Competing for Attention. Too Few Resources.

This week I read a five-part story about the demise of Local School Councils (LSC) in Chicago, written by Marcus Flenaugh who was defeated in this week's LSC election when only 30 people out of a school service area of about 27,000 residents took the time to vote.  In the 5th article  he concluded by urging people to mobilize and offered many specific suggestions.

That prompted me to look at a couple of visual essays that show a strategy that involves young people in community-organizing efforts.  

The first outlines a strategy that follows highly visible media stories with student generated stories. click here

The second shows an application of this strategy, focusing on the North Lawndale area of Chicago. click here

Below is the first part of an article I wrote in 2024, which points to similar articles from 2019 and 2012.

---- start 2024 -----

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 (remember, this was prior to the Nov. 2024 election), 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?

click here to read the full article

---------end 2024 article ------

These articles focus on building on-going attention for specific areas of Chicago, or any other city, and in drawing needed resources to organizations and schools in the focus area. Since adults have their hands full, why not enlist youth from local schools and colleges?  

Above is one view created using the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which was created in 2008.  While the Program Locator no longer is active, it remains a model of "what is needed".  View this PDF essay to see some of the features that were included.

Since 2011 I've been using the MappingForJustice blog, created by Mike Traken in 2008, to show ways to use maps to draw more consistent attention to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas of Chicago.  The strategy can be used to draw attention to local schools and their surrounding community, too.

In this article I included a concept map showing layers of information that need to be included on maps now being built by others.

I also included the concept map in this article.

Since I began trying to harness map-making technology in 1993 the means of creating data maps have simplified dramatically.  However, while I find many maps that show boundaries and indicators (poverty, violence, health disparities, etc.) I don't find many showing existing service providers and I find even fewer adding assets (people who can help) to the map layers.  Or using their maps in on-going stories intended to draw more attention and resources into the map area.

Thus, my "Rest of the Story" essays can still provide some ideas that others can apply.  I hope that happens.

I close many of my articles with this photo of me standing in front of a map of Chicago, and a Chicago Tribune article with a headline of "City Kids at Risk". 

I'd love to find blog articles and newspaper stories with similar photos, showing political leaders, business leaders, sports and entertainment figures, and others in my place.

This could be a photo of a 5th grade boy or girl from a South Chicago  neighborhood!

Thanks for reading.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Mastodon, Twitter and other platforms. see links here

And, if you're able, visit this page and make a small contribution to help me pay the bills.

Reaching youth in high poverty areas - distance matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distance matters. I write more about that below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.  

What if. Looking at past. Looking forward.

A main part of the strategy that I launched in 1993 when we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection was an effort to draw more consistent media attention to places in Chicago where news stories were showing "bad things happening" to kids.  I used maps and my database of youth tutor/mentor programs to create story-maps like the one at the left. Unfortunately, this was before the Internet, and too few people ever saw these.

For today's article I want to jump from 1993 to 2005, and an article that I wrote, titled "A Tutor/Mentor Program is a Place where Idealism meets Reality."  Below is that article. I've highlighted some key passages. 

--------------- start 2005 --------------------

I was only able to attend the O-net conference for half a day Saturday. However, I read through all of the summary reports and blogs this morning. I hosted a conversation on Saturday, focused on creating a group of active o-net members who work to draw people from universities into o-net conversations, with the goal of recruiting resources to support o-net projects.

As I said after Friday's day-long session, I'm really impressed with the talent of the people who are participating in the conference, and who have posted introductions at www.omidyar.net. One person I talked to yesterday was a PhD student at Purdue, who is organizing information intended to be used to help connect people doing good work with resource providers. Another person was a technologist who had great ideas of creating alternative currencies that would encourage people to share talent with each other. A third was a women with an idea of creating visual databases to map assets.

I was really inspired by the Peace Tiles project. I hope we can duplicate this in Chicago tutor/mentor programs and connect our kids with kids in African and on other continents.

When I read one of the blogs, one person was questioning whether or not O-net was just a lot of talk, or if it was stimulating action (providing resources for O-net members to do their various projects). I'm hoping that my participation accelerates the rate at which people help each other, or draw new resources into o-net that end up helping members of the community do their work.

However, until this happens it is idealism within a world where the daily papers remind us of reality. A few weeks ago I did a Mind Map of the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Today I did another. I found a really great story written by Mary Schmich, one of my favorite writers, telling how people had responded to an earlier story about a computer center in Cabrini-Green being flooded, with all computers destroyed. Because of her first story, people provided new computers, and everything else needed to get this site up and running again. That demonstrates the power of the media.

However, in the same section of the Tribune Metro section was a story about a boy being fatally shot at a playground on the far South side of Chicago. There was another story on the same page about a Muslim teen center re opening, after being closed since 2003. These neighborhoods don't have a feature writer of the Chicago Tribune, or SunTimes, writing regular stories about life in these neighborhoods. Most of the times they get in the news is when something bad happens.

My mind map linked these stories. Every time I read a story about Cabrini-Green, written by Mary Schmich, I just wish she'd end with "and this is just one neighborhood of Chicago where kids live in poverty and need extra help with volunteers, donors, technologist, etc." (and provide a link to web sites that people could use to learn about other places where volunteers, donors and technology are needed).

If she and other reporters were doing this regularly, maybe people would have been helping the Muslim teen center get computers, and maybe the boy shot on a playground (or the shooter) would have been inside sitting at a computer rather than out on the street where something terrible happened.

When I sit with my friends at O-net and talk about ideas, it is with an urgency of putting these ideas to work to help more kids in cities like Chicago have safe places where they can gather to learn, be mentored, have access to computers and the world around them. The reality is that while we talk of great ideas, we are losing kids to the streets and to poverty.

Maybe I cannot convince the media to consistently tell the rest of the story when they write their stories about individual tragedies or triumphs, but maybe I can enlist a few technologist at O-Net to help me create a map gallery that would show where negative news happens and where volunteers and donors are needed. If hundreds of friends at communities like o-net were to take on the same goal, we might create a much larger public involvement and flow of resources to every place in the world where good people are trying to do good work to help people who need extra help.

What about you? Can you help?

--------- end 2005 article ---------------

Since 2005 I've created a presentation, and many articles, like these, showing this "Rest of the Story" idea and how students and volunteers from schools throughout Chicago, and other places,  could be creating their own stories, modeled after the ones I've been doing.

Below is a presentation showing this strategy:

Rest of the story: A Strategy to Draw Attention and Resources to Youth Serving Organizations from Daniel Bassill

This continues to be missing from media thinking.  This week WTTW shared an article showing the effectiveness of Chicago Youth Programs, which I had included among featured programs in this 2019 article. 

I think it's wonderful that Chicago Youth Program gets this attention.  However, I just wish every story would end with something saying, "This is just one of many youth programs in Chicago who need constant help to do good work.  They all need help.  Look at the list hosted by the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and get to know others".  

I launched this strategy in 1993. I launched this blog in 2005, so the article I pointed to was one of the first that I wrote.  Today, in July 2022, we still have the same problems, plus new ones.  Getting people on social media and traditional media to connect "bad news" to "idea libraries" and then to places where time, talent and dollars are needed to change conditions, still is my purpose for writing these articles.

I thank you for reading and invite you to share this, and your own version.  

Follow Negative News with the "Rest of the Story"

There's plenty of bad news in the media and many non-profits working to change conditions that lead to these stories. I focus on volunteer-based youth tutor and/or mentor programs and have led a strategy for the past 28 years intended to help such programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.  You can find more than 1200 articles on this blog that focus on this.

One challenge that most programs have is finding the operating dollars needed each year to host a space where kids and volunteers can meet, fill it with learning resources, such as computers and Internet access, and with paid staff who support both youth and volunteer involvement.

Most tutor/mentor programs are relatively small and don't have the type of staff most businesses do to advertise regularly and draw customers (donors, volunteers) to their locations.  Thus, they struggle to stay funded, or raise the level of funds needed.

Thus, in 1994 when I was launching the first survey of Tutor/Mentor programs in Chicago we began using maps to show where they were.  We published our list of programs in a Directory, starting in May 1994, and used maps to show where poverty was greatest and where existing programs were located.  We started putting this on-line in 1998 and launched an interactive program locator in 2004 and a map-based version in 2008.  Unfortunately after 2011 I was not able to keep these updated and the sites are now only available as an archive,.

I still plot program locations on a map, which you can find in this article, but no longer have the interactive features of the original program locator.

However, you can still zoom in and build an understanding of what programs are in different parts of the Chicago region.

We never had much money for advertising, and recognized that this was a weakness of many programs. Thus, we began a strategy I call "The Rest of the Story".  

When we saw media giving feature space attention to a "bad news" story, like one about poorly performing schools, gangs, or violence, we created a map showing where the incident took place, then used overlays to show the role of poverty.  We also showed locations of existing tutor/mentor programs in the area, and assets, like banks, drug stores, colleges, hospitals and faith groups, who are in the neighborhood and should be supporting efforts to make high quality, mentor-rich programs available to a growing number of k-12 youth.  

In the 1990s we put these map-stories in our newsletters and shared them at conferences.  We created maps for other youth programs, too.  In the 2000s we began to share these via email and our websites and in 2005 started putting them in blog articles.

However, too few people were seeing what we were publishing. Thus, I created a presentation showing how students and volunteers from schools throughout Chicago could be creating their own stories, modeled after the ones I've been doing.

Below is a presentation showing this strategy:

Rest of the story: A Strategy to Draw Attention and Resources to Youth Serving Organizations from Daniel Bassill

Note: I've been updating all of my Slideshare presentations and the ones I've embedded in past articles will no longer appear, since my updates have new locations.  I encourage you to visit my collection and bookmark it for future referral.

While I've struggled to keep my own mapping platform on-line others are creating robust data-mapping platforms.  Below is a concept map I created a few years ago to share some of these. 

Anyone creating "Rest of the Story" articles can use one or more of these platforms to build the base map you use in your article by zooming into the geographic area you're interested in, adding layers of information, then creating an image that you paste into Power Point or similar publishing tool. Then you can add additional information to the map. Once you're satisfied, save it as a JPG and you're ready to put it into a blog article, Tweet or Facebook/LinkedIn post.

If you're doing this please share your articles with me on Twitter or any of the social media platforms that you find in this link. 

If enough people adopt this strategy we can do much to make safe spaces available that help kids living in poverty areas move through school and into adult lives.

Violence in Chicago. The Rest of the Story

Below is a screen shot from today's Chicago SunTimes, of a story about the high homicide rate in the 11th Police District of Chicago. The map shows where this district is in the city and shows that high levels of violence are mostly in the SW and NE side of the district, along with a section just East of Garfield Park.

Since 1993 when starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC)  in Chicago I've tried to help comprehensive, non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in all high poverty areas. I've maintained a database of such programs since then and developed what I call "The Rest of the Story" strategy to draw attention to programs in neighborhoods featured in local newspapers because of bad things that happen there.  

So today, I created a second graphic, using the SunTimes map, along with a screen shot from a Tutor/Mentor Program map that I launched in 2016.  It's shown below.

You can find my Chicago area map and my list of programs in this blog article.  I zoomed into the same area as shown on the SunTimes map, then created a screenshot.  On my map I show seven green icons, representing youth serving programs. Enlarge my graphic and you can see their names. 

It looks like there is only one youth organization, The Off The Street club in the lower left section and none in the upper right. There's a YMCA along Holman Avenue near Augusta, just outside of the high violence area in the NE corner of the map.  There are three programs in the SE part of the district and one to the far East.  

In 2018 I  used data from the Heartland Alliance to create a set of maps showing the number of high poverty youth age 6-17 living in each community area. The image below shows the West side of Chicago, including the 11th Police District.  There are about 9500 high poverty kids in the area  (and about 20,000 in total). The percent shown in the blue boxes represents what percent that number is of the total youth population in the area. 

I first created this report in 2011, so the numbers shown in yellow boxes are from then. The blue boxes are from 2018, thus you can see changes in population.

Last month I posted a story using the map at the left, emphasizing that commuters using Chicago's expressways or trains to come and go from the LOOP to the suburbs are riding right past high poverty neighborhoods.  

I've long encouraged people in these areas to work together to build public awareness campaigns that would motivate these people to spend time getting to know about the neighborhood, and its need for youth serving organizations, and showing the ones that already exist.  Then pick one or two and make a long-term commitment to help them be the best in the world at helping kids through school and into jobs.

Below is a map story created in the mid 1990s for a group on the West side of Chicago. I've highlighted in yellow the section where I encouraged them to set up a campaign along Grand Avenue that would attract commuter volunteers.  I've been preaching this story for many years.

However, too few have ever seen my map-stories or my blog.  Yet, youth from schools all over the Chicago region could be creating "Rest of the Story" strategy, following negative news they see in the local media.  In publishing their stories they could be adding their "call to action" to my own and those of others, resulting in greater visibility, and a greater flow of dollars to help youth programs grow where they are most needed.

The Mayor, the Police Department, local politicians, businesses, faith groups, universities, etc. all could have been doing this for the past 25 years.

If they had, maybe the story about the 11th Police District in today's paper would have been different.

If they start now, maybe those stories will be different in 10 or 20 years.

I'd be happy to help anyone think through this strategy.  I'm on Twitter and these social media platforms.  

If you value the stories and program list that I share please consider a small year-end contribution.  Click here to learn more. 

Building Systems of Support for Urban Youth - What's It Look Like?

Last Sunday the Chicago Tribune called attention to our inability to solve the violence and poverty that plagues some parts of Chicago more than others by telling the story of  Yummy Sandifer, from 1994.  I wrote about this on Monday.

I shared my post on social media but received no responses. Yesterday I saw a post on Twitter, following up on this story. You can see it below:

Every, *every* system in this city that touches violence has to triage because there's more demand than there is capacity for service. And things like this will keep happening. That's why we're 25 years on and kids are still doing shootings and murders and getting killed.

— Peter Nickeas (@PeterNickeas) August 30, 2019

Peter Nickeas, the writer, talks about systems that touch violence.  As I read this and tried to frame a response, I was frustrated because I have more thoughts than could be communicated in one Tweet.

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 create many of these using PowerPoint, which I then convert to JPGs.  A few months ago I embedded one of my PPTs on Slideshare, to enable people to view a collection of graphics in one place. I show it below:

Tutor/Mentor Institute, llC Strategy Graphics from Daniel Bassill

While there are more than 30 graphics in this PPT, that's really just a small sample of the graphics I've created.  Here are places you can find more:

1)  Pinterest.com/tutormentor  - I've created several collections on Pinterest. With each graphic I've included a link to where the graphic was used

2)  Google search - view images - if you search 'tutor/mentor connection' on Google then look at the images, you'll find dozens of my graphics. Each has a link to where it was used.  Do the same search on Bing.com

See map here

3) Concept maps can be used to visualize systems of support, showing all that is needed, to help young people move safely through school and into adult lives.  I show a collection of my cMaps at this link.

The Mentoring-Kids-to-Careers cMap is at this link.

Every time a story appears in the news that causes you to ask "Why is that happening?" or "What can I do to change that" I encourage you to view some of my graphics and draw others together to discuss what they mean to you.

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, etc. with the same goals as I have.  If you're doing that, let me know!

Chicago SunTimes 4-7-1997

While last Sunday's Chicago Tribune focused on one killing, there have really been hundreds in the years since then.  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.

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.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.   If you want to help me do this, visit this page and send me a contribution.

Following Bad News in Media with "Rest of Story"

If you read the Chicago Tribune on February 7, 2014 you might have seen this story. Note where it says "there have been at least 11 other shootings withing four blocks since June 2011". Have you seen any marches, or editorials, or visits by the Mayor mobilizing resources to change the conditions that cause these acts of violence?

I created a "Rest of the Story" strategy in 1993 when I was launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Recognizing that I had no advertising dollars to draw regular attention to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, I felt that a strategy that followed media stories could build public awareness and lead more people to be involved in helping mentor-rich programs grow in more places.

On the Mapping for Justice blog you can see many past map stories. On this section of this blog you can see more.

I think map stories like this could be created by student advocates, working in middle and high schools, or in faith groups and local youth organizations. The week #3 topic on the Deeper Learning MOOC #DLMOOC has focused on internships engaging youth in real world learning.

Imagine a steam of student/volunteers taking ownership of this process.

Once a student recognizes that a new story has been given feature attention in the local media, meaning thousands of people have been reached by the story, the address for where the incident happened is given to a map maker, who uses the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and other on-line resources to create a series of maps.

This map shows where the shooting took place, at the corner of Pratt Ave and Clark Street in the Rogers Park area of Chicago's North Side. It also shows demographic information, locations of poorly performing schools (from 2008) and locations of any non-school tutor/mentor programs in the area (green stars) based on available data in the Tutor/Mentor library.

This map uses data provided by the Social IMPACT Research Center at Heartland Alliance to show the number of youth age 6 to 17 below the poverty line in each Chicago Community area. While the map only shows one area of poverty concentration above 25% it shows nearly 6,000 youth in the three surrounding community areas who might benefit from being part of well-organized, mentor-rich non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs.

This next map shows assets in the area, such as banks, universities, hospitals, faith groups, etc. who should have comprehensive strategies in place to reduce poverty, and violence, in the area, because they share the geography. They are part of the neighborhood.

A team of youth and volunteers could create maps, and create a story like this, post it on a blog as I have done, then use social media to demand that the adult leaders in the community come together to make more and better youth programs available. As they do this they can point to information in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library that can be used to help innovate new strategies to support these programs.

They can also point to online learning events, such as the Deeper Learning MOOC that is taking place now.

They can even organize their own GooglePlus community and learning MOOC to share ideas of ways youth can be leaders in drawing attention to problems in their communities, and in drawing people together to learn new ways to solve those problems.

As they do this they can learn to create maps such as this one used to analyze participation in the Deeper Learning MOOC. If you zoom into this map you'll see that very few people from the Chicago region are involved. If you look at the map showing participation in past Tutor/Mentor Conferences, you'll see that very few people from business, philanthropy, media and/or government are involved. Future blog articles and outreach can target these groups so that over time, more and more people who need to be involved in helping youth in the community are participating in a wide range of actions.

Who could lead this effort? A map of Catholic schools supported by the Big Shoulders Fund shows schools in the Rogers Park area where teams of students, working with volunteer support, could create articles like this. Any of the Chicago Public Schools in the area could also support such activities as part of service learning, or as part of deeper learning and internships.

If this Rest of the Story activity is adopted in schools throughout the Chicago region, and in other cities, the neighborhood can unleash a new generation of talent and leadership needed to draw consistent attention to a problem that only gets random coverage in traditional media. It can unleash a new generation of leaders who understand how the Internet can be used for network building, learning and collective actions.

I posted this story on Scribd at this link. You can see fifty other stories I've posted since October 2011. Collectively these have been read over 80,000 readers. Imagine how many more readers there might be if there were collections of "Rest of the Story" articles posted on hundreds of sites, created by young people and adults who want to turn bad news into better news.