Does your youth-serving org have a blog?

I've been sharing images from the Kumu.io project created by the IVMOOC student team at Indiana University in my last few posts.  Below is another.  This shows participation in the two 2011 conferences. 

I created this after spending time yesterday updating the list of blogs written by tutor/mentor program staff and leaders.  One was by a college student working at Femi Memorial Outreach.  I looked at the 2011 conferences to see if I could find the program and created this image. I circled Femi Memorial Outreach.  You can do the same.  Open the map at this link.

If you search the Femi blog for "tutor/mentor" you'll find a few articles written about the conference. 

In this one she wrote:

Keeping up the Tutor Mentor Connection
If you guys have been keeping up with our posts, you'd know that I mention the Tutor Mentor Institute more than any other organization. When I started working seriously with Femi Memorial Outreach, my first big non-profit conference was sponsored by the Tutor Mentor Institute. I think I learned more in that one, activity packed, day than I had in my first month as an administrator and program developer.

In this one she wrote:

This past Friday I went to the Tutor-Mentor Conference. There was an outstanding turnout from various different education and mentor programs from across the Chicago area. I don't think I fully realized the impact and breadth of education non-profits throughout the Chicago area until Friday.

On the surface, the scene looked like a group of regular people, sleepy eyed, and pounding back cups of coffee as the 8a.m conference began. But, throughout the day people slowly removed their shell and opened up about their projects: executive directors, media relation managers, tutors, and people with projects so new, they hadn't even started yet. The level of enthusiasm was unending.

If you explore the conference participation map you'll find many organizations who participated multiple times.  If you browse the conference tab on this blog, you'll see more than 200 articles.  In a few you'll find links to stories others wrote about their participation.

In 2014 Steve Sewell wrote this article and Valerie Leonard wrote this article.

Kelly Fair of Polished Pebbles wrote this article in 2014. 

I was prompted to look at the list after seeing an announcement from Jeffrey Beckham, Jr., the Executive Director of Chicago Scholars, introducing an article he posted on Substack.com.  It was titled, "The Democracy our Young People Deserve".  I hope you'll read it.

Sadly, my list of blogs has many that are no longer being written and too few from the more than 100 Chicago area youth serving programs on my lists.  

I look at the websites on my list at least once each year, just to make sure the links are working. I'm also trying to find out if they are writing blogs or are using media like Substack.com or YouTube to share their ideas. 

I need your help.  Please look at what local programs are doing and how they are sharing their "What works and what does not work." messages. If you find blog articles or other places where programs are sharing, please send the link to me via LinkedIn, Twitter, BlueSky or Facebook.

In response to the comment I posted on his article, Jeffrey Beckham, Jr. wrote, "And I deeply agree with your invitation. We need more tutor and mentor leaders telling their stories publicly through blogs and reflection. The narrative must belong to those building hope, not only those creating fear."

I agree.  

Are you hosting events and want to map participation? Visit this page to learn about the open source mapping tool created in 2025 by IVMOOC students at Indiana University.  

Thanks for reading.  If you're able to support my work with a contribution, please visit this page. 

Target holiday and year-round giving to high poverty areas

 On Sunday the Chicago SunTimes and WBEZChicago published a story about how life expectancy in some neighborhoods of Chicago is much lower than in others.  Below is the map that was in the SunTimes story, and which can be found on the WBEZ site. 

I included some text from the article with the map.  The top paragraph says, 

"In a city with a deep history of segregation, Chicago public health officials view the gap through the lens of race. They say four main drivers — heart disease, homicide, opioid overdoses and cancer — fuel shorter lives among Chicagoans who are Black compared to residents of other races. In many cases, these deaths are preventable."

The bottom paragraph reads,

"In West Garfield Park, merely living is much harder than in most parts of Chicago, according to a “hardship index” that incorporates unemployment, income and other factors. Around 40% of households make less than $25,000 a year, data shows. The majority of residents are unemployed or stopped looking for a job"

I've been writing about this for over 20 years.  In 2008 I followed a SunTimes report titled "Schooled in Fear" with these articles. 

As we began 2025 I wrote an article titled, "Inequality. So much data. So little change."

In that article I included this Chicago Tribune story and map from 1994.

This is not a new problem.

As you celebrate Thanksgiving, then the year-end holidays, I urge you to form a study group and start reading some of the articles I've posted on this blog, and some of the information I've shared in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

Then read some of my articles about philanthropy, such as this one.

And read my invitation to universities, such as this one.

I created this concept map several years ago to show that youth, families and schools in areas of persistent poverty face many challenges.

Helping volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods is one way to provide extra support that helps kids through school and into adult lives.  It's also a way to increase the number of adults from beyond poverty who become personally involved, through the bonds they form with the kids they work with.

But each node of this map points to issues that need to be addressed concurrently.  It's a huge challenge and something that won't be solved in a short term of any single elected official.  

What I've been doing as a one-man operation since 2011 and a small organization since 1993, needs to be owned by one or more universities in Chicago and other cities so an on-going input of student manpower and talent can do the work of a Tutor/Mentor Connection, and learn habits that they can use once they graduate, and for the rest of their lives, to help reduce these challenges and create a brighter future for all of us.

That ownership can come if one or more wealthy donors provides the multi-year funding needed to make it happen.  

As you celebrate the holidays, think about what's shown in the graphic below.

Everyone celebrating with you represents different talents, skills and resources that could be part of a long-term strategy.  Many have people in their own networks who also have these skills. And some may know a "super hero" who would make a major gift, if they were asked.

Read the articles. Share them. Start a study group. Pick neighborhoods to support. Pick organizations in those neighborhoods where you can offer time, talent and dollars.  Identify and elect legislative representatives who will create policy that mobilizes and distributes an on-going flow of operating resources to EVERY neighborhood with concentrations of persistent poverty.

Do this and you'll also connect with people and ideas that focus on saving our Democracy.

Thanks for reading. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky or any other platform that I show on this page.

And, if you're able help me celebrate my December 19th, 79th birthday with a gift that lights a candle on my cake.

Or a gift to my on-going Fund T/MI campaign. 

Drawing attention to tutor/mentor programs

When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 our goal was to build an information base consisting of "all that was known" of volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region. This led to building a list of Chicago area programs that we initially published in a printed Directory (1994-2003), then an on-line Directory (2004-2018) and that we used to invite programs to gather and share ideas through May and November conferences that we hosted in Chicago (1994-2015). It's still available on this page of our website. 

As I wrote in last week's post, the www.tutormentorexchange.net site has been reconfigured after being moved to a new server.  That results in a revised look and feel. But it also meant that I've had to fix a lot of broken links and formatting problems.

Yesterday I updated all the links on the "In the News" page shown in the two graphics posted below.  These are media stories generated through the strategy we launched in 1993.

This page has a long list of stories.  Included is a link to an archive, that shows additional stories, including those that focused more on the Cabrini Connections part of our local-global strategy. 

This media strategy was Step 2 in a 4-part strategy developed in 1993. It's visualized on this concept map.

It's important to keep in mind that when we formed a new organization in late 1992 our first goal was to create a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program that would continued support to 7th graders who had aged out of the program hosted at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago (which I led from 1975 to October 1992) to help them move through high school.   We named that Cabrini Connections. As we launched that strategy in  January 1993 we were also in the beginning stages of building the second strategy, which became the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Thus, over the 19 years that I led this two part strategy our first priority was always what we called the "Kids' Connection".  This map shows our location in the Near North part of Chicago and the location of other tutor, mentor and learning programs in other high poverty areas of Chicago.

We created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to draw needed resources to EVERY other program in Chicago as a strategy to help draw more of these same resources to OUR OWN program.  The information that has been archived in the Tutor/Mentor library was first intended to support the volunteers, students, leaders and donors of our own program. 

The media stories shown on the "In the News" page and the archive show how successful this strategy was despite having consistent challenges caused by the loss of our major supporter, Montgomery Ward, in 2000, then the economic downturns of the 9/11/2001 attack, and the financial collapse of 2008-10, which led to the split in mid 2011 which led to me forming the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to keep the T/MC available in Chicago and help similar efforts grow in other cities.  

In most of the articles posted on this blog I've encouraged programs in Chicago and in other cities to embrace a "Tutor/Mentor Connection" type strategy and for universities to lead it.  Doing so can draw more support to your own organization, while helping your city fill all high poverty areas with needed youth serving programs.

I hope you'll take time to look at these media stories.  If you can find a similar list of stories created by anyone in your own community, over such a long period of time, please share it.

If not, then why not put together a team and duplicate it. The problems are still with us, and may grow more severe in the coming months and years.  

Share you thoughts and resources with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram and other sites.  See links to my social media on this page.

If you want to recognize, or reward, or support my efforts, please visit this page and make a contribution to help me keep doing this work.

Thank you for reading.  Good luck to you.

"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. 

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.  

Letters-to-the-Editor. Was Anyone Listening?

Have you ever submitted a letter to a local or national print media outlet and had it published?  When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in 1993 one of our main goals was to increase the number of media stories drawing attention to volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago. 

This graphic visualizes our goal. 

We created quarterly events to draw programs together and draw volunteers and donors to our Directory and list of Chicago programs.  These motivated local media to write stories about our events (see list here) and that built our reputation as an "expert" and led to media coming to us for quote in stories they were writing.  

However, another way to get our story into local newspapers was to "write it" myself, as a "letter-to-the-editor".  Below I'm sharing some of those.

Chicago Tribune - 10-29-1995 - open PDF to view

Chicago Tribune - 12-7-1995 - Open PDF to view

Chicago Tribune 9-3-1997 - Open PDF to view

Chicago Defender 4-1-1998 - Open PDF to View

Chronicle of Philanthropy 5-21-1998 - Open PDF to View

Chicago Tribune 4-30-1998 - Open PDF to view   The same letter appeared in the Chicago SunTimes on 4-30-1998 - Open PDF to view

Chicago Sun-Times 4-12-1999 - Open PDF to View

YouthToday - July 2000 - Open PDF to View

Ecumenical Child Care Network Newsletter - 2001 - Open PDF to view

Daily Southtown - 3-30-2001 - Open PDF to view

Directions Mag.com - 3-3002 - Open PDF to view

Youth Today - January 2003 - Open PDF to view

Crain's Chicago Business - 4-12-2013 - Open PDF to view

By 2000 I was spending much more time on the Internet, connecting with people and ideas from Chicago and the world.  I made less effort to write Letters-to-the-Editor because I was sharing the same information on my website, in email newsletters, and on-line eMail discussion groups.  

Below is a message I posted on October 2, 2000 in a digitaldivide list hosted by Benton.org. Open this PDF to read my post and others in that discussion.  I'm still connected to some of these people today. 

In each of these letters I'm sharing ideas that other people need to implement.  That's more difficult than doing the work yourself, but I've never had much money to do everything that needs to be done, and frankly, the whole strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been to provide information that others can use to build the "Village" needed to help more K-12 kids born, or living in high poverty areas, of Chicago and other places, move more successfully, and safely, from birth-to-work.

I have been doing this since 1975 when I became the volunteer leader of the tutoring program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago and needed other people to help me.

All of these images are part of an archive that I've built over the past 50 years.  I've been able to put a large part on my Google drive as I've down-sized and had to through original copies away.  

My wish is that a research group from a local, national, or international  university will take ownership of all of this information and then teach young people what I was trying to do, and how to do it better.  There still is so much that needs to be done. 

That wish could come true if a major donor were to provide the money for a university to build such a program, and name it after the donor.  If you've any ideas, please reach out.

You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social media platforms. You'll find links on this page. 

If you've appreciated what I'm sharing and what I've been trying to do, please consider a small contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  Click here

Updating my Visual Essays

I started a retail adverting career at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago in 1973. Every work day for the next 17 years I focused on visually communicating the sales promotions, merchandise and services offered to customers near 400 stores located in 40 states.  I think that's part of where my commitment to visual thinking comes from.

I was recruited to be a volunteer in the company-sponsored, employee-led, tutor/mentor programs in the fall of 1973 and selected to be its leader in the summer of 1975.  In the following years I applied many of my retail advertising lessons to how I communicated to volunteers and donors.  I'm still connected to Leo Hall, who I was matched with in 1973 when he was in 4th grade. 

Below is a graphic I created in 1986 to show the organizational chart of the tutoring program. 

I share this as a transition to how I've been using visual essays for the past 25+ years to communicate strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I formed in 1993, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, which I formed in 2011.

From August 1993 to mid 1999 we had offices on the 20th floor of the Montgomery Ward Corporate Office building, where we operated the Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Program and from where we organized and led the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I  used one entire wall to share our four part strategy and often would walk volunteers and potential donors and partners through that information.  Unfortunately, I often heard many say "He's really excited, but I don't know what he's talking about."   

That prompted me to start using desktop publishing and PowerPoint to create visualizations that I could share to communicate strategies.  I've been updating the collection for the past month and below are two that I finished updating this week.

A Role for Intermediaries and Consultants -
  

A Role for Intermediaries a... by Daniel F. Bassill

Collective Effort Required to Support Youth Mentoring Programs
  

Collective Effort Required ... by Daniel F. Bassill

These are just two of more than 60 essays that you can find on this page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website. 

In 2011 I started putting these on Scribd.com because I was not getting a visit count from just embedding the PDF on my website.  In 2012 I began putting them on https://www.slideshare.net/tutormentor, too, because it had a different viewing format, and did not charge a fee to view the PDFs. 

Scribd.com bought Slideshare a couple of years ago, so it now charges a fee, too.  However, what I've learned is that while I can update new versions to Scribd.com, and keep the visit history and URL address, on Slideshare I need to upload a new version, and delete the old one.  That breaks all the links to the PDF that I've embedded in past blog articles.  If you open an article and the presentation is not appearing, that's the reason.

Thus, while I will keep updating the presentations on Slideshare, I will  probably point to the articles on Scribed.com more often in the future.

As I've updated these PDFs I've also personalized them to show that I'm the author of all of these essays, and now the sole person supporting the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (without any salary since 2011).  

I believe that every city with areas of concentrated poverty could use a map-based strategy like the Tutor/Mentor Connection so I invite people to look at the PDFs, decide if the strategy could be used in their own city, than create and share their own versions.

I say "don't reinvent the wheel".  Use what I 've learned over the past 30 years to jump-start your own efforts.

Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and/or Mastodon and I'll be happy to guide you through the library and discuss ways a university might take ownership of my archives, and support the growth of local tutor/mentor programs and intermediaries through the work of students, faculty and alumni.

In the meantime, to keep me going, and paying the bills, please visit this page and send a small contribution. 

New Research on Mentoring Shows Funding Challenges

This week I received a new report from MENTOR, titled "Opportunities to Invest in Long-Term Social Capital for Our Youth: A Philanthropic Agenda."  You can download the report from this page. 

Below is a passage from the report's introduction:

I highlighted the part that said "A striking data point from the study's survey showed that most funders want to invest in long-term positive changes (71%), yet none expected outcomes to take five to ten years.  Instead, the majority of funders said they expected to see outcomes in just one to two years."

I've used the graphic below for many years to show that kids in middle school require four to six years of continuous support just to finish high school and another four to six to get through college. Even then, if they don't have people in their network who can help open doors to jobs, that degree may not be enough to help them reach their full potential.

The kids in the photo on the left were part of the Cabrini Connections program in the mid 1990s. We operated in the third time frame, after 5pm, when workplace volunteers were more consistently available to serve as tutors and mentors and program leaders.  The photo at the right is one of the teens shown on the left, who was the graduation speaker in 2010.  I'm connected to her and many other alumni on Facebook, and thrilled to see many of them with advanced college degrees and many showing photos of their own kids finishing high school and college.

I could not have convinced donors in the mid 1990s that this was the long-term outcome we wanted. Thus we struggled each year to patch together the funds needed to operate.  Ultimately, this was the fundamental reason I left Cabrini Connections in 2011 and formed the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to try to continue supporting the city-wide strategies of the T/MC. 

If you read the MENTOR report you'll see that many other programs, in 2023, are struggling the same way.

This entire blog, written since 2005, and the www.tutormentorexchange.net website, launched in 1998, offer ways to change how programs are funded, and how this can lead to constantly improving non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach kids in more high poverty areas....which is where long-term, mentor-rich programs are most needed.

This graphic was created by an intern from South Korea nearly 10 years ago, who was prompted by a similar graphic in articles like this from 2009.  

The goal is that groups of people gather regularly, like people in faith groups do, or people in high school or college classes, or in business, to look for ways to solve problems, using information that I and others aggregate in web libraries and share in articles like this.

Below is a graphic showing part of a Tutor/Mentor blog article written in 2009, 25 years after the murder of Ben Wilson in Chicago.

I highlighted "We are still having this conversation 25 years after the death of Ben Wilson because the writers ..... don't focus on ways to build a consistent flow of operating dollars to help constantly improving youth serving programs be in all the neighborhoods where kids need this help, for dozens of years, not just for one workshop, or for one intensive intervention...."

That's just about what the MENTOR report was saying.  

So what can you do? Form a learning circle, just as the graphic above suggests.  Read something every week, then talk about what it means and how the ideas might apply where you are, and based on who you are.  

Every one of my articles has tags at the bottom, which you can see at the left side of this blog.  You can use these to focus your discussions.

Or you can go to my Wakelet page and look at collections of blog articles. 

Or, you can visit this Tumblr site and look at the articles I've posted there, which represent most of the key ideas I've been sharing.

As you do your learning share your understanding and ideas with your own graphics, concept maps, videos, etc.  

8-19-2024 update - here's another article that focuses on the funding issue. It's titled "Should we pay for relationships? Why philanthropy needs to invest in social capital?"

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. and share your work with me so I can learn from you and share your ideas with my own network.

The MENTOR research shows the challenges and a path forward.  It's not a new path, because I and others have pointed to these challenges for many years.

The question is, will you say ENOUGH, and begin to take actions so we're not having this conversation again in 25 years?