Celebrating 60 years - Tutoring Chicago

 A few months ago I was invited to be part of the 60th Anniversary Celebration of Tutoring Chicago, which started in 1965 as the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program.  I joined as a volunteer tutor in 1973, during my first year of starting a retail advertising career at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago.  I joined the volunteer leadership committee in 1974 and became the program's volunteer leader in 1975. I held that role through 1990 when we converted the program to a non profit, called "Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, Inc."  I led it until October 1992 then left because of disagreements with the volunteers on the Board of Directors, who I had recruited to their roles.

That led me to form a second program, helping kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade get continued tutor, mentor and learning support through high school. That also led to me forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to help our program, and every other tutor/mentor program in Chicago, get more consistent media attention and a more consistent flow of operating dollars.

The original program is now Tutoring Chicago. I was asked to share my thoughts and this video is a portion of them. 

 

For those who are interested here are the questions from Tutoring Chicago and answers that I shared with them prior to doing the video interview. 

In many articles on this blog I've shown the vision driving my daily work.  Below are portions of an article I wrote in 2017 under the headline of "Go Forth and Multiply."

---- begin 2017 article ---

I led a volunteer based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 till 2011 and have collected a load of endorsements and paper archives. I've been digitizing these and last week converted a 22x26" Thank You, Dan! card from 1989-90, signed by students and volunteers.  Click on the graphic at the left and you can see a few comments.

I put the entire card into a PDF and uploaded it to SlideShare. You can view it below. Use your zoom button to enlarge and see all the signatures and comments.  One of the joys of having led these programs is the enthusiasm and positive feed back that I've received.  However, that has to lead to more than just "thank you cards".  Read more after you view this.

"Thank You. Dan Card (1989-90) From Students and Volunteers from Daniel Bassill

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 (and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011) to help mentor-rich non-school programs grow in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and since then have created a huge library and hundreds of articles and strategy presentations that are tools others could use to help with this strategy.

In the four-part strategy that we developed in 1993, step 1 focuses on collecting information, such as the database of Chicago tutor and mentor organizations. However, step 2 and step 3 focus on increasing the number of people who are using this information.

Since I never had many dollars for advertising, and I'm not a celebrity or part of a wealthy family, or politically connected, this strategy has always depended on others carrying the ideas I launch on this blog and my web sites forward to their own friends, family and co-workers.

This graphic illustrates how ideas I share can be shared by people who read them, with others who will read them and then pass them on to even greater numbers of people. I included this in a 2011 article, and in many others.

I was thinking about this last week during a Twitter chat with educators from around the world and the I began to think of this graphic as a form of fireworks.

Posting an idea, like this article, is like lighting the fuse on a fireworks rocket. As it explodes it creates a constellation of stars, which represents people who are exposed to the message.

Some of these also explode, creating another burst of stars, representing the message reaching a new network of people. Often there's a third, and a fourth blast, meaning the ideas are reaching more and more people.

Think of my Tweets and articles as a daily blast of exploding ideas.  

Below is an example of what I hope happens every day:

That's an amazing resource. Am saving it right away and will spread further. Thanks for sharing Daniel!#nt2t https://t.co/Xc2yw9swTh

— Manav Lalotra (@manavlalotra) September 16, 2017

Since 1975 several thousand youth and adults have been part of tutor/mentor programs I've led. Some have provided endorsements and "thank you, Dan" messages, like those you can see above.

However, so far, too few are passing on the ideas I share and taking actions that result in more and better volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reaching k-12 youth in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities.

In addition, too few are providing talent and dollars to help me continue this work, or to help me pass this entire library and mission on to a younger, more talented generation of leaders.  I saw a tweet this morning with a quote saying "the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now"  I re-tweeted it with this message.

This is what I say about supporting Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I started in #Chicago in 1993. https://t.co/Gn4yrptIw3

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) September 17, 2017

Had a few leaders helped me "plant the Tutor/Mentor Connection tree" in early 1990s, and helped me continue to nurture it for the past 24 years, I feel Chicago would have a much denser network of mentor-rich programs helping kids in poverty, and many more people taking active roles to share these ideas, get more people involved, and build sustainable and on-going flows of talent and dollars to every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities.  Many might be able to show "thank you" cards from alumni students and volunteers on their own web sites similar to mine.

If this interests  you, read the  "do-over" articles I posted last spring.  

--- end 2017 article ---

Thanks for reading and thank you to everyone who has helped Tutoring Chicago grow for the past 60 years, as well as those who help other volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago and other places.

The challenges of operating these programs have always been great. In these days of political turmoil and destructive actions from the leadership in Washington, DC, it is even more difficult to attract consistent attention for these programs, which makes it more difficult for them to attract the resources they need to operate, and constantly improve.

I'll be 79 in December and will continue to end my blog articles with a call to help me find one or more universities and/or institutions to take ownership of my archives and my vision, and lead it for the next 20 to 40 years!

Connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Substack and other platforms. Share your own ideas and strategies. Borrow mine and share them in your own community. 

And visit this page and  use the PayPal button to send me some financial support.

New look for visual essays and videos

I spent the last week reformatting pages on the Tutor/Mentor website where I have shared videos, visual essays and concept maps in the past.

This is the revised format for my video library.  I'm showing page 1 of 3 pages. 

Below is what the page looked like before.

The new format is two columns wide.  Each image is larger than on the previous format. Where this really makes a difference is when you view the page on your phone.  Instead of seeing the whole page scrunched onto your phone screen, you see one image at a time as you scroll through the page.

Below is page 1 of 5 pages of the reformatted visual essays page.

Below that is the first page of my concept map library.

I also reformatted pages showing visualizations and videos done by interns between 2005 and 2015. I posted this article on the intern blog to share those. 

As you look at my collection of visual essays you'll see presentations like this, where I've encouraged high schools, colleges and universities to create a Tutor/Mentor Connection study and action program on their own campus.

The interns who worked with me spent time reading my blog articles and looking through my website, then created their own interpretations, using various forms of visualization.  They were building new skills while learning new ideas. They were actively helping share ideas that could help more youth living in areas of persistent poverty get on-going tutor, mentor and learning support that would help them through high school, college and into adult lives and careers.  

Their articles focus on Chicago. The last were done in 2015, 10 years ago. That means there is a lot of new content that could be reviewed.  Any university in Chicago or any other place could have students doing this same work, and could soon have a page on their website showing student work, just as I do.

A few years ago I wrote an article titled "Tipping Points: Growing and Supporting New Leaders". In it I showed how universities could be building a new wave of leaders who work directly in youth serving organizations while training others to become more proactive in supporting nonprofit and social benefit organizations from their roles in business, professions, policy makers, etc. 

It's the type of article student learners could review and reproduce in ways that might influence more people to actually adopt the ideas!  Many might continue such work through their adult lives.

That's the goal.

I can be found on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Twitter (see links here).  I hope you'll connect with me.

If you appreciate what I share on my blogs and in the Tutor/Mentor library, please consider a contribution to help me pay the bills.  click here

Who uses Slideshare or Scribed.com?

I began creating visual essays in the late 1990s and started posting them on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website around 1999.  These were in PDF format and I had no way of knowing how many people read them, so I started putting them on Scribd.com and Slideshare.com in 2011. At that time they were to separate companies with different display formats. They have been one company for the past few years.

Each month I look at the stats and record the number of views each presentation receives. That has shrunk quite a bit over the past few years.

Here's the latest presentation that I put on Scribd.com

My 30-Year History of Reach... by Daniel F. Bassill

I created this in early 2024 and so far it's not recorded many views.

Here's one of the first presentations that I put on Slideshare. It shows the learning and networking strategy that I've piloted since 1993.

   

Tutor/Mentor Learning Network Strategy Introduction from Daniel Bassill

These are two of about 60 presentations on each platform.  Many are duplicates since I was posting on two different platforms with different display features when I started putting these on line.

So my question is, are you viewing presentations, from anyone, on these platforms?  Are you posting your own presentations on one or both of these?  Is there another platform that you post to more often?

I keep my content on Scribd and Slideshare, and updated, because I believe it only takes one person, from anywhere in the world, to view my ideas and want to embrace them and support them with time, talent and a lot of dollars.

I originally put my visual essays on this page.  It sill has many presentations that I've not shared on Scribd or Slideshare, so I encourage you to skim through the list.  

For a few years I featured the link to the Scribd and Slideshare pages, but as I began to see more advertising embedded into these sites, making them less reader friendly, I created a new page with most of my visual essays.  You can find it here.

I've also created a page with my collection of videos, created by interns who have worked for me, and by myself.  Here's one.

 

As I said earlier, it only takes one person to see these and want to use their own time, talent and dollars to share the ideas and make the strategy come alive in many cities, including Chicago.

My dream is that one day you could go to the website of a university and/or a high school, and find pages with collections of visual essays and videos, with exactly the same content and purpose as what I've created, but re-built and updated by students, volunteers and professionals.

Does such a page exist in your community? Share the link in the comments section or on social media. You can connect with me on many platforms. Open this page to find links to each. 

Thanks for reading my posts, and for sharing them with others.

If you find value in what I'm sharing please consider a gift to support my 78th birthday - see this page

Or a contribution to my annual "Fund the T/MI" campaign - see this page.

This helps me keep my library and ideas on line for another year.

Duplicate This!

Below is a video created by an intern from South Korea in 2013.

     

This is one of several visualizations created by interns between 2007 and 2015 to  help others understand strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).

You can view more at this page.

 After you view that video, take a look at this one, which I created six years ago:

    

In this video I showed an animation created in the late 2000s by graduate students from the University of Michigan School of Information to visualize the "It takes a village" message I've been sharing often since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.

I end the video, like I end many blog articles, saying "Create your own version. You can do it better than I did. You can focus on Chicago, or on the city or state where you live."

This photos shows me surrounded by students and volunteers in 1994 as we were just forming Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. 

This type of gathering takes place in hundreds of location, in a variety of formats.  Every organization making this happen is constantly searching for dollars to support their efforts.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help them attract those dollars, as well as ideas and volunteers that they could use to constantly get better at how they help kids.

If you create your own versions of my videos and graphics and share them often in your networks you are taking on the role that I've piloted.  Maybe you'll be a "tipping point" person, who attracts the attention and funding of a major donor like MacKenzie Scott, who funds T/MC strategies at universities in every major city, that grows new leaders to carry this strategy forward for the next few decades.

Do it!  Be like Dan!

Visit this page to search my lists of Chicago programs and find some to support.

Visit this page and make a year-end contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so I can keep posting articles like this in 2025!

Listen to some of my blog articles!

Today my Acacia Fraternity brother Allen Anderson put a message on Facebook saying he had set up an account on POST.news.  I'd seen others share similar news on Twitter and wondered how this compared to MEDIUM, a blogging platform I'd used in 2015-16.

So I visited.  I was blown away by an unexpected new feature.

Here's the link to the article shown above. I've circled a green icon above the headline, which you can click, and hear someone read my article! 

I've wanted this feature here on Blogger for many years.  About 4 years ago I recorded myself reading one of my articles. You can view that recording below.

If you compare the article being read on Medium, with me reading the article in the video, I'd choose Medium every time!

Here's another article on Medium.  Again I circled the "Listen" button. 

So far, I don't see this feature on Blogger (this blog) or on Wordpress.  I don't know if articles on Post.com have this feature. I'll find out.

However, based on this new discovery I'm sure to start posting on Medium again!

After you listen to a few of my stories please visit my home page and go to one of the December campaigns that I'm using to raise money to support my on-going efforts.

Thanks for reading....and listening!

View the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC Video Library

Over the past 35 years many videos were created showing the work done at tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago and sharing the ideas and strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I launched in 1993.

While you can find these on YouTube I've created an archive of these on my main website. 

There are two pages with videos I created, interviews that I was part of, and videos from the conferences I organized in Chicago between 1994 and 2015.  

There is also one page with projects done by Interns. 

I had been hosting these on a different site, which I'm no longer able to edit. Thus, by building new pages on my main site I can add new videos as more are created.

Most of the videos that I'm pointing to focus on the Tutor/Mentor Connection part of the two-part Cabrini Connections - Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy that I led from 1993 to 2011.  In this panel I point to a Vimeo site with 49 videos focusing on Cabrini Connections.  There's also a YouTube channel for Cabrini Connections/TMC.

While I've piloted my strategies in Chicago I feel that any major city in the world, where there are pockets of concentrated poverty, could apply the ideas in these videos to their own community.

That means students from middle school, high school and/or colleges could be creating their own versions of these presentations, using maps of their own city and pointing to youth programs that already operate in those places.  They could also use any of the blog articles I've posted since 2005 as content for their own blogs and videos. 

By doing so students build creative communications skills and learn roles leaders need to take over, and over, for many years in order to help kids born  in poverty move from birth-to-work, or to solve any of the other complex problems facing our world.

If you create new versions, just point to where you got your ideas, and send me a link so I can help you draw attention to them.

Thank you to those who make small contributions to help fund my work and keep these sites alive on the Internet. If you'd like to help, visit this page. 

Sharing Ideas With Nigeria

Yesterday I had the honor of talking with Aliyu B. Solomon, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria, which is the capital city of that country.  Here's the link to the recording of our talk.  

Here's the link to the slides that I shared while talking.  In this document you can see the questions I was asked to address along with some responses. 

We first connected via the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning site in the late 2000s. A few years later we re-connected on Twitter, where we've done most of our interactions since then.  Yesterday was the first time we've actually talked to each other, which reinforces my belief in how people from around the world, or around your city, can connect and build strong relationships via the Internet. 

Nigeria is the most populated country in Africa at over 203 million in 2018 and is projected to grow to about 401.31 million by 2050.   I've circled Abuja, where Aliyu B. Solomon lives.  It's the second largest city in the country, with Lagos, on the coast, being the largest.  See details here.

As with any large country there are substantial areas in each major city with high poverty, and there is much poverty in rural areas. In the interview I talked of the importance of building an information library similar to the Tutor/Mentor library, with a research section that collected information about poverty and inequality, and a programs section, that shows existing efforts to help kids through school and in to jobs. 

If you visit this group on the TutorMentorConnection Ning site you'll see that I've been encouraging people from Africa to take this role for many years. 

Anyone who views this interview is encouraged to form a group and begin studying the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategies, launched in 1993.  Then begin to build a library, pointing to these strategies, my web library and to information you can find related to poverty, inequality, school-to-work and tutor/mentor programs in your own city and country.

As you and others collect this information, or look at different parts of my website, write blog articles showing what you are seeing and what it means to you and your city. Share these and let them be conversation starters among people in your group, and others who will join you.  View the work interns did while working with me between 2004 and 2015 and duplicate their efforts. 

At the right is a concept map showing actions and key events from 1965 to now, which led to the growth of tutor/mentor programs I led in Chicago, and to the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).   See the 1992-present map at this link. 

Hopefully in 50 years many cities will have a timeline full of intentional actions like these. 

Thank you Aliyu B. Solomon, for inviting me to mentor you and your friends.  I look forward to similar conversations in the future with you and others.

I did not charge a fee for this conversation and don't charge others who ask me for help. I do have a page where I ask people to make contributions to help me continue to do this work.  

A picture is worth 1000 words

In the 1990s I used wall space at the tutoring program headquarters to show strategies for helping kids in poverty connect with adult volunteers in on-going non-school tutor/mentor programs.  I often led potential volunteers and donors through this information, and heard many comment, "I see that he's excited about this, but I don't understand what he's talking about."

So I began to use desktop publishing, then Power Point, to create visualizations, and visual essays, to share my thinking.  I started putting these on this page in the late 1990s and began putting them on Scribd.com and Slideshare.com in 2011.  I also enlisted interns to help communicate these through videos.

I consider these "teaching" and "planning" tools. Anyone can pull up one of my presentations and start a conversation asking, "How does this apply to us?" or "How can we use this idea to help kids in our area?"

Below are three examples, one from each platform.  This is one posted on Slideshare.com, which is now owned by Scribd.com.  This used to be free, but now people are being asked to subscribe.  

Planning Steps to Fight War on Poverty (and help youth tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty areas) from Daniel Bassill

This is from the collection on Scribe.com.  There's a duplication between this and Slideshare.com. I started posting to both because of the different presentation formats and because one was free to users.  
 

Building Learning Circles I... by Daniel F. Bassill

 This is a YouTube video created by me several years ago.   

 

 You can see my collection of videos on this page.

All of these can be remade, over-and-over, by students, volunteers and/or professionals. Substitute a map showing your geography, instead of Chicago, or showing a community area within Chicago, to focus the ideas on other places.  Just give an attribution link, showing where the idea originated, and send me a link so I can help you draw attention to it.

Maybe you will be the one who captures the attention and imagination of thousands of others who need to be giving time, talent, votes and/or dollars to help kids living in every high poverty area of the USA, and the world, grow through school and into adult lives free of poverty.

Thank you for reading and sharing my stories.

Using concept maps in planning path past Covid19

A week ago I wrote this article, about an on-line conversation that I was part of. We tried to do another last Friday, but I could not get my mic and video to work, so on Saturday morning I used a different computer and even with a couple of glitches, was able to share information about using concept maps to create a visual  understanding of complex problems along with visual blueprints showing work needed to reach solutions.

Here's the presentation:



During this hour long chat with Valerie F. Leonard I was able to talk through the ideas I shared in this blog article.

Any can be the YOU in this graphic,

Toward the end of the session I pointed to this graphic, emphasizing the need for some people to view the video, then to write their own interpretation and share it with friends, family, co-workers, etc.

When those people do the same the ideas spread and reach more people.

Covid19 has revealed the ugly reality of poverty and inequality. Only when more people get involved in trying to understand the problem, and how other people have already been trying to solve it, can we get enough people involved to support needed solutions in all the places where maps show concentrations of poverty.

Thanks Valerie Leonard of NonProfit Utopia for bringing me into this conversation and helping me share these ideas.

After Covid19: Visions for the Future

Have you ever had an experience, where you just randomly dropped into a conversation, and found it to be one of the best you've had in a long time? It happened to me on Wednesday, April 15. I knew that Valerie Leonard was hosting a ZOOM conversation at 2pm that day, and recognized some of the guests, but I was not certain I'd have time to join in. Then at 1:45 pm my day opened, and I went to Facebook, found the link, and you can watch the video to see what we talked about.  Here's the recording.

This was one of the best one hours that I have spent on-line in a long time. Let me introduce you to the participants.

click to enlarge

Oscar Rivero, Ronan Perennes and Marcela Calderon are students in a marketing class at Roosevelt University in Chicago, which is led by Valerie F. Leonard, who also is the founder of a consulting platform called Non-Profit Utopia.

Oscar is from Mexico and Ronan is from France (and was in Paris while talking with us in the ZOOM meeting.) Marcella is from Downers Grove, a Chicago suburb.  If I get a link to the class blog I'll post it here in a few days.

click to enlarge

To the right is a screen shot showing other participants. Valerie had invited Shelby Parchman, founder of InUrban Strategies, LLC and Xavier Ramey, CEO of Justice Informed, LLC., to be guest speakers, then posted the invitation for others to join in.  Mike Trout, founder of the YMEN Chicago youth organization in the North Lawndale community on Chicago's West side joined in, as did Will Chatman, Program Manager for YMEN.  JP Paulus of DoGooder Consulting also participated, along with myself.

Mike introduces Dan Bassill

The first part of the meeting was introductions, and when it came to my turn, my mic was not working.  After a short silence, Mike Trout spoke up, saying "I could almost speak for Dan", and he did. Open the image at the left or listen to the video to see Mike's intro of me.

I first met Mike in the early 1990s when he was forming YMEN. In the late 1990s we had a conversation where he said "At first, I did not trust what you were saying, but after seeing you repeat your message over, and over, I really believe you."  You can see that from his introduction of me. Thank you Mike!

During the introductions each of Valerie's students told a bit about who they are, where they came from and how they were all connected through the soccer program at Roosevelt, where Oscar is head coach, and through a youth soccer program in Pilsen, where all three are involved.

Xavier Ramey - TED Talk

I had heard Xavier Ramey speak at several events in the past couple of years, and you can get to know him better in this TED talk. 

He led off his part of the ZOOM meeting saying “The situation we're in now is a moment of harvest, and of planting, as well. We're harvesting what we planted together before, such as shadowy social safety net.

What excites me is that “so many people who have been alarm sounders; seeing now how they are organizing, and asking,  What can our economy look like?”

After the introductions Valerie led the group into a conversation about socialism, pointing to comments Oscar had made during class a few weeks previous.

The next 30 minutes focus on student and panel member thoughts on this topic.

Oscar said,   “A lot of people stigmatize that word, Socialism, and confuse it with Communism. They entail different systems.

It's about balance. What capitalism could do with some socialist ideas that people have."   We need to revisit our ideologies and come up with ideas better than we had."

Marcella said, “For the most part if you already didn't start ahead, then you will never get ahead.  It's important for people who recognize that things can be done differently and that the only option isn’t to keep doing things the same,  is to be morphing that and sharing it with people who don't want to believe that's the case."

Ronan said, “In France, much different than what's happening in United States, because we're already a much more socialist country"


Since my mic did not work I was typing my comments into the chat box on ZOOM. Valerie read this post:

“I'd love to hear student thoughts of how marketing tactics could be applied to building public will needed to remove the stigma of socialism.”

Xavier and Mike focused on the idea of "American Individualism".

Xavier led of with:   At the core of this is the question of American individualism.  What we're being pressed on right now with Covid19, is the reality of our community commitments to one another, meaning public policy, government, social sector programming, and these types of things, the “community” stuff, the “not my personal family, not my personal friends, the what we have together if we commit to one another, has shown that it has a lot of gaps.   The value of our public relationships is so shallow that it can't provide for everyone."

Mike and Xavier have talked about this for many years. I asked Mike if Xavier had ben part of YMEN and he said "Xavier was a student in YMEN starting in 6th grade and stayed involved through his college graduation from DePaul University. A year after he graduated college he returned to YMEN to join our staff as the Director of Development and Marketing. Where he worked for 5 years before joining the team at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago."

This long-term connection of youth with a site-based program is exactly what well-organized, consistently funded youth tutor/mentor programs can foster. It's what I've been working to help make happen across the Chicago region since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.

Mike added this to the ZOOM conversation: 

You got this American individualism which manifests on a bigger scale as American nationalism.

If we'd only learn from other countries who do things in a more communal and in a better way.

As you bring up models outside of the the American construct, you kind of go against the visceral reaction  that we have as Americans that say “no, no, we're the greatest country! How do you get people to acknowledge that other people out there are doing it better, and we need to learn from them.

There's a visceral reaction to word socialism. You can't market your way out of it. 

We need a different word, like the word justice, something for all."

ENOUGH - Educate yourself

I've only pulled a few snippets of conversation from this hour long session. There's much more.  I hope the students who participated, and others who view this, will take time to write and share their own reflection.  My #clmooc friend Terry Elliott, a college professor in Kentucky, has been trying to help me find a way to pull video clips from the master video. I've not been able to do that, but perhaps someone else who writes about this will succeed.

In the closing ZOOM meeting thoughts Shelby said, What are you doing now to do something post-covid? It's a good time to take a step back and think more clearly about what this world looks like, and how do you navigate that world?

We already have socialism. It's a bad word. But we already have it. Any time someone gets a check from the government, that's socialism.

Oscar added some closing thoughts when he said 

At the end of the day I think we have lost track of our humanity.

And like what true values of humanity should entail. Why are we in this world?

If you don't have a spirituality, forget religion, but just a spirituality of what a human being should be thinking of and what his purpose is in this world, then you start seeing people have that, like “its just about me and my community", and being close minded. 

The best people in the world have to look at how others do t hings.

I think there's much to think about from this conversation. I believe I and most working Americans have been brainwashed since birth, by nationalist and capitalist, self-interested parties.  Here's a few articles from my web library that might stretch your thinking.

* America's Hidden Philosophy - When Cold War philosophy tied rational choice theory to scientific method, it embedded the free-market mindset in US society

* America's Long (unaddressed) History of Class - click here

* 'Democracy In Chains' Traces The Rise Of American Libertarianism - click here

See work like this - here

The ENOUGH graphic and this "Is that ALL?" graphic were both created by interns who worked with me between 2006 and 2015. You can see these and other work on this page.

My role in the ZOOM meeting was to focus attention on the on-going communications and public education and engagement efforts that will be needed, by many people, reaching millions of other people, in order to create a world we want in the future.

The projects done by interns who worked with me are models of what other students (and adults) could be doing to share ideas and connect with others.  There is little costs involved. It just takes time.

The video above could be one of your first projects.

Thanks for reading. Let's find paths that take us forward together.

PS:  Yesterday as I was working on this article I received a call from Nathan Harris, who lives in Indianapolis. Nate started attending Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences around 2000 and that led to IUPUI tech department rebuilding the T/MC website in 2006 and hosting it through 2011. It's still hosted by the tech department head, but on a different server.  This is just another example of the long-term connections I keep trying to help grow from many youth programs in Chicago and around the country, like the YMEN program in North Lawndale.

Nate called to ask how I was and to tell me he and his wife Carrie were sending a small contribution.  If  you click this link, you can do that too.

Update 4-21-2020 - there will be many articles written on "what to do after Covid-19". Here's one from the Democracy Collaborative titled "Owning the Future: After COVID-19, a new era of community wealth building"

Go Beyond What's Expected

Below is a video that focuses on volunteer-involvement in youth tutor, mentor programs as a form of service learning. I created a power  point essay in the mid 2000s to communicate this idea, based on my own experiences leading a tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 2011.  Then in 2007 an intern from Hong Kong created an animation to show the idea. In 2011 a second intern, from South Korea created a new version. Since Flash Animation no longer works I've created a video to show the animation.



This shows that as a volunteer learns about a volunteer opportunity, then joins a program, they begin a learning process that repeats every time they meet with their student. After each meeting the volunteer has the opportunity to share what she has learned with friends, family, coworkers, etc. in ways that often draw others into service.

"figure eight" graphic used often

The middle of this figure eight graphic is where program leadership and knowledge reside. It's the role the Tutor/Mentor Connection (and Institute, LLC) have taken since 1993.

If we provide information that helps people find where to volunteer, and helps them become a more successful tutor or mentor, we do more to help kids. If we provide tools and information that volunteers can take back to family and friends to educate them on why these programs are needed and ways they can help, we grow the support needed for tutor/mentor programs to operate and reach more youth.

Below is another presentation, showing the ways a volunteer can do more than what he/she does each week when they meet with their student.

Mentor Role in Larger Youth... by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

These videos and presentations can be found on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site at this link and this link.  The library is intended as a resource for anyone who wants to help reduce poverty and inequality by providing more learning opportunities for K-12 youth.  The ideas can be used in any place where there are pockets of concentrated poverty. 

They can also be used as a model for information-based problem solving, that applies to many other issues.  Take a look.

I'll be 73 on December 19.

Each year since 2011 I've asked people to help me celebrate my December 19th birthday with a gift to support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  The T/MI is not a 501-c-3 so making a birthday gift is one way to support my efforts.  Click here to learn more.

All of the ideas I share on this blog and on Tutor/Mentor web sites are free to any user. I'd be happy to connect on Skype or Twitter to help you understand the ideas. I'd love to find institutional partners who would help rebuild the Tutor/Mentor Connection and spread these ideas in more ways.

Here's a link to my social media page, where you can find platforms where we can connect.

New Videos on Tutor/Mentor Institute Video Page

Students, volunteers and interns have created videos showing Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC strategies since late 1990s. I started creating a few videos myself, in late 2000s. I've added a few more in the past year.

While you can search YouTube for these, I created a few pages where you could more easily find and view these. Below is the first page of the collection.

Find these videos at this link

I realize that the page layout is really crude, but it's the best I can do with the talent and dollars I have.  Thus, I invite others to create and share their own versions of these, or volunteer your talent to create a  new template for sharing these videos.

These and all of the articles on this blog focus on one big question that required on-going involvement of many people to find and implement answers.

What will it take to assure that all youth born or living in high poverty today are entering careers by age 25 or 30?

I look forward to connecting with you on one of these social media platforms.

Visit Tutor/Mentor Video Library

I'm not a professional video producer but with help of volunteers and interns and emerging technologies I've created a library of videos that share ideas from my 35 years of leading a single tutor/mentor program in Chicago, and helping similar programs grow in all high poverty areas of the city. Here's one.



I created this Tutor/Mentor Videos page several years ago to show the full collection of videos that I and interns have created since early 2000s.

As you look at my videos and the layout of the collection I'm sure many will say "I can do that better".  

Yes you can!  

I invite others to create their own versions, just as interns working with me have done. I invite people to offer their time and talent to rebuild the video theater page. And I invite people to send dollars to my FUNDME page to help me keep doing this work.

If you'd like to have your name/logo put on my web sites, pdf presentations and videos, become a sponsor/partner. Let's talk.

Audio version of Tutor/Mentor blog - try it out

Last week I learned of a free screen capture video tool and I decided to try it out by recording one of my recent blog articles. Here's the video:



I also recorded a second article, which you can view here. I've added these to a collection of videos that I and interns have created since the late 2000s.

I've posted more than 1000 blog articles here and on the MappingforJustice blog since 2005.  I think I'll go back through these and record some that I feel are more important than others.

CC Alum Tramaine Ford w Dan
at Tutor/Mentor Conference

My hope is that by my example I'll inspire former students and volunteers and others who are in my network to do their own recordings of my blog articles.  At first, you'd just be reading the articles, and commenting from your perspective. As you get comfortable with the ideas I'm sharing, and with creating the recordings, and begin to draw a following, you may want to write and record your own articles.

As more people view and understand this information more people will do work needed to make non-school support systems available to more k-12 youth living in  high poverty areas. 

Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC Concepts

The India Development Corporation of America (IDCA) invited me to speak at their June 2018 education event and yesterday they sent me the video clip below, showing part of my presentation.



In preparation for this presentation I created some slides. You can see a couple in the video. You can view the entire slide show in the SlideShare below.

June 2018 Intro to Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC from Daniel Bassill

I was first introduced to IDCA in the early 2000s by one of the volunteers in the tutor/mentor program I was leading at that time. He was also a member of IDCA. Since then I've spoken at their educationT events every few years.

My goal is that the ideas I share are applied in India and other parts of the US and the world, while some of their members and network also offer time, talent and dollars to help me operate the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

The interactive map, and search  portal, of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator were both built in the 2000s by volunteers from India. Thus, there's an abundance of talent that could be helping me update these portals now.

from 1990s

Last Tuesday evening I attended the weekly ChiHackNight event at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago and as I was eating a snack before the start of the formal presentation, a man came up to me and asked "Are you Tutor/Mentor?"

It turns out that he had  heard my introduction the previous week, then had connected with me on the ChiHackNight slack channel.  He and a group from Northwestern University have been developing an interactive map focused on health issues, so we had some interests in common.

Turns out we had more in common than that. He told me that he was a volunteer in the mid 1990s at the tutor/mentor program I was leading.

More than 4000 adults and 4000 youth (now adults) were part of the tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 to 2011.  This represents an army of reinforcements who could not only be helping me now, but who could be carrying Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC ideas and strategies to cities throughout the US...and the world over the next 20 years.

I'm excited every time I reconnect with one of these people and every time I have the opportunity to share my ideas with groups like IDCA because they represent badly needed drinks and potential new !eaders.

See more videos at this link.

See  more PDF presentations at this link.

Become a sponsor, contributor and supporter at this link.