those wrongs.

In this graphic the circle represents the information available on the Internet, and in many libraries, that groups of people can read, discuss, debate and use to innovate ways they can use their time, talent and dollars, to help kids move through school and into jobs, in one of the high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago, which show on the map at the right side of this graphic.

Clarence Page talked about how "We tend to be kind of crisis oriented in our society". As he did I recalled how I used this 1996 article to illustrate that problem.

I spent 17 years creating retail advertising for the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago. We spent over $250 million dollars a  year (in the 1980s) using weekly adversiting to tell 20 million people, in 40 states, that we had stores near them, with merchandise they were looking for....AND.....this week it's on SALE!

What will it take to motivate leaders to create on-going advertising type campaigns that draw more and more people to information they can use to become solutions to the problems we face?

As one person responded to me, "Where's the profit?"   

I created concept maps like this to try to show the "profit" gained by strategic investment by business in youth tutor/mentor programs.

I've attended forums like today's for over 20 years. I've been on the Internet since 1996 and in one section of my library I share links to web sites talking about innovation, creativity, collaboration, network building, mapping, etc.

Articles that I point to show ways people who attend events like today's can be connecting with each other after the event and digging deeper into the ideas shared, while learning and innovating ways to build the "public will" needed to create the world we want and should have, rather than the one the super rich are forcing us to live in.

In another two sub sections of the library I point to a set of blogs where the writers talk about learning and cMOOCs which show ways organizers of events might be connecting participants to each other in on-line communities where they engage, share ideas, learn new ideas, and put into practice the type of learning we hope young people bring into their adult lives. 

Another set of links points to articles about poverty, social justice, housing, etc.  

I recognized a long time ago that I am an inadequate teacher, unable to fully communicate the ideas I find from others. Thus, I try to point people who are inspired by speakers like the panel members in today's UIC Urban Forum, to visit web sites that  I point to, where much more talented and knowledgeable writers than I, can help them understand issues and ways to respond.

For instance, I've had a link to this paper by Dr. James Heckman, another panel member at today's forum, in my web library since the mid 2000s.

If others are looking at these articles, or attended events like today's forums, they might be able to communicate the "Where's the Profit?" response to business leaders and the wealthy better than I do.

My goal is that organizers not only build on-line interaction into the design of their events, but that they also build an evaluation process that creates maps showing where participants come from and what skills/network they represent. From year-to-year such maps should show repeat participation and greater engagement....if the goal is building public will to find solutions to complex problems like poverty and inequality.

They also might aggregate stories created by event participants and share them, in an effort to help everyone become a blogger, network builder and solution finder.

I've posted more than 1000 articles on this blog since 2005 and have more than 2000 links in the web library I host. No one can comprehend all of this if they only spend a few minutes on site. However, if college and high school students, faith group members and business research & development teams spend time on an on-going basis looking at these articles and links I think they will find a wealth of ideas that they can apply to resolve their own "dissatisfaction" with the way the world is structured in 2016.

I hope I can be included in that process.

Engaging Volunteer Mentors in Youth Employment Issues

I attended a Youth Employment hearing at the Chicago Urban League yesterday where nearly 20 urban youth testified before a panel of elected officials and a crowd of community organization leaders, showing the importance of jobs and mentoring.  Articles sharing this information are in today's newspapers and many places on social media. Congratulations to the organizers for bringing the media,  political leaders and community organizations together to focus on this issuel.

During the hearing, Teresa Cordoba of the UIC Great Cities Institute shared a report, showing nearly half of urban Black men, age 20-24, are unemployed, and used maps to show the relationship of poverty, unemployment and urban violence.   Kelly Hallberg, from the University of Chicago Crime Lab, shared research showing that youth employment programs have a positive impact on the aspirations of youth and in reducing criminal behavior. She started her testimony with a sign saying:

"Nothing stops a bullet like a job."

Since this is obvious, why are the funds not in place to offer more jobs, Why isn't the business community doing more?


I attended this hearing (that's me sharing event information via my Twitter feed)  because I became a volunteer tutor/mentor in 1973, and because I was part of organized, structured, supportive non-school programs, I've stayed involved, and grown my own commitment to where it is today. See timeline.

I've been saying for nearly 20 years that strategies that support the growth of well-organized non-school tutor/mentor programs are strategies that increase the number of people who become allies..and voters... who are needed to resolve these problems.   Unfortunately, too few leaders have embraced the vision and ideas I've been sharing on this blog and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site.

Below is one of several presentations I've created that expand on this idea.

Mentor Role in Larger Youth Development Strategy by Daniel F. Bassill

If company leaders, faith leaders, college teams and more adopt this ROLE OF LEADERS strategy, and build internal teams to lead the engagement of the entire corporate/organization in this effort, there would be more well organized youth programs, and more volunteers, like myself, deeply involved in trying to reduce these problems.

As I listened to the different youth giving testimony yesterday, I had a vision of a different type of presentation.  What if each youth, when they introduced themselves, said "I'm a registered voter. I  live in xxWard, xx County Board District, xx State Legislative and State Senate district.  I am to cast my vote for someone who brings jobs and non-school learning and mentoring opportunities to my neighborhood."

I've written many articles on uses of maps, such as this one.  Here's a presentation, illustrating what youth could have been offering as part of their testimony, using maps of political districts, to illustrate where help is needed and who should be helping.

Violence in Chicago: Where Will We Be in 10 Years? by Daniel F. Bassill

I'd be happy to meet with leaders of youth serving organizations, schools, universities, faith groups, political campaigns, and business, to show ways I think maps, and map stories, can involve youth in roles that not only educate and motivate adults to do more, but provide skill-building opportunities that translate to well-paying 21st century careers.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIN, or email tutormentor 2 at earthlink dot net.

Calling all Veterans. Be part of War on Poverty

I spent three years in the Army in the late 1960s, serving in Military Intelligence. I'd studied history in college prior to joining the Army, so I understood the role of collecting best available information for leaders to use in making decisions. Over the past 40 years I've amassed a large web library, that anyone can use to build and sustain volunteer-based programs reaching k-12 youth living in high-poverty areas of big cities.

It's Veteran's Day, so I'm calling on Veterans and active duty service men and women to use the skills they have learned to support an "intelligence-based" effort that fills high poverty areas with needed programs, and helps each program get the on-going flow of resources each needs to constantly improve their ability to help youth overcome the challenges of poverty as they move through school and into adult lives.

This map visualizes this process. You can find an explanation of the graphic here, and here.

On the right hand side of this graphic I emphasize the use of maps. Unless leaders use maps to show all of the places within an urban area where poverty is concentrated, and where other indicators show a need for extra support, it's likely that strategies will only reach a few places, not every place where help is needed.

Step 7, on the far left, is equally important. Unless we focus on ways to build and sustain public support for this strategy, the flow of resources to all of the programs that need to be involved will be too small and or discontinued too soon. I wrote an article about building public will recently. I hope you'll look at it.

Steps 2 through 6 are on-going, but they involved building a deeper understanding of the complex challenges of reaching youth in all parts of a geographic region with a wide range of supports that help them move through school and into adult lives. This deeper learning extends far beyond understanding how to be a tutor or mentor, or how to organize and lead a youth serving organization.

I encourage you to look at this graphic which shows that affluent people face many of the same challenges as people living in high poverty.

In this book titled "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis", Robert Putnam, see my article, shows that kids living in affluent communities have many more resources available to help them and their families overcome their challenges. Youth living in high poverty communities not only have extra challenges, but have far fewer resources to help them and their families overcome those challenges.

When I describe a Total Quality Mentoring program, I'm thinking of programs where some volunteers take on many roles beyond acting as a tutor or mentor. This PDF focuses on the extra roles volunteers might take to help youth and families overcome more of the challenges shown on the graphic above. There is no limit to what things a team of planners might look at.

TQM programs are learning organizations where youth, volunteers, staff and leaders are constantly reading research and looking at work being done in other programs, with a goal of constantly innovating ways to help youth stay in school and move toward jobs, which means they also are looking for ways to engage a wider range of volunteers who can model different types of careers, and who can open doors to part time jobs, internships, vocational training and college as youth grow up. A TQM program offers a network of support, via the Internet, that can last a lifetime. A TQM program also shares its own ideas, strategies and challenges on its own web site so others can learn from them while they are learning from others.

I don't know how many programs in Chicago, or around the country, actually fit this TQM Program description, and have never had the manpower to do the on-going searching to find out which programs already operating in Chicago have the vision and strategy that heads them in this direction. It's the type of program I led between 1993 and 2011.

Understanding where services are needed, and what types of services need to be available within a geographic area is one challenge that planners and "intelligence gatherers" need to focus on. However, another challenge is to understand the infrastructure that is needed to support effective on-going learning and mentoring within every organized tutor/mentor program. Understanding the different functional roles that need to be filled enables intermediaries, donors and third party supporters help provide this talent, and keep it in place for many years.

Since this is Veteran's Day I want to end with a though that addresses the talent and manpower needs within the youth serving world. I encourage you to view this presentation and think of how veterans could fill many slots, in many different tutor/mentor programs, and how other veterans working in various industries and professions could support them on an on-going basis.

Citywide Youth Supports Infrastructure - a Jobs Creation Strategy? by Daniel F. Bassill

As planners look for ideas the articles I've posted on this blog since 2005 and the ideas I share in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site and library offer an extensive source for deeper learning and inspiration. Building a network of mentor-rich, Total Quality, youth serving organizations that reach youth in all poverty areas of big urban areas like the Chicago region, offers job and career opportunities for thousands of veterans, while also providing a support system that helps more youth move from poverty neighborhoods into a wide range of jobs and careers, including careers in the military.

As you celebrate Veteran's Day I hope you'll spend time looking at this and other ideas for ways veterans can continue to serve and make a difference in the world.

Labor Day - Creating Jobs

Do you think of Mentoring as a A Jobs Creation Strategy?

What if we could put thousand of unemployed people in long-term jobs while also helping more youth living in high poverty prepare for future jobs and careers?

In numerous articles being written this Labor Day weekend the unemployment rate is stated as being between 9% and 16% reflecting people out of work, no longer looking, or under employed.

Many talk of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure as a jobs creation strategy for putting people back to work. However, that does not address the large number of people who are in the birth to work pipeline who are not being adequately prepared for 21st century jobs and careers.

What if we had a jobs program that could create jobs for currently unemployed people and do more to help youth from inner city neighborhoods move successfully from high school to college and to jobs?

I’ve been aggregating information about poverty, poorly performing schools, social justice and workforce development for many years. This section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library contains many articles on this topic. (research library).

One article I found today is titled Overcoming Intergenerational Poverty (pdf). The writer recounts her own struggle to get through college and does research to show the barriers others from areas with high concentrations of poverty face.

In one of the conclusions she says “"Mentoring and Social Capital
A strong link between mentor support and academic success emerged in my study of students from generational poverty. I found that if students had mentors early in life and in college, they were more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree. Mentors facilitated their understanding of social capital possibilities, expanded their networks of support, and let them know about important resources. In addition, mentors helped generate trust, and once participants felt safe and trusted, they were able to share their poverty related experiences with others. As a result, they received more assistance. Additionally, through their mentors, respondents learned new communication styles and behaviors that enabled them to communicate more effectively in the college environment. Mentors, and in most cases, the mentors’ connections, were pivotal when linking participants to information and contacts. This facilitated their success in achieving literacy and completing higher education. For example, mentors helped respondents understand the intricacies of filling out financial aid forms and taught them how to improve their study habits. In some cases, these resources reduced the stress of poverty and allowed the respondents to focus on their studies for the first time."”

Others are focusing on mentoring as a form of expanding social capital and my own view of a volunteer based tutor/mentor program shows youth surrounded by volunteers who come from diverse workplace backgrounds.

In a small tutor/mentor program with 50-70 pairs of youth and volunteers there could be five to 10 jobs. This infrastructure graphic shows what needs to be in place. The talent chart on page 5 of this Tutor/Mentor Institute PDF does the same. Most tutor/mentor programs don’t have this range of talent and they struggle. Our survey of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago shows many neighborhoods with few or no organized programs.

Since there are over 200,000 youth living in high poverty in Chicago, how many tutor/mentor programs might be needed to reach 50% of these? 500 programs with 75 youth each would cover the city and suburbs and still only reach about 38,000 kids.

How many jobs might be created if an effort were made to build a comprehensive network of tutor/mentor programs operating in all poverty areas of the city and suburbs. How many people might this put to work? How many internships might be created for youth in these programs? How might this contribute to the current economy in high poverty neighborhoods while also building the future workforce and lowering the costs of poverty at the same time?

I’m trying to build a team of people that will help me think through these topics and will help generate the resources and public will needed to make more and better non-school tutor/mentor programs available.

Maybe if we looked at this as a jobs and infrastructure program the government or some high profile foundations would take another look at this? What do you think?