State of Chicago Youth - 2026 - Our kids need help.

I just read the State of Chicago Youth 2026 report published by A Better Chicago.  

Below is a paragraph from the introduction posted on Page 2 of the report.  It shows that Chicago has nearly 800,000 young people under the age of 25. But, "Opportunity remains out of reach for far too many youth, especially those in Black and Latinx communities on the South and West Sides."

I urge you to visit this page and download the PDF, then read the full report.

Then, take a look at what I wrote last April following the release of the 2025 State of Chicago Youth report.  Everything I wrote then applies now, except that due to ICE immigration raids in Chicago more young people are struggling to find their way through school.  Supportive adults in schools and non-school programs are needed more than ever, but too few still exist.

I think A Better Chicago is doing great work. Since 2010 they have provided more than $50 million in unrestricted funding and management support to help nonprofits in their portfolio grow.  Yet, that's not enough. Chicago (and many suburbs) need great tutor/mentor and learning programs in every high poverty neighborhood.  That means someone needs to be raising funds to help youth programs that are NOT in A Better Chicago's portfolio grow!

In 2011 I obtained data from the Heartland Alliance to create a series of maps showing the number of kids age 6-17 who were living in each Chicago Community Area. I updated that in 2018.  My goal was that planners in each community area would use this information to better understand how many youth-serving programs were needed, and what programs were already available to youth in their area.  

My 2011 (yellow boxes) and 2018 (blue boxes) versions show the total number of youth age 6 to 17 in each community area, and the percent of those youth who were at or below the poverty level.  Based on this planners could determine how many youth serving programs were needed in the area, just to serve a small percent of the kids living there.  

I used the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator map as the base, then added the yellow and blue data boxes using Power Point.  Then I published the report in this visual essay.

Unfortunately the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator is no longer available.  However, if I had updated data I could re-create this report using the map that I host on this page.  Below is an example.

Using this data and my lists of Chicago youth-serving programs, anyone could lead year-round public awareness campaigns intended to educate potential donors, volunteers and business partners and turn them into proactive supporters of existing, or new, programs.

When we were creating the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program in late 1992 we realized that one more great youth-serving program could be life-changing for the few youth and volunteers who become involved, but would have little impact on the more than 200,000 youth living in high poverty areas of Chicago.  So we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, to help all programs, including our own, attract more consistent media and donor attention.

I led this two-part strategy until mid 2011 when the financial crisis that started in 2008 finally caused our board of directors to drop the Tutor/Mentor Connection and focus only on the kids program.  I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to keep the T/MC available in Chicago to try to help similar strategies grow in other cities.  

However, I led this two-part strategy for almost 19 years!  Imagine how much impact might be generated if A Better Chicago and other youth-serving programs adopted this same strategy for almost two decades! 
 

The top graphic shows that attention and resources will grow if the same events and "call to action" are repeated quarterly from year-to-year.  The bottom graphic shows how anyone can be the YOU who calls on their stakeholders to get informed, then get involved, supporting tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty area of Chicago.

What it takes:
As long as someone maintains a list of youth-serving programs and makes it available on a website, anyone can build a campaign that draws attention and support to these programs. That's what I have been doing.  You can find my lists on this page. 

Maybe in a few years one or more intermediaries will be able to create their own version of maps like the one below, which shows participation in the 1994-2015 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago.  See the dashboard on this page. 

For most of the past 30 years I've focused strictly on programs that identified as some form of volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring based on this survey.  The programs on my maps are programs that fit this description.  However, I recognized in the late 2000s that I needed to be adding other types of youth-serving programs to my maps, but never was able to do that.  However, I have included many of them on lists found on this page. 

I'm now 79 and not in great health.  Someone needs to step forward and take ownership of my archives and responsibility for building a new youth-program resource that draws volunteers and donors directly to existing programs.

Until that happens, I'd appreciate any help you can offer to keep my lists up-to-date and to share my posts with more people.  That includes sharing them with people in other cities, where there also are concentrations of persistent poverty and too few youth-serving programs.

You can reach me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Mastodon, Twitter and Instagram.  See links on this page.

And, if you'd like to help me cover expenses, visit this page and make a contribution.

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. 

Inequality. So much data. So little change.

In December I received the Chicago Community Area Hardship Index (2019-2023) from the UIC Great Cities Index. 

The introduction says  "The Chicago Community Area Hardship Index combines values from six indicators of socioeconomic hardship to quantify and visualize the significant variations in socioeconomic status across Chicago. This story map will present hardship index values at the community area level calculated using socioeconomic data from the 2019-2023 American Community Survey (ACS)."

View the report and maps at this link. The map shows areas of greatest hardship on the West and South parts of Chicago.    

This was last published as a 2016-2020 report which I shared in an article on the Mapping for Justice blog. You can see that most of the same areas are highlighted.

I've been using maps to focus attention, and resources, on high poverty areas of Chicago since 1993 in an on-going effort to help long-term, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs reach more K-12 youth in these areas.  

One story that motivated me was this from the Chicago Tribune, in 1994, which also shows the West and South parts of Chicago as areas of high poverty where kids are most at risk. 

I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 as an information-based public education effort, intended to build a better understanding of what volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs were in Chicago and help draw needed operating resources and volunteers to all of them.  Since 2011 I've led this through Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

We published our first Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs Directory in 1994 and updated it every year through 2003, when we launched an on-line portal to help people find programs and know where more are needed.

You can see that the map on the front cover of the Directory shows the same areas of Chicago as the 2024 UIC maps.  Not much has changed.

In April 2015, almost 10 years ago, I included this graphic in an article titled "After the Riots, Do the Planning."  

This shows an August 1993 Chicago SunTimes story, which leads off with a statement saying "Chicago neighborhoods that were poor 20 years ago are even more entrenched in poverty today because the city lacks a comprehensive battle plan".

It highlights the same areas of Chicago as were highlighted in the UIC report.

In this article I show the "Master Plan" that the Tutor/Mentor Connection created and presented to leaders at the 1997 Presidents' Summit for America's Future, held in Philadelphia. 

This article is one of several in this section of the Tutor/Mentor blog where I describe the planning process, commitment, and leadership, that has been needed for so many years. 

Since launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection the goal has been that others would use the information in the library to deepen their understanding of problems associated with poverty and inequality and solutions being applied in some parts of the world that could be applied in Chicago neighborhoods.

There are several hundred articles on this blog, and the Mapping for Justice blog, with maps that you can use in your planning and resource allocation.  You just need to spend time looking at them.

Below is Page 2 from the 2000 February-March issue of the printed newsletter that I mailed to about 10,000 people.  It describes a community-building process, where groups of people read the information I've been sharing, and use it in their own planning.  

As we enter 2025 I repeat my invitation for big and small groups of people to dig into my archives, my past articles, and the ideas I share and start a conversation with people in your network to better understand the information and find ways to apply the ideas.

Read these articles about having universities create on-campus Tutor/Mentor Connection study/research/action programs where students spend four to six years digging into my archives and the rest of their lives applying the ideas and generating new information that others learn from.   

"It just takes two or three people on a campus to launch a Tutor/Mentor Connection."  Or one wealthy donor.

I've been repeating this "call to involvement" every year since 1975 when I began leading the volunteer-based tutor/mentor program at Montgomery Ward.  I hope you'll accept the invitation and begin to add your own voice.

I encourage you to connect with me on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter and that you'll read my posts and share them with your network.

At the right is an example of what you could also be doing. Paul Signorelli, who I met on Twitter through the 2013 #ETMOOC, saw my National Mentoring Month post and shared it on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook, with  his own endorsement and encouragement.

As I said above, my 2000 newsletter only went to 10,000 people and many of those probably did not read it.  Too few ever saw these ideas. You can change that by sharing my posts, just as Paul and others have been doing. 

Thanks for reading. I look forward to connecting with you and your ideas in 2025.  

I want to thank those who sent contributions during 2024 to support my work.  I hope you'll give again in 2025 (even if you were not able to give in 2024). 

View my Support Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC page. Click here.

I cannot keep doing this without your help. 

When will this end?

I watched a movie titled "The Six Triple Eight" this week on Netflix. It's a war drama film directed by Tyler Perry, focusing on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black and all-female unit to serve overseas during World War II. They were given six months to fix the three-year backlog of undelivered mail in Europe and faced with massive discrimination, they managed to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail and get it delivered to troops. See more here. 

It's a powerful movie and several scenes brought tears to my eyes.  It also reminded me of how the discrimination these women faced did not end with their success in delivering the mail. It continued when they returned to the United States, from the late 1940s till now, entering 2025.

For the past 23 years I've been building a library of articles related to race, poverty, segregation and inequality in America.  

Browse this section and one of the first articles is this one from The Atlantic, asking "How Did We Get Here?" and sharing "163  years of The Atlantic's writing on race and racism in America."   This is one of more than 100 websites I point to in just this one section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

Another section focuses on Black History and also has dozens of links. Scroll to the bottom and you'll find the Zinn Education Project, with teaching materials that educators, parents and youth program leaders can use to expand our collective understanding of this tragic, continuing, history. 

I majored in history at Illinois Wesleyan from 1964 to 1968.  It wasn't until my senior year when I did my senior thesis on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which consisted of all African-American enlisted men commanded by white officers, that I was officially exposed to this history. And, it wasn't until I started volunteering with a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, serving elementary school kids from the Cabrini Green neighborhood, that I began to take a personal interest, that has grown over 50 years.

Another section of my library focuses on poverty and crime mapping.  One of the sites is the American Inequality site hosted by Jeremy Ney, with data maps and articles like the one shown below. 

You can also find many links in articles on the Mapping for Justice blog. For instance scroll these articles and you'll see how I've shared the American Inequality site. 

The maps are important. This Pew Research Center article provides facts about the U.S. Black population, which was an estimated 47.9 million in 2022.   Scroll down on this page to look at data about educational attainment and household income.  "Among Black U.S. households in 2022, 27% earned less than $25,000, 23% earned less than $50,000, while 51% made $50,000 or more. A third of Black households (34%) earned $75,000 or more, including 22% that made $100,000 or more."

The maps I share focus on that 27% who earn less than $25,000, and who are living in highly segregated, persistently poor areas of big cities and rural areas.  These are places where organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs can expand the networks of opportunity for kids living in highly segregated poverty.

However, the color of your skin and racism affects people of all income levels.  Maps can help target resources and programs to areas of high poverty. They can also show incidents of police violence, traffic stops, drug arrests and other systemic practices that affect people of color more than others.  We need to understand and address both issues. 

Many of the sites I point to are libraries themselves, with links to hundreds of additional books, articles, movies, etc.  There's a lot to learn. Maybe too much to learn.  

Yet, without making the effort the racism and inequality that persists in America will continue. Will you add this to your 2025 commitments?

Thanks for reading my articles this year. I hope you're sharing them.

I can be reached on Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.  See links on this page.

I depend on a small group of donors to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and that enables me to keep the library on line and to keep writing articles like this.  If you can help, please visit this page.

What You Can Do to End Poverty - 2005 Letter

I've been digitizing more of my archives for the past few months, and again today. I've been sharing some files, like these yearbooks, on social media. The result was 67,200 views of this blog in March 2024.

I did another batch today, which requires looking at old files and seeing if I should put them in my Google drive folder.  I found a letter I wrote in October, 2005, as a "Letter to the Editor" which I hoped the Chicago Tribune would publish.  I was going to post it here, but decided to look first, to see if I had posted it in 2005.

Yes. I did, on November 3, 2005.  So I'm going to share what I wrote then: 

---- start Nov. 2005 article ----

On Tuesday, Nov. 1, I attended a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, where more than 200 people were given information that showed the "State of Latino Chicago". This highlighted the huge contribution Latinos are making to the Chicago area economy, and the need for more programs to help Latino youth move through school and into careers. On Nov. 2nd I attended a meeting at the Union League Club of Chicago where the No Child Left Behind law was discussed. At the same time a lunch was being held where others were focusing on ways to build better schools.

What these meetings had in common is that they were not connected to each other with an internet strategy that would have enabled participants from all three meetings to connect with each other, and with the speakers. They also did not have a strategy for engagement, that would increase the number of people personally involved in long-term efforts that help kids in poverty move to careers.

In September, people from the Connect for Kids group in Washington, DC helped me develop a letter to the editor that illustrated the role of tutoring/mentoring as a civic engagement strategy. I met Connect for Kids through internet networking and this is an example of what's possible when such networking is a strategic goal of people who host face-to-face meetings.

I sent my letter to the Chicago Tribune in mid October and it has not been published. So here it is for you to read:
--------------

What you can do to end Poverty, by Daniel F. Bassill

Alicia and Marquita were in elementary school when I first met them 15 years ago. They were normal kids, except they lived in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood of Chicago, where the role models and life experiences were anything but what normal kids in most parts of America grow up with. The Cabrini Green neighborhood has a high concentration of poverty, many people living on welfare, and strong street gang involvement. This is the neighborhood that shocked the nation in 1992 when 7-year old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed while walking to school. It’s a neighborhood where more than 40% of the kids drop out of high school before graduation, and where many who do graduate never move on to college and careers.

Today, Marquita has graduated from college and Alicia will do the same next year.

What happened to take these girls off the path toward poverty, and place them on a different path toward college and careers? The answer is simple, but powerful. They were able to participate in a comprehensive volunteer-based tutor/mentor program that connected them with adults who mentored them, helped with school work, talked about options and choices, and just plain cared. In elementary school they were able to participate in a program hosted by the Montgomery Ward Corporation in Chicago. After 6th grade they were able to transition to the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program, which has supported them for the past 12 years. This year they have become part of the adult tutor/mentor corps, and are now volunteering to help other Cabrini Green children move through school and into college then careers.

In the aftermath of Katrina, people in Chicago and across the nation are asking what we can do about poverty. I’m not a teacher by training and I don’t have special skills. I started mentoring a fourth grade boy living in Cabrini-Green in 1973 and became leader of a volunteer-based program in 1975. Thus I have 30 years of experience in recruiting volunteers and connecting them with inner-city kids. While I did not have much experience when I started, my understanding of the issues and my commitment to volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring has continued to grow with each passing year. I’ve learned the difference between being poor and being poor without hope.

I’ve also learned how tutoring/mentoring can be one of the best strategies for civic-engagement, workforce development and education reform. Long-term programs connect youth and adults from both sides of the economic and social divide in a long-term process of service and learning. This leads to a better understanding of poverty, and a stronger commitment to do what is needed to provide paths to hope and opportunity for kids who need extra support to succeed in school, move to college and find help in starting jobs and careers.

I would like every adult who is not living in poverty to become personally involved in helping build and sustain long-term tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood where concentrated poverty is the largest obstacle to succeeding in school and moving to jobs and careers. That is how we are going to improve our schools, reduce youth violence, lower the costs of the juvenile justice system and meet the workforce needs of the 21st century.

The way to get everyone involved is for people from every walk of life – business, churches, hospitals and universities – to step up as leaders and make children living in low-wage families a priority. Businesses can use their intranets to provide information about where tutor/mentor programs are needed, and ways to contact existing programs. They can use their advertising to encourage employees and customers to volunteer in programs throughout the Chicago region. Universities can encourage their students to talk with local children about what college is like, and can develop research and teaching programs that connect students and alumni with training resources and tutor/mentor programs throughout the country. Every organization can use its website to publicize volunteer opportunities and to increase the number of people who are learning ways to become involved in tutor/mentor programs. The ways to take action are as endless as the numbers of children in need.

Such a leadership strategy needs to guide volunteers and donors to all neighborhoods where there are high concentrations of poverty, not just to the few brand name programs in highly visible neighborhoods. If we increase the number of people who are willing to commit time, talent and dollars to efforts that help end poverty, we will reduce dependency on government and build programs that last more than a few years.

No business would be successful if it advertised sometimes, and sometimes not. Children take a long time to grow up, and they will only be successful if adults like us get personally involved, stay involved, develop an understanding of poverty, and grow into leaders who bring in new volunteers to do the same. We’re building a system of support for this type of involvement. We call it the Tutor/Mentor Connection. You can find us and similar support networks that operate in other cities by using Internet search tools like www.Google.com .

By the time you read this, the media will probably be turning its attention away from poverty and to the next "hot" issue. But that doesn’t mean we have to turn our attention away from the children who need us.

---- end 2005 article ----

I'm pleased to report that in 2024 Alicia and Marquita are both doing well. I'm connected to them on Facebook, along with many other alumni from the tutor/mentor programs I led since 1975.  I'm seeing many now report on their own kids, or grandkids, finishing high school and college.  And, I'm seeing many starting new families.  

I found another letter in my files today. I wrote it to university contacts in 2008.  It included this paragraph, asking "What are all the things we need to do to assure that all youth in the city where your  university is located, or where your students and alumni live, are starting jobs/careers by age 25/"

You can read that full letter here.   

Imagine if students and faculty at various universities were looking at the documents in my archive, just as I am, and then were sharing them with others at their universities and where they alumni live and work.

Could we build a more consistent and innovative strategy to connect with kids and families in areas of persistent poverty with long-term support that helps them build jobs and careers so they can raise their own kids free of poverty?

I hope you'll share this and that another 65,000 people will view my article in April and every month after that.  Maybe that will increase the number who follow me on social media.

Maybe it will also increase the number who go to this page and make a contribution to help me continue collecting and sharing this information. 

Learn more about Poverty in America

Last May I posted an article with the headline, "Poverty in America. Why so Much?"   I pointed to a presentation by Matt Desmond, and encouraged readers to watch it.

Today on Twitter (X) Matt Desmond shared a slide presentation that people can use as a study guide to understand poverty and take actions to reduce it.  Here's the website where you can download the presentation. 

Below is a slide from the PDF version. (scroll down to bottom of home page to find "Teaching Resources".

There are a lot of slides, with great visualizations, and each chapter has questions that can be used to stimulate discussion in learning groups.  

The only thing missing from this is a chapter on social capital and ways volunteer involvement in on-going tutor/mentor programs can increase the number of people motivated to spend time reading Desmond's book and sharing these slides with their network.

6-30-2025 -  visit the Othering and Belonging website and listen to a discussion of a new book titled "Structural Racism", by Stephen Menendian.   Visit this page and read a paper titled "The Roots of Structural Racism Project".  Scroll down to the bottom to see an extensive additional reading list.

8-7-2025 - view this video about "Structural Racism", by Stepen Menendian - click here

Below is a concept map that shows the birth-to-work timeline.  If you view this in context of Menendian's book about "Structural Racism" one my frame the conversation about making these learning opportunities equally available to all kids, which would require different strategies for different places.  

Look at the text box in the lower left corner, showing the role volunteers in tutor/mentor programs might take.  Desmond's book mostly focuses on policy and what voters can do to reduce poverty. I'd like to see a chapter showing the support that needs to be made available, at each grade level, to every youth living in a high poverty area, and what policy, philanthropy and business involvement can do to make these supports available in more places. 

Here's another concept map showing growth of volunteers who are well-supported in on-going volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. 

I show this graphic in this blog article. I also show how interns created to animated versions of this graphic more than 14  years ago.  It takes an intentional effort for leaders in volunteer-based programs to educate volunteers on this issue. It take consistent, flexible funding from donors for programs to hire and retain staff who do this well, and to make long-term, mentor-rich programs available in more places.

It takes network-building, like I keep repeating with this graphic.  

Unless more people become personally involved, and get friends, family, co-workers and their professional networks involved, and stay involved for decades, we'll still see "poverty books" 20 years from now, with little change from today, or 30 years ago.

This is EASTER week. Millions around the world will be celebrating.   

I've posted EASTER week articles almost every year. Here's one from 2018 which has a link to a PDF presentation with the maps shown above.  

I've been preaching this message for 30 years.  This blog and my website could be additional resources to people trying to understand the issues and solve such a complex problem.

However, too few have ever seen what I'm writing. You can change that if you share my blog articles and create your own versions to communicate these ideas.

Imagine a strategy in faith communities that engaged their congregations in an on-going study of poverty, using resources such as Matt Desmond's study guide and book.  What if they created maps showing which of their congregations had such study groups in place?  

I found Matt Desmond's post on Twitter (X). That's why I still use the platform. I'm also using many others. Find the links on this page.

Thanks for reading this article.  If you want to help me continue this work, please visit this page and make a contribution.  

Opportunity for All? Involvement of More.

Last week I posted some maps created from an interactive dashboard built by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) that enable you to zoom into different places in America to see, at the census tract level, where poverty persists.  

Today they released another dashboard, showing where economic prosperity is more prevalent, and where distressed communities are located.   The poverty rate is part of this index, but other factors are also included. Read about the DCI on this page. 

Below is one view of that dashboard.

Here is a second view, this time centering on the Chicago region, where I've worked for the past 30 years to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow.

This map shows that there are many places in the Chicago region and Northwest Indiana that have distressed communities. So do other cities surrounding Lake Michigan, such as Milwaukee and Kenosha, Wisconsin, Waukegan, Illinois, Benton Harbor and cities further East.

To help you understand the data shown on this map, read some of the stories shared on the platform.  This one, titled "Economic inequality often divides neighboring communities", is especially relevant. It shows how communities, like the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, have a huge variation in economic well-being.  If you zoom into the Chicago region, or other big cities, you'll see the same pattern.

Since I began serving as a volunteer tutor/mentor in 1973 I've been building a library of articles to help me understand why tutor/mentor programs were needed and where. Over the past 25 years I've accelerated that information collection, building a wide range of articles about race, poverty, inequality and social justice.  

I use this concept map to point to the various sections of my library where I share these links.

When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in 1993 our mission was   

"to gather and organize all that is known about successful non-school tutoring/mentoring programs and apply that knowledge to expand the availability and enhance the effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region."

 On the mission page of my website I show that

THIS IS A MARKETING PLAN INTENDED TO MAKE HIGH QUALITY, CONSTANTLY IMPROVING NON-SCHOOL TUTOR/MENTOR PROGRAMS AVAILABLE TO THOUSANDS OF YOUTH LIVING IN HIGH POVERTY NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE US AND THE WORLD

On the strategy page I show this concept map, outlining four concurrent strategies. 

I created this graphic many years ago to show the intermediary role the Tutor/Mentor Connection has taken since 1993 and that I've tried to continue via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011.

The information I share can be used by anyone in any part of the country to help people living in distressed communities move toward economic prosperity. It can be used to understand our long history of racism and inequality and current threats to democracy and freedom.  It can be used to draw people from all sectors into conversations and learning that leads to problem solving and solutions.

Using the EIG map anyone can create a different version of my graphic, replacing the Chicago region with their own part of the country.  Anyone can build a library showing local issues and link to my library showing a broader range of information (and in my library I point to many websites which themselves are extensive libraries).

So why aren't more people involved solving these problems?  Maybe one reason is that too many people don't want them to be solved, for their own self interests or political/religious beliefs.

I'm sure a major reason is that there are so many other competing issues, and most people struggle with their own personal well-being and that of their own families.

Maybe another is that most people don't live in distressed areas. These are not their problems, or their daily lived experience.  The map views below illustrate this point.

This is a view of the EIG dashboard showing persistent poverty by census tract.

If you look at the map from this view, you can hardly see the persistent poverty areas around Lake Michigan or in Ohio.  You need to zoom in to see high poverty areas around Lake Michigan.

However, these are small islands in an ocean of opportunity.  Unless you live near, or in, one of the shaded areas on the map, this is not your lived experience. You only understand the problem from what you read in the news, or on social media, which is often a very biased point-of-view.

3-7-2024 update - Here's an article using the EIG dashboard to show patterns of neighborhood distress in US metros

The reason I support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs is that they not only can offer life-changing opportunities for kids lucky enough to participate in an organized program, but they draw people from beyond poverty into a shared experience with kids and families who do live in these areas.

I created this concept map to show how volunteers who are well-supported, and stay involved for multiple years, begin to learn more about the challenges facing youth and families, and in some cases, become willing to do more to try to help remove those challenges. 

I did not have the library of information that I now host 49 years ago when I began leading a tutor/mentor program.  In fact, I did not begin to intentionally collect race-poverty information until the mid 1990s.  Initially, I focused on the benefits of being part of a tutor/mentor program as "diversity training".  

Here's an article from page 2 of my January-February 1997 T/MC Report newsletter report that shows how "One-on-one tutor/mentor programs offer the best diversity training program any company might invest in." (It's always embarrassing to find typos in past articles that I wrote. Ugh.)

As we built the Tutor/Mentor library in the 1990s and 2000s we began sharing the information with our students and volunteers, encouraging them to use the learning resources to help students succeed in school and to help volunteers understand the history of slavery and racism and the continued challenges faced by people who live in areas of concentrated poverty, which are the areas highlighted on the EIG dashboards.

I've been singing this song for a long time as the 1997 T/MC Report newsletter shows.  Here's a more recent article, posted in 2015.  It includes the graphic shown below.

I highlighted the part that reads "We can give ourselves a cozy feeling of cheaply acquired nobility by apologizing for past injustices. Or we can stop patting ourselves on the back and cross the tracks to the other side of town to take small, concrete, unglamorous steps to end present-day suffering."

This was written in 1997 following the President's Summit for America's Future, hosted by President Clinton and every other living President, to focus on improving the lives of the 14 million youth living in poverty in America.

One last graphic.  Take the YOU role and share this information.  Do what I've been doing.

I've written this blog since 2005.  I've shared this information on websites since around 1998.  I shared via print newsletters from 1993 to 2003 and email newsletters from the early 2000s till today. I've posted regularly on social media.  

All to motivate more people to "cross the tracks" and "take small, concrete steps" that would help kids living in areas of concentrated, persistent poverty have mentor-rich pathways from birth-to-work.

If thousands of people in Chicago and other cities had shared this information as often over the past 25 years, and with their own creativity, perhaps there would be fewer areas of distressed communities and/or persistent poverty.  Maybe we would be closer to solving some of the other problems buried in our history as a nation.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing.  Please spend time reading other articles on this blog.  Help me find leaders who will carry this work forward in future years. 

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I don't have a salary for doing this work (since 2011). So if you want to help, visit this page and make a small contribution.