Knowledge Based Problem Solving in Era of Government Chaos

Since I started leading a tutor/mentor program in 1975 I've searched for ideas that I could learn from to constantly improve my own efforts. I began to build a library of program reports, newsletters and research, that I shared with volunteers, to help them expand their own efforts. In 1993 when I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection, I dramatically expanded this library, and in 1998 when I launched my first website, I expanded it even more. I still add new links every week.

I've learned that while our focus is on connecting kids and volunteers, there are a massive web of other issues that affect each student's future, and our own.  Below are two graphics that illustrate this.

Birth to Work Challenges concept map - click here to open

 

This shows that while a tutor/mentor program must overcome an on-going series of challenges to keep a student participating as they move from first grade through 12th grade (which could be in more than one program) the student, family and school face many more challenges caused by poverty and systemic racism in the United States.   If you open the concept map and look at the far right, you'll see that one of these challenges is "poor elected leaders".  

Below is a different graphic, created to show many of the challenges we face. I included it in this "Can't drain the swamp" article. 

Note at the far left I've highlighted "Democracy under Attack".  This was the third version of the climate change graphic created since 2019.  It was created in 2021 following the January 6th attack on Congress. 

Now that Trump and Project 2025 are now back in the White House, and many states are in the control of ultra conservative forces, the magnitude of this problem is much, much greater. Even our courts have been compromised. 

I created the graphic below many years ago to visualize the need for daily, on-going outreach to attract visitors to my library, my list of tutor/mentor programs, and to the programs themselves. 

I think a similar graphic could be created to show the on-going effort needed to draw attention and resources to each of the issues I show on the top two graphics.  

My challenge now, in mid 2025, is how do I keep this attention focused, knowing that without continuous help kids fall behind in school, and in life, so that volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs find the support they need to stay available to kids.

Yet, how do I also call attention to the terrible things being done to vulnerable people in this country. How do I help keep the United States from becoming a new Nazi Germany?  

When I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 the mission was to "gather and organize all that was known about successful non-school tutor/mentor programs and to apply that knowledge to expand the availability and effectiveness of these services to children throughout the Chicago region". Read it here.

I've often tried to explain the purpose of the information I collect, by using the analogy of a "hospital operating room" where the operation is performed in an amphitheater where hundreds of others are watching. I found this graphic in a Wall Street Journal ad, and it communicates the idea visually.

I hope you'll follow this progression of thinking, because it applies to helping cities like Chicago solve complex problems.  It also may help solve the problems facing democracy and our planet, too.

1) At the start of the "operation" two people are bent over a patient (a problem like violence?). As long as the expertise they both have is enough to do the operation, they continue. (This photo is from an improvisation workshop in spring 1993, during the first year operations of the Cabrini Connections program I founded and led until 2011.)

2) However, as usually is the case, something occurs where the two doctors on the floor, don't know the answer. They say to the audience, "Do any of you know how to solve this problem?" Someone says "I do" and they join the two on the floor. As this continues to happen, new ideas are brought to the operation and the group on the floor grows.

3) At some point, no one in the amphitheater knows the answer. However, someone says, "I know someone who does know the answer. I'll find them and invite them to join the group." Once that happens, the operation continues.

4) Eventually, a problem will arise that no one knows the answer, or knows anyone else who has ever dealt with that particular problem. Someone high in the gallery says, "I'm starting a PhD course at the local university. I'll look into this and when I find an answer I'll bring it to the group." Several people, in universities, or in business, could be doing research on that problem.

I've been looking for people with experiences and information that could help people in Chicago build systems of support that help youth in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs since I launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993. I'd been doing this informally since I started leading a tutor/mentor program at the Montgomery Ward Headquarters in Chicago back in 1975. 

My library and social media network now represents thousand of organizations and tens of thousands of people.  

Those people, IF connected physically and virtually, represent the wide range of people who need to be in the "operating room" looking for solutions to the problems we face.  

Below is a map of the information in my "knowledge" library.

This information has been growing for 30 years. It's been available to leaders in Chicago and other cities for that long. It went on the Internet in 1998. Yet, too few seem to value the role information has to support innovation and problem solving. That means when I go to events where people are gathering to "solve the problem" of education, violence, workforce development, health disparities, etc, few are even aware that my library exists.

The process does not effectively capture the knowledge of everyone in the room, or of others who may be in other cities and countries. Yet anyone could be building a web library, with links to ideas and resources they find valuable, and with links to other web libraries. This concept is outlined in the PDF showing the goal of a "Tutor/Mentor Learning Network" which I've been trying to build since 1993.

The critical idea in this PDF is that since few of us have advertising dollars, we need to take daily actions that draw attention to everyone in the network of information and ideas, not just to our own organization, no matter how powerful we are. As speakers have emphasized over, and over, "No one can solve this problem by themselves."

I've devoted one entire section of the library to collaboration, knowledge management, visualization, innovation, etc. You can enter it via this map. This section could be curriculum for school, or non-school, youth programs, where volunteers from business and universities help youth learn these skills, and learn to apply them in their own efforts.  It can also be a training resource for organizers working on other issues.

I've devoted another concept map to social justice, race, poverty and inequality issues.  

That concept map points to maps like this, and, another section that focuses on political issues, and reforms, asking what is causing people to accept what Trump and Project 2025 are doing?,  and what strategies might reverse this? 

One set of blog articles that I point to focuses on "online learning, cMOOCs, etc." The ideas in these sections can help enhance the information-sharing process any group is using to solve local-global problems, regardless of if they connect with me or not.

Below is another visualization that I've created to illustrate the role knowledge, or work done by others, can take in supporting the constant improvement of work everyone is doing to help youth born in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers.

Using Ideas to Stimulate Competition and Process Improvement - Concept Paper by Daniel F. Bassill

I think my role is to aggregate information that others can learn from, and to use my social media and email newsletter to draw attention to the library while trying to motivate others to share it.

And to motivate volunteers and donors to visit program websites and be proactive in offering support, without waiting for an "ask" or a "grant proposal".

In some posts I'll be calling attention to Chicago tutor/mentor programs and in others I'll be boosting posts by others who focus on broader issues, including stopping the movement toward fascism, and, not just rebuilding democratic structures, but making them do more to improve the quality of life for every person in the USA and the world.  

I'll do this every day. 

You can help.  And, I hope I'm helping you.

Connect with me on social media (find links on this page) and share my posts with your own network. 

Find time to browse my library and get familiar with what it includes. Use the ideas to expand your own efforts, to help kids and tutor/mentor programs, and to help fix our broken government. 

Thanks for reading.  If you're able, visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills.

Understanding Racism Using a Map

 Below is a Tweet from Chicago Beyond highlighting a discussion they hosted today on ZOOM, titled "Unpacking Race, Wealth and Individual Power".

We are live now with our guests @andreperryedu & @davidaxelrod, talking Race, Wealth, and Individual Power. Use #racewealthpower to join the conversation. pic.twitter.com/CG2FsuX1BZ

— Chicago Beyond (@Chicago_Beyond) September 23, 2020

As the conversation unfolded I begin to feel that it mixed two significant problems facing the Black community and people of color.  I created a screenshot of this RacialDot map to help illustrate my thinking.

I circled areas in Chicago with high concentrations of Black citizens, which also are areas with high concentrations of poverty.  If you browse through the maps, media and violence articles on this blog, you'll see that most of my focus has been to help create opportunity for youth in these areas, by motivating more consistent investment in youth mentoring, tutoring, learning and jobs opportunities.

However, as this graphic from Ebony Jet magazine illustrates, many Black Americans do not live in poverty. Many are very, very successful and have great wealth and unlimited opportunities.  These people are spread in all parts of the Chicago region. 

For them racism is not so much a lack of opportunity as it is a fear that because of the color of their skin they or their kids can be pulled over by police, and possibly killed, or they can be stopped in their neighborhood at their homes, or near their cars, because someone called the police, "fearing" that a Black person had entered their space.

You can find stories like this every day in some part of America.   

Don't get me wrong. From what I have read, there is plenty of discrimination facing people who have managed to escape poverty but still lose jobs, promotions, access to loans and lower property valued because of the color of their skin.

If you're in a high poverty neighborhood, you have these fears, too. Maybe even more frequently. However, I think that some how this conversation needs to broaden, using a map, to understand the ingrained racism that affects every Black person, regardless of their wealth or where they live.

At the same time we need to find ways to engage EVERYONE in efforts that fill every high poverty neighborhood with a full range of programs and supports that help each youth born today be starting a jobs and career free of poverty 20 to 30 years from now. That will take significant investment and public will, for many years.

Build your own understanding of race/poverty issues.  I've built a huge library, pointing to dozens of web sites and resources.  The concept map shown below serves as an entry point. Use it often.

I'm on Twitter @tutormentorteam and on Linkedin and Faceboo, too. I urge you to follow my posts, share them with your network, and share your own ideas with myself and my networks.  

If you value my posts, please help me fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC with a small contribution. Visit this page and use the PayPal link. 

Learning from Others. 25 Year Goal of Tutor/Mentor Connection

My mentoring email group today included a message from Graig Meyer, who led the Blue Ribbon Mentoring Program in North Carolina for 16 years. Graig and George Noblit have written a book,  titled "More than a Mentoring Program" and used the email to introduce it to the research community. He also pointed to a series of videos and podcast interviews. Below is one of the videos.



Here's what Graig wrote about the book:

"My hope is that this can act as a guide for both practitioners and researchers. I believe that the field of mentoring needs more examples of effective programs, and we were able to build a model that did some interesting things:

-Support youth beginning in 4th grade and until they completed college
-Provide community based mentoring while being embedded in a school system
-Utilize volunteer mentors and keep costs low
-Attain a 97.5% high school graduation rate and send 100% of those students on to post-secondary education

Perhaps more importantly, we tried to use our program to create leverage for attacking institutionalized racism within our local school system. In the book, we explore Blue Ribbon's anti-racist approach through a wide variety of stories, many of which should be familiar to anyone who is working at the intersection of mentoring and education."

I've had a link to Blue Ribon Mentoring and hundreds of other  youth programs in Chicago and around the USA in my web library since late 1990s, with the goal that people would learn from each other as way to constantly improve every program, and that new start ups would borrow from others to shorten their journey to becoming a great program.

Furthermore, my goal has been that donors, business leaders and policy makers would be learning from the same resource, and using the information to be more proactive in helping great programs grow in more of the places where they are most needed.

However, what really interested me about Graig's post is the effort the program made to attack institutional racism within the local school system.

I've created dozens of visualizations and concept maps that encourage people to dig deeper into all of the issues that influence the lives of people living in high poverty areas.  Furthermore, in my leadership of a single tutor/mentor program between 1993 and 2011 I attempted to share the research in the Tutor/Mentor web library with volunteers so they would dig deeper and get more involved in helping reduce the institutional barriers and other challenges that kids and families face.

I don't know how many programs do this as a strategic part of their program design. I can't tell very well from looking at program web sites.  Below is a concept map showing an ideal "volunteer growth cycle".

View in this article

In this video you can see an animation created by an intern in the late 2000s to explain this.  I've annotated it to highlight some features and to demonstrate a way others can engage with videos like mine. I hope you'll take a look.

Every year there are 50,000 to 100,000 volunteers working with high poverty youth. If every supporting organization were doing what Blue Ribbon Mentoring was doing imagine how many more people would be giving time, talent, dollars, leadership, votes and other support to help such programs reach k-12 youth in more places, and help these kids move more safely through school and into adult lives.

If you're doing this, share your links.

If you value the ideas I'm sharing please visit my FUND ME page and make a contribution.

#Never Forget

This being the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, my Twitter feed is full of powerful, emotional, and motivating posts. Some use the #NeverForget tag. Not all focus on the 9/11 tragedy. Some focus on other tragedies, including US interventions around the world that have resulted in the loss of life and unimaginable suffering of millions of people. 

We are not alone in our suffering and our memories.  I encourage you to click on the link and scroll through some of the comments.

ChicagoSunTimes 10-1992

This Chicago SunTimes front page, from October 1992, is my own #NeverForget message. As with many other times before then, and since then, the editorial writers were eloquent in saying "it's everyone's responsibility" to solve this problem.

Unfortunately, that never was sustained.  Other than a few days, to a year, of editorial indignation, these headlines did little to bring people together, develop solutions to complex problems, and generate an on-going flow of talent and dollars into every high poverty neighborhood, and to all of the organizations needing those resources to help kids and families overcome poverty.

Furthermore, few news stories about urban violence, or poorly performing schools, pointed readers to a library of articles that showed the institutional racism that has existed in America since before the Declaration of Independence, and which has continued up until today.

View map

In one section of the Tutor/Mentor web library, which I show in this concept map, I point to many articles that point out these injustices.

Thus, when I say #Never Forget, I'm reminding you of Dantrell Davis and calling on you to do your homework to learn more about the problems we face and more about ways you can use your time, talent, dollars, votes and voice to bring about solutions.

Here's one more reminder, from today's ChicagoSunTimes.  It's a story of three innocent people killed by gun violence in Chicago.  If you click on the image and enlarge it you can see that I drew a red line around the last paragraphs of the story, then wrote that text in the yellow highlighted box.  It's a quote from the father of one of these three victims. He said,

"This has been going on for 20 or 30 years, and has been evolving. The teens and young adults caught up in the cycle of violence need additional funding for education and jobs programs to get them off the streets.”

“I haven't seen anyone with that kind of leadership. I don't have a lot of hope."

Share this with others.

I've been trying to draw people to a growing information library that people could use to build and sustain these types of  youth development, tutor, mentor and jobs programs. Too few have seen these stories or chosen to respond.

Share my articles with people you know and you become part of the solution.

Visit my FUND ME page, and make a contribution, and you help me continue to keep the memory of Dantrell Davis and others like him alive through my on-going efforts.

Scroll through articles I wrote during the second week of September,  in past years, to see other ways I've remembered this tragedy.

InJustice in America - Bryan Stephenson talks in Chicago

On Thursday night I attended an event hosted by the Chicago Urban League, where the featured speaker was Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Below is a Tweet posted from the event by MENTOR Illinois.

“Resist the politics of fear & anger!” - Bryan Stevenson pic.twitter.com/eFDf2qx9tH

— MENTOR Illinois (@ILMentoring) June 29, 2018

I've heard Bryan speak via live presentations on the Internet in the past, but this was the first time I've seen him in the flesh.

He talked of his own journey and use the term “proximity” to show how important it is to get close and personal to people living in poverty and stuck in racism and the American criminal justice system.

I posted a couple of Tweets which you can see if you look at the #CLUSummit2018 timeline, just to connect my network to him and to try to connect with some of the five hundred other people in the room and the millions around the country who are affected and care about what he was talking about. Here's one:

This is reason I have supported organized volunteer based tutor and mentor programs for more than 40 years. #CULSummit2018 https://t.co/c6weCszdQ8

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) June 28, 2018

I also added links to my web library to the Equal Justice Initiative web site, and to the “Just Mercy” book that Bryan wrote. In doing so, I also updated the concept map that I use to point to different sections of my library.

See map at this link

I have more than 2000 links in the main web library and more than 200 links in the section that points to Chicago youth serving organizations that include volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring in their strategies.

I actually go through the library on an on-going basis so that at least once a year I open every link to remind myself of what information it is sharing and to make sure it still works. Often I post Tweets or messages in Facebook or LinkedIN to remind others of different links that I point to.

Role of Intermediary 

I've created dozens of visualizations since 1994 to try to communicate my role as an intermediary and to show roles others need to take to help youth in high poverty areas have the support systems they need to move more safely and successfully through school and into adult lives.  The graphic at the left is one. You can find more in these articles or this page on Pinterest.  Or do a Google search for "tutor mentor intermediary" and then look at the images.


However, my efforts alone are not enough. Others need to be digging into web libraries like mine, reading the articles, reflecting on what they say, then sharing them with others.

I've been pointing to the United Nations Global Goals Tweets and web site in articles like this for the past few months because of the way they itemize issues and try to draw attention to each of the 17 goals/issues they focus on.

I included the SDG link in my library, plus many many more.

In 2010 a young volunteer joined the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum on Ning and wrote an article titled "Thinking Like Google". In it he wrote:

It occurred to me that this forum is essentially modelled on a similar format as Google's. Tutormentorconnection.ning.com a) looks for information, or content, and people relevant to the cause of tutoring and mentoring; b) organizes, analyzes, and archives that information for future reference; and c) utilizes those references for targeted advertising campaigns, social networking, grant-writing, and the like. Even more to the point, this forum is a way of attempting to grow the idea of tutoring and mentoring to scale, or to a point where it "tips".

The "In-Forming" Process works something like this:

1. Uninformed people interact with information and become informed.

2. Informed people interact with uninformed people, producing more informed people.

3. Informed people interact with each other.

4. To the point where new information is being passed along to all parties involved, starting the process over again.

Well Google has millions of dollars in investment and revenue to support what it does. I have my social security and that's all. Thus, for my library to have value others need to use it as I've suggested.

Maybe a few will even become partners and investors to help me keep it updated, growing and available to Chicago and the world in coming years. Here's a page you can use to send your support.

Stephenson ended his comments saying the size of your bank account, or how much you get paid is not what determines your impact on the world. It's what you do with your time. He could have been talking directly to me.

His presentation was summed up in this Tweet:

Takeaways from Stevenson’s talk: 1) Get proximate to the poor and marginalized. 2) Work on the narratives beneath the headlines. 3) Be willing to do things that are inconvenient and uncomfortable by positioning yourself in difficult places. 4) Stay hopeful. #CULSUMMIT2018

— Ms. H (@ClassroomQuips) June 29, 2018

That's a good summary.

State of Racial Justice in Chicago - Who Cares?

My friends in the Connected Learning #clmooc are focusing on doodling this week and I'm seeing lots of creativity.  Visit the G+ page (no longer available) or follow on Twitter and see all the ways educators from around the world are connecting with each other.

Over the past few days I did not spend as much time with the #clmooc group as in earlier weeks because I was reading this report by the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at UIC that focuses on the State of Racial Justice in Chicago.  As I read I began to scratch out some ideas, and you can see my graphic below.

The report looks at the problem of racial justice from five different lenses which I've shown as spokes surrounding the UIC hub. With each section statistics are presented in a very clear format (very depressing, too). A list of citations is included at the end of each section.  I agree with the choices but the report could have also looked at the easy access to guns, or the impact of climate change, and done more to dig deeper into intentional racism. The section on housing touches on some of this.

Each problem by itself is a huge challenge. However, taken together they present a wicked, complex problem which has persisted for many years and seems to be growing with the new President.

I added four other spokes to the hub.  1) other issues 2) a link to my own research map, which points to sections of my web library with additional information related to these issues; and 3) a hope that all of the citations referred to in the report be aggregated on line using cmaps like I use.  A 4th spoke asks that the movements mentioned in the final section of the report be collected on line, as I've collected youth intermediaries on this map.

I also put a time line through the middle of the map. These problems have been with us for 50 years and longer. I mentioned a 1993 Chicago SunTimes article that I wrote about here, which talked about poverty being the same then as it was 20  years ago.  Below this I put in a box showing the 4-part strategy that the Tutor/Mentor Connection started in 1993.  To the right of the hub, I asked if UIC and others would adopt the 4-part strategy in 2017 so in 2037 we might see more change than we've seen in the past 20 years.

I listed the four steps in the 4-part strategy across the bottom of the graphic and referred to an "information flow" cMap that I use to show how I've been sharing this information since 1993 in an effort to support the learning, innovation and actions of  users throughout Chicagoland and in other cities and states.

At the top I talk about getting the village involved, building public will and focusing on all areas where people need help with the major heading of INCREASING WHO CARES.

That's what this graphic focuses on. How can the ideas we share reach millions of people and influence actions that change the future?

I plan to convert my graphic to a concept map and I'll share it on social media and in this collection of cMaps. I'll share the graphic I created today with my #clmooc friends.  My hope is that some of them use their creativity to help share the information in the UIC report, using their own doodles and creations.  For instance, the five sections in the report could be highlighted, using a Lumen5 video, or a GIF or other a poetic rendition, put to music.

While the report focuses on Chicago it shows that other cities face the same problems and have greater frequency of some of the problems for which Chicago has a nasty national news reputation.  That means the graphics people create can be intended to attract viewers from their own cities and states, not just Chicago.

Who knows. In a month or a year there could be a set of makes in the CLMOOC Make Bank focused on this single graphic and these issues. And, in 20 years maybe we can see evidence that a lot more people care and are more involved in solutions to these problems.

7-11-18 update -  above I added a link to the words "wicked, complex problem" which points to an article defining this term. Take a look. click here

1-30-2020  update - new State of Racial Justice report titled: "Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago?" available at this link.  See all Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) research at this link.

War on Poverty Enters New Stage - War on Freedom

A few years ago I wrote an article titled "War on Poverty" and created the graphic shown below to show the steps needed to fight this battle. I  put it in a PDF posted on Scribd.com  An intern from IIT and South Korea, later created this video, showing these steps.

I used the graphic in this in a "Veteran's Day" article last November, calling on veterans to help me develop this strategy and to lead it in Chicago and other cities.

Now that the shock of the Trump election victory is beginning to receed, the need to strategically mobilize to protect American freedoms and identify and address the needs of people who are suffering in zip codes throughout the United States, and the world, is more acute than ever.

I attended an Afterschool Conference a couple of weeks ago, and met a few people and exchanged business cards, as I do almost every week. This morning I sent this follow up email.

We met at lunch during the Afterschool Conference. While I hope you've found time to browse my web sites, I'm writing to follow up.

I have been building an on-line library of information since 1998, which I started collecting in the 1970s and 80s while leading a non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from the Montgomery Ward corporate headquarters in Chicago.

The goal is to gather people from all parts of the Chicago region in on-going learning that results in more consistent efforts to help mentor-rich, total quality, non-school learning programs be available to k-12 youth in every poverty zip code of the Chicago region, so those programs have the talent, volunteers, ideas and dollars needed to build and sustain long-term connections that help kids through school and into adult lives.

Many focus on the same goals, but most do so with too few resources, and in limited networks and silos. Thus, as I build and share my library, I'm also pointing to strategies used in some places to connect groups of people with each other in on-line learning, which can be duplicated in Chicago.

I use concept maps to show my library. I hope you'll take some time to view this map, and each of the four sections. http://tinyurl.com/TMI-library

I use a monthly newsletter to draw attention to this information and to draw volunteers and donors directly to tutor/mentor programs in my database. Here's the latest. http://tutormentorconference.org/newsletters/TMI_Oct-Nov2016.htm

I'd be happy to meet with any of you, or any others, to provide a tour of the resources that are freely available to you. Just email to suggest a time and place. I also encourage you to sign up for the newsletter.

As of Tuesday we enter a very dark journey in our city and country's history. We need to find ideas and supporters who will help us, and the kids we work with, through this journey.

I look forward to connecting with you and your networks.

I share this introduction and invitation with anyone who is concerned with the direction this country is headed, and who already has been working to correct some of the inequalities and injustices that were poorly addressed in this campaign season....by both parties.

Below is one of many presentations that I've created to introduce the work I've been doing, with scarce and limited resources, for the past 20 years.

Intro to Tutor/Mentor Institute - Version 1 by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

I look forward to connecting with you in a one-on-one, or on-line group or future conference.

Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L.
Tutor/Mentor Connection
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC
http://www.tutormentorexchange.net
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com
https://tutormentorexchange.wordpress.com/
Connect with me in any of these social media spaces. click here.

40th Conference in 20 Years. Tomorrow.

Back in 1993 and 1994 when we were working with volunteers and partners like Public Communications, Inc, a public relations firm in Chicago, I was encouraged to "host a conference" to connect the programs I was learning about in the Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Survey, which we launched in January 1994.

I had no idea that I'd be doing these for 20 consecutive years.

The idea of an intermediary collecting information about tutor/mentor programs throughout the Chicago region, and using this information to support the growth of every program, was something that began in 1975 when I first began leading the volunteer-based program at the Montgomery Ward Headquarters in Chicago. One of the VPs suggested that I should seek out other programs in the city, invite them to lunch, and see what I could learn from them.

I started doing that and soon realized that no one had a master list of programs, and the one who did have a list was the only one who could be consistently inviting people to gather and share ideas. They also were the only ones who could provide reliable information about the range of programs in Chicago.

During the 1975-1990 period I held full time advertising management jobs, thus my leadership of the tutoring program at Wards, which grew from 100 pairs to 300 pairs of kids and volunteers by 1990, took up most of my volunteer leadership capacity. It was not until I left Wards and began to lead the tutoring program in a non-profit structure that I began to have the time, and resources, to think of formalizing this information gathering/networking process.

We started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 with no money and a huge vision. One of our first partners was PCI where a VP said "We've worked with organizations like yours before. We'll help you develop a plan and get it launched, then as you raise money, you can pay us part of our costs for helping".

With the help of PCI we built this Case Statement, launched the first program survey, started sharing information through a printed newsletter, and then organized a first tutor/mentor conference, held in May 1994.

With the first conference we distributed the first printed version of the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Directory. We also launched a partnership with the Lend A Hand Program that is now the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program.

While the first conference attracted 70 people the second held at the Shedd Aquarium, attracted 200.

In 1995 we added an August/September Volunteer Recruitment Campaign to our strategy, working with Chicago Access TV and several partners to promote tutoring/mentoring during August when every program was looking for volunteers.

By 1997 we were recognized well enough to be invited to host a "Teaching Example" booth at the President's Summit for America's Future, held in Philadelphia. I was one of 10 people representing Chicago at the event. We had developed a year-round strategy for supporting tutor/mentor programs throughout the region, which is described in this video.



Unfortunately, this strategy was never embraced by city leaders nor consistently funded. We have never had more than $150,000 in a single year to support everything the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been doing, which is an insignificant amount of money in the third largest city in the country. The T/MC depended on volunteers and organizational partners doing what they could, when they could.

This list of "helpers" was compiled in late 2000 to show people who helped in the first decade. In 1999 our major sponsor, the Montgomery Ward Corporation, began to down size and we were forced to move from donated space in the corporate headquarters to rented space in the Cabrini Green area. In 2000 when Wards went out of business we also lost their $40-$50,000 per year financial support. The dot-com financial bust in the 1999-2001 period was followed by the 9/11 attack, and a decade of financial challenges that led in 2011 to the Tutor/Mentor Connection separating from the Cabrini Connections program.

Despite these challenges, I've continued to try to provide regular attention to the needs of youth and the potential offered by well-organized non-school tutor/mentor programs. I've continued to invite people to gather in spring and fall conferences, and in on-line forums or face to face conversations.

The chart below shows attendance from 2001-2010. Since then conference attendance has ranged from 75 to 100 per conference, and around 150 total participants each year. At the same time web site traffic has continued to grow, with more than 150,000 visitors to our various web sites each year.

Visit this page on the Tutor/Mentor Conference web site and view videos showing what participants of past conferences had to say about the conference.

If you browse through the articles I've posted on this blog, or the pages of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site, you'll see that I have been consistent to the goals we established when we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and launched the first conference in May 1994.

The next conference is tomorrow, November 4, at the Metcalfe Federal Building. Pr-registration is close to 100 but we hope a few more will attend.

We'll be focusing on the same question I've been focusing on since 1975. What are all of the things we need to do to make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available to youth in all high poverty neighborhoods, and to engage more people in figuring out ways to assure that every child born in Chicago today is starting a job/career in 25-30 years.

20 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America. Chicago tops list

One of my Facebook groups shared this article with me today, showing 20 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America.

I responded by sharing a link to the Map Gallery I host, showing maps I've created between 2008 and 2011 that show high poverty neighborhoods where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs can be a form of social capital, connecting youth and families in the neighborhood with resources, ideas and jobs out of the neighborhood.

While I've shared these maps in blogs like this, too few people know they exist and too few people are using them as planning tools for building a distribution of resources and programs that would help youth and families build economic stability, education opportunities, and a life free of violence.

If you read the map stories and share them with people in your own network you can help increase use of these maps. You may even help me find volunteers, sponsors and/or partners to update the maps and keep the service available.

Class War in America?

As we begin to celebrate National Volunteer Week, I share this video which I watched earlier today. The gaps between rich and poor are wider than ever in America. When I talk about volunteering in a tutor/mentor program, I'm not just talking about how that helps kids rise from poverty through education and expanded networks, I'm describing a strategy that connects people beyond poverty, in on-going, personal interactions, that help build understanding, empathy and a commitment to change.

In Chicago there are more than 600,000 youth between age 5 and 19 and half live in poverty. The total youth served in all of the existing tutor/mentor programs is probably less than 5% of this number and the distribution of programs in different neighborhoods is poor. As you reflect on this video, take a look at this list of organizations. Find one or two that you can support with your time, talent and dollars so that we find ways to reach more kids, and engage more adults. It's one strategy that can lead to more people involved in closing the inequality gaps.

Stopping Violence - Do the Planning

I wrote this article several years ago following a shooting that received front page media attention. I've repeated is a few times, most recently in July 2010. Since violence and murder are getting editorial attention again, I'd like to re-post it.

Once again a horrific act has moved violence to the front page of Chicago's Sun Times newspaper, with the headline "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".

In the article Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis is quoted saying “So I say, enough is enough. We are coming for you. We will find you, and we will bring you to justice.”

The article also quotes St. Sabina’s pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who said "it’s not enough to pray, not enough to lower flags every time an officer is killed."

How many times must we read the same headlines? How do we move beyond the prayers, marches and flag-lowering, to the research, planning, brainstorming and action steps that are needed?

On Thursday, October 08, 2009, Arne Duncan was quoted as saying, "This is the time to look in our collective mirror and ask whether we like what we see or whether we can do better together."

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

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

I've been issuing this invitation for the past 17 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Leadership ideas here and here

Here are other articles I've written on this topic in the past few years.

Animation shows help needed

Sam Lee, an intern from IIT and Korea, created this animation to illustrate the infrastructure support all Tutor/Mentor Programs need.

Play video at this link.

This original blog article is the idea she is communicating.

I attended a SAGETournament last Friday in Chicago where teams of student entrepreneurs from around the country were competing to see who would represent the USA in this summer's world competition.

If we can find sponsors we could be engaging teams of young people and adults in a world wide competition to communicate T/MC ideas like Sam is doing, and to reward them for how these ideas are implemented in different communities!

Chicago 3rd Worst Segregated City - See maps

Since 1994 I've been trying to find ways to use maps to show where poverty is most concentrated in Chicago in order to motivate leaders to on-going build strategies that draw volunteer and donors and technology to tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas. I've not been able to gain much traction on this since I've not found the philanthropic capital needed to build my organization's capacity.

Yesterday I came across this article titled "The 10 most segregated urban areas in America". Chicago is 3rd. Milwaukee is 1st. Detroit and St. Louis are also in top 10.

Because of the size of these cities, the impact and isolation of segregation is greater, the bureaucracy of schools and cities is larger, thus less able to get everyone working on the same strategies, and the geography is larger, meaning it is more difficult for people from beyond poverty to connect in on-going ways that build relationships, understanding and expand social capital and resources available to high poverty areas.

Thus, the problems of big urban areas are different from those of smaller cities and rural communities of America. We use the same words, but our understanding of the meaning of these words, and strategies to help the poor, may be different.

To me this means that groups in the top 50 urban areas of the country, perhaps the world, ought to be working together to build poverty maps and program directories, and advertising campaigns to draw volunteers and donors to places in neighborhoods that create bridges connecting the community to outside ideas and resources.

Programs like Cabrini Connections do this. I posted a video a few days ago showing how tutor/mentor programs are a format for collective action. They can do this we can inspire leaders to use their own visibility and bully pulpit to build attention and draw daily resources to all of these places.

Without the maps this is almost impossible.

Waiting for Superman commentary

Michael B. Romain is a volunteer with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. He spends time looking at the information we share, what our goals are, and then shares what he is learning on a blog hosted on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum. Yesterday he posted a commentary on the Waiting for Superman Movie that I encourage you to read.

Michael is one of a growing number of people browsing the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections web sites, and writing articles reflecting their own understanding. Visit this blog and see how students from DePaul University are involved.

Waiting for Superman tickles the surface of a very complex problem, which is different for kids living in huge urban school districts with large numbers of people living in segregated poverty neighborhoods than for people living in smaller, and more economically and socially diverse communities.

Unless significant time is spent understanding the problem, the solutions will just be superficial.

Motivations for Giving

I encourage you to read this article, titled 'Selfish' Giving: Does It Count If You Get In Return?. It's from a NPR report.

Then read this article about Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness philosophy.

Then read the articles on this blog about poverty, workforce development and leadership (see tags at left). Unless donors have tremendous altruism, or tremendous motivations, or both, programs like Cabrini Connections will never have the sustained flow of resources needed to help teens joining us in 7th grade be starting jobs and careers by their mid-twenties.

What motivates your giving?

Can you support Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection with a Holiday Donation?

Can you make a bequest, or support us with a corporate or foundation grant program? Do we fit with your own personal and strategic goals?

Creating Public Interest in Race, Poverty, Education issues

I attended a forum this morning hosted by Voices for Illinois Children in which the 2009 Illinois Kids Count Report was distributed. The focus of this year's report was the growing gaps between rich and poor and good schools and poorly performing schools in Illinois. The statistics can be seen in the report. They are appalling. I've seen them before.

The focus of today's symposium, and this year's Kids Count is to go beyond traditional thinking to innovate new ways to help kids get through school and into adult lives. A variety of panel members spoke. Judy Erwin, of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, was part of the morning panel, and she said "we need to look at a continuum of learning; we need to get out of our silos".

I agree. The graphic on this page represents some of the different silos that need to be connected in a learning process that focuses adults on the type of reports that are produced by Illinois Kids Count, and which you can read in the T/MC links library. We need an adult learning process, that builds public and private sector investment in solutions to this complex problem.

I created the graphic above using a concept map tool and I've had it on my site for a while. It means something to me, but maybe not to most people. Thus, I was pleased this week to have two graduate students from the University of Michigan School of Information spend their spring break with my organization in Chicago. They decided to animate this village map, in order to help people better understand the idea behind it. You can view their project here. You can meet Malhar Gupta and Garima Garg and read more about their work on this project in the T/MC Ning page.


I could not have created this animation on my own. But I've been reaching out to graduate schools to help me convert my ideas into animation, and this year was the second year we've had students from the University of Michigan work with us.

We actually had a third student this week, and I'll write about his project next week. You can meet our technology interns on line and if you like what you see and want to get your university involved, just introduce yourself on the Ning.com site.