Inspired by Edison; Inspired by Others.

In my Twitter feed today I came across a post by Emlyn Cameron, containing a podcast essay that he wrote following the death in 2020, of his father, Charles Cameron.  

I met Charles in the Social Edge forum in the mid 2000s and through conversations that he hosted there we developed a strong relationship that continued until his death.  I did a search on my blog to see what I had posted that pointed to these conversations. 

Since the Social Edge forum has not been active for the past decade I had to use the Internet archive to find links to some of the articles I had put in my blog prior to 2010.  This led me to do some searching for articles including "Social Edge" and I found a couple using this graphic and the idea of Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, then an industry to distribute light to every home.

Here's a 2008 article where I showed how this conversation on Social Edge about design thinking included this paragraph:

"Thomas Edison created the electric lightbulb and then wrapped an entire industry around it. Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device. He was able to envision how people would want to use what he made, and he engineered toward that insight."  

In an earlier article from 2006, I wrote this “After Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he had to invent an industry to put light bulbs in every home. Imagine what it might have been like trying to think of every thing needed to make that happen, and not having much of a blueprint to follow. 

I wonder how many are thinking like Edison, of all of the actions needed to end poverty and racism in America, or the world. For volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring to be part of the lives of more youth living in high poverty neighborhoods, and to stay engaged until each youth is starting a job/career, we need to be just as creative, and persistent as leaders like Edison and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. 

We need to build an industry that can provide the ideas, dollars, advertising, tech support and leadership needed by CBOs in every neighborhood in every big city. We need to make these resources continuously available for many years at thousands of tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago, in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, and in every major cities around the world."

Since starting this blog in 2005 I've written hundreds of articles using maps to emphasize  the need for well-organized, mentor-rich youth programs in every high poverty neighborhood.  And I've used concept maps to visualize the team of talented people who need to be helping each program grow, as well as the many different types of mentoring, tutoring and learning each program needs to over, over many years. 

As we head into another weekend and a new month I repeat these messages.  I invite you to read some of my articles then share them with people in your network.  Become the leader of groups who "think like Edison" and envision the "fully developed marketplace" of learning and enrichment opportunities needed in every high poverty area of the country.

Start conversations like this one hosted by Charles Cameron on Social Edge, in 2010. Its title was "Theory of Change: A Collaborative Tool?"  Share the conversation on Twitter, LinkedIN and Facebook so I and others can find it and join in.  That's what drew me to Charles back in 2005.

Thanks for reading and thank you for sharing.  If you are able to help me pay the bills please visit this page and use the PayPal button to send a small contribution. 

If you'd like my help understanding the ideas I'm sharing let's schedule a ZOOM call.  

Springsteen, Vivaldi, Coast Guard, Avengers

I started my day as I usually do, visiting my social media sites and clicking into articles that interest me, especially those written by people I've been connecting with frequently. This map shows my journey.

As I scrolled Google+ I was drawn to an article posted on Kevin Hodgson's blog, which was a review of "Born to Run", Bruce Springsteen's autobiography.   Kevin embedded a few Springsteen songs, which I listened to.

As I did, I thought to myself about how my network exposes me to such different sensations and ideas. Last week I had visited Charle's Cameron's Zenpundit blog, where he had shared video of Vivaldi's Gloria.

I wanted to share this with Kevin, and went to the Zenpundit site. However, the first article on the site was one titled "Of Boxes and Worldviews" which I started to read. It led me through an deep exploration of wicked problems, silos, war planning, and more.

On Saturday I had posted an article under the title of "Climate Crisis - Environmental Racism" in which I described a complex problem and embedded a few concept maps. At the end of the article I invited better writers to help me communicate these ideas. If you read the "Of Boxes and Worldviews" article by Charles Cameron, you're looking at a "better writer" describing the same ideas.

Then, on Sunday, I viewed a 60 Minutes segment about Artificial Intelligence. Imagine harnessing that capacity to try to solve wicked problems.

All of these ideas are related. 

Toward the end of Charles' article he wrote this:

Somehow, these matters of extreme subtlety must at times be borne in mind while making the split-second decisions so characteristic of both military and law enforcement practice. And the higher the decision-maker in an action-oriented profession, the greater the need for deep understanding. Throughout Charles' articles he inserts quotes from other people. In this case, he pointed to Napoleon Bonaparte, saying, "In Napoleon’s own words, we can see that his actions, too, sprang from contemplation"

I spend time in this type of learning path every day, of every week. Through my links and web library I try to point to other people who are communicating ideas with greater depth, creativity and clarity than I do.

I hope you'll take the tour.

Why? Did you listen to the Presidential Debate last night? I doubt that Donald Trump has ever spent time in this type of learning. I suspect that Hilary Clinton has.  Yet, I fear that too few elected leaders at the city, state, national levels in America, or the world, are living lives of "super heroes", doing the deep learning and reflection, that prepares them to make important decisions that affect the world we live in, now, and in the future.

I suspect that too few potential voters are either.

This is why I take time to read Kevin's blog articles, and those of others who I've met in Connected Learning MOOCs. Keven is a 6th grade teacher. Most of the #CLMOOC participants are educators. They are helping shape the learning habits of future generations of leaders.

I connect my #clmooc and other education friends to people like Charles and to my own blog articles, because I hope they are teaching youth to build their own ability to understand and discuss wicked problems.

I keep looking for ways to draw people from the non-school tutoring, mentoring community into these deeper learning spaces, along with donors, policy makers, business leaders who all have a role to play.

Creating a new learning game

Last summer I took part in a Making Learning Connected cMOOC and one of the activities involved creating a game visualization. Someone showed an old Monopoly game board and that inspired me to create this graphic, as a learning game people would play, that would result in greater understanding of all the ideas in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library, which I've been building for nearly 40 years. I created this using cMAP software. Here's the link.

I've a friend, Charles Cameron, who I met in the early 2000s via the Social Edge discussion forum. We're still connected on Twitter and he writes articles on the Zenpundit blog. In addition to writing thought-provoking articles for Zenpundit, Charles is a developer of a "game of connections" called Sembl.

As I was creating my own game board I created this graphic to show what I was trying to do and some different names I was considering.

.

I'm not able to take my game any further than this concept stage, but would love to find some teenager or young entrepreneur and game developer who'd like to take it further. If just a small percent of the people who play fantasy sports or watch live sports each week were to play this game, we'd have more people working to end urban violence, and maybe more working to end world violence.

As I write this I'm following the shootings in Paris on my Twitter feed. It's a tragedy.

However, one person wrote, "Would the media be covering this as much if it were happening in the middle east?" Or in the South Side of Chicago?

Too much tragedy in the world. Too little attention paid to solutions and ways to solve these problems.

That's a tragedy too.

Connecting network. Building Relationships.

The video below is from a Google hangout this morning, with Terry Elliott, who I met last year when I began following the Making Learning Connected MOOC. That is repeating again this year and following a comment I posted a week ago, Terry invited me to connect this morning in a Hangout. I hope you'll take a look.



I've been reaching out to share ideas and learn from others via on-line communities since I started using the Internet in 1998. This is part of a process of learning and network building that I feel is essential to expand my own effectiveness, and expand the range of non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reaching youth in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

This relationship-building is a process. In the final part of today's interview, Terry said that when I first started posting on the CLMOOC he and other organizers were not sure if I wasn't just a spammer. Over time Terry began to dig deeper to see how what I was posting was related to the goals of the group, and that led to today's interview.

I started participating in discussions on the Skoll Foundation's Social Edge platform in 2005, and over the years have built strong relationships with a few people. Here's a discussion led by Charles Cameron, who I started connecting with in 2005. As a result Charles was a speaker at the 2010 Tutor/Mentor Conference I host in Chicago.

I first connected with the Webheads group in 2004, and in recent years that has resulted in on-line sessions like the one today. Here's a link to a discussion with Vance Stephens in 2012. This link points to an archive of many interviews and videos I've been part of.

I've participated in MOOCs for the past few years and believe that MOOCS are one strategy for building a deeper understanding of all the ideas I share on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site, as well as a larger network of people who help share that information and apply the ideas in more places.

I post links to these MOOCs, and to articles about "how to create a MOOC" with the goal that others will step forward to organize MOOCs and communities of practice aimed at helping mentor-rich youth programs grow in more places, using the ideas I and others share from our own experiences.

Thanks Terry for taking time to get to know what I was offering the community and for inviting me to share my ideas in today's hangout.

Growth of the middle-man in non profit sector

I've used this graphic for many years to illustrate the role of the Tutor/Mentor Connection as an intermediary connecting those who need help (non school tutor/mentor programs and the young people they serve) and those who can help (business, volunteer, donor, etc).

From 1993-2011 I did this role as a non-profit and did not charge a fee to either side to support my services. Furthermore, I built an extensive map-based information system and a year-round schedule of activities intending to draw volunteers and donors DIRECTLY to individual tutor/mentor programs the same way advertising draws customers to retail stores. Let the zip code and the web site of the program provide information the volunteer, donor, parent use to decide about getting involved.

In recent years I've seen the growth of consulting firms who "tell you how to do it" but leave you without the manpower, talent and resources to apply their ideas. I have seen very few consultants acting like the T/MC, using their articles and blogs to draw volunteers and donors directly to the organizations they are trying to help.

A few days ago I saw an article on Facebook titled "The Philanthropic-Consultant Industrial Complex . . . editor notes issue #74". I was not able to comment at that time. Then today as I read Charles Cameron's introduction to a Social Edge forum discussion titled Philanthropic Advisers: Experts in Successful Generosity, I saw a link to a blog by philanthropic consultant, Lucy Bernholz, titled The Business of the Business of Good which pointed me back to the original article that I'd seen on Facebook!

I think the intermediaries like philanthropic advisers can be a good thing. I was given $50k in late 2007 to rebuild my mapping capacity because an advisory was doing research on funding tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and he came to me for information. As I showed him how to use the Program Locator to find programs in the West part of the city I said "If your donor really wants to make a difference, give me some money to rebuild this capacity." He did.

I never would have connected to this donor otherwise.

However, the opposite side of this conversation is that I don't think the consultants and experts, including researchers, are doing enough to drive needed operating resources and talent directly to all of the small and mid-size places who need flexible, on-going resources to build talent, knowledge, experience and human capital within their organizations. Without this there are too few programs reaching too few kids.

Due to my inability to connect consistently with enough philanthropic investors over the past 18 years I've not been able to maximize the potential impact of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. In the end the strategy was dropped in April 2011 by the Board of Directors at Cabrini Connections. I had to create Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in July 2011 in order to keep the T/MC going.

I've always been a consultant, but I gave all my ideas away for free. Now I'm trying to find ways to get paid for sharing some of these ideas.

Part of my strategy is to earn consulting fees from cities, businesses and others who want to duplicate the T/MC concept in their own cities, without the costs of starting from scratch.

I'm committed to finding the dollars and talent to do this, but will never change from the philosophy of using my own time and talent to draw needed resources to the programs on the front lines of the war on poverty who must have these to win.

I encourage you to follow these discussions over the coming weeks and think of ways you can be an intermediary who connects "those who can help" with "those who need help".

Freedom is not FREE

Last night I watched a documentary showing how African Americans have fought and died in every major conflict from the mid 1700s through the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They fought for freedom, despite the fact they they enjoyed so little of the rights of freedom in America.

 In the past six years I've written about the price of freedom and the sacrifices citizens need to make tohave the future we want. You can read all of these under the HERO tag. Here are a few headlines.

Feb. 8, 2006 - "the difficulty of success does not relieve one of the obligation to try" 

May 29, 2006 - "Where does the courage come from to fight the un-winnable fight?" 

Sept 11, 2006 - "Remembering 9/11 - How much sacrifice is enough?" 

Oct 8, 2008 - "What sacrifice will our next President ask from Americans?" 

Aug 5, 2009 - "Our promise: Do all we can to assure inner-city youth are in jobs and starting by age 25" 

March 4, 2010 - "What Level of Commitment?" 

March 14, 2011 - "Hero. George C. Marshall" 

All of these articles have a common theme. The freedom and future we all want comes with a huge price. We need to innovate ways to involve more people in the work that needs to be done and the sacrifices that need to be made--not just the men and women in our Armed Forces. 

I'm re-starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the next few months. I have no board of directors, no source of funding, a huge mountain of decisions that need to be made. The main T/MC web library is not working. The maps need to be updated with 2010 census info but I've no money, or source of income, to do this. It's a huge challenge. 

Yet in the 35 years since I began leading a tutor/mentor program I've touched the lives of thousands of youth and adults in Chicago and around the world. Charles Cameron is one. He's hosting forums on Social Edge to help me rebuild the T/MC. 

If I can just find a way to reconnect with the people I've touched or reached out to over all these years I can find the talent, manpower, dollars and other resources needed to not only create a new organizational structure for the T/MC, but to make it much stronger than in the past. 

Here's an article I wrote in October 2009 titled "Nobel Prize. Earn it." 

We can do this if we can find a way to create this BIG REUNION over the next few months. Email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net if you want to help.

T/MC Added Value - We Free Up Time

By leaving the Cabrini Connections program this summer I free up time to innovate new ways to help programs like this grow. I'm reading "A Brief History of the Corporation."

This is one quote from the article: "Ideas fueled by energy can free up time which can then partly be used to create more ideas to free up more time."

This week on the Social Edge Forum, Charles Cameron is leading a discussion about the changes taking place in organizations like Tutor/Mentor Connection. Join in and add your ideas.

Racism, Poverty, Unemployment - Network Building

Last night (April 27) I attended a panel discussion titled “The Relationship Between Racism and Unemployment” at First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park, Il.

Yesterday I wrote about an article about poverty written by Clarence Wood, President of Jane Addams Hull House. It focused on many of the same things as last night's panel.

Then this morning, I read a paper posted on a Social Edge discussion forum, (see pdf) where the researcher said "only when upper-class individuals were experimentally induced to feel compassion – thus orienting them to the needs of others – did they exhibit levels of prosociality that rivaled their lower-class counterparts."

In many ways, each of these discussions focuses on the needs of one community of people and the need to have the wealthy class, the political elite, and those living beyond poverty involved, and connected to those who are working in the field to solve this problem. There is much "bridge building" to be done. This graphic illustrates this idea.

In last night's forum, panel members (Dr. Finley Campbell, Social Justice Council of the First Unitarian Church, Dr. Dick David, Cook County Hospital, Nanette Campos and Samuel Gutierrez, Primerica, and Walter Bush IV, The Renaissance Collaborative, Inc.) provided information about the connections between racism and unemployment and shared ideas about what can be done.

As I listened my mind was shouting "Where are we connecting these people and this information to all of the other people and information related to the same problem?" In just a few minutes this morning I was able to create a map showing links to several places where this topic is being discussed by different groups, as well as to links on the Tutor/Mentor Connection library that connect myself and the people I know to thousands of others.

After panel members shared opinions and research related to the problem of racism and unemployment, recommendations for solutions were discussed. Among these were

* Educating yourself and others about these issues
*Learn (teach others) to take personal responsibility for your learning, actions and success
*Believe that the “right to work is an inalienable right” central to the pursuit of live, liberty and happiness in America.
*Organize. Form a movement to create political change and make this "right to work" idea a reality.

So how do we do this? In almost all events I attend people say "we need..." and "we should" but they don't provide a map or blueprint showing how this small group grows to an army that makes that idea a reality.

There is plenty of evidence of racism in America and gaps between rich and poor, but too few market-based strategies that will change this dramatically in the coming century

As I said, I wrote a blog article on Wednesday about a Perspectives article in the 4/24/2011 Chicago Tribune saying “people are not poor because they are Latino or African America or Caucasian. They are poor because they have not had the opportunities to advance themselves.”

The authors concluded that “we all pay for poverty” and we need to find ways to work together to solve this problem.

Since only about 20 people attended the Racism and Unemployment discussion the first thing we all might focus on is “how do we expand the size of the congregation?”

In the research study from this week’s Social Edge forum led by Charles Cameron, the writer says “In Study 4, only when upper-class individuals were experimentally induced to feel compassion – thus orienting them to the needs of others – did they exhibit levels of prosociality that rivaled their lower-class counterparts.”

Only when we move from 20 people to 20 thousand and then 20 million and then 200 million people in this discussion can we change the way we all understand the impact of racism and poverty in the world, and become more consistently committed to actions that result in a different world.

So how do we do this? On the Tutor/Mentor Connection site I’ve created articles that show how volunteers who become part of well organized, long-term, tutor/mentor programs can grow in their understanding, and empathy, to the point where they become leaders inviting others to become involved. In the T/MC library, I post articles like this one, that show how volunteer involvement can create understanding and empathy, that is essential for greater involvement. If this is happening in enough places, there can be a constant expansion of the number of people from beyond poverty who are getting involved and becoming informed.

Becoming informed of what? There is so much to know. What would be 10 things we’d want people to understand that would result in actions that increase employment among those who are chronically under employed, or unfairly compensated when they are employed?

What if we borrowed a chapter from the education reform movement? What if we developed a set of “learning standards” for ADULTS? What do we want them to know about poverty, racism, philanthropy, capitalism, etc? How do we teach this? How do we motivate learning?

Then let’s develop standardized testing that would determine how well adults are learning this information, and would also help us understand how many are involved in this learning. Without this we’ll never really know if the congregation is growing and/or if we’re all singing from the same song book.

• what do people need to learn
• what test questions would determine if this learning is taking place
• how do we determine that a growing number of adults are involved in this learning and mastering the knowledge
• what changes in behavior do we want to see as a result of the learning
• how will we know this is happening

Then, let’s tie this form of Adult test taking to privileges, such as driving a car, or leading a company, or being elected for public office, or taking a trip out of the country so we’re sure that the people who don’t live in poverty are being motivated to ‘attend this school’ and take part in this learning.

If it works for kids in America why wouldn’t it work for adults?

This is only an idea. But it could be made into a reality if others felt it had value and wanted to use their own talent to develop it. We've many ideas that need resources and partners to develop.

That's where philanthropic investors come in. Take a look at the information we share and the maps and graphics we're piloting and ask "How much more could the Tutor/Mentor Connection be doing if I were its benefactor?"

If you see the potential please come forward with your support.

Connecting the Network

The image below shows the range of different organizations who connected to each other at the May 2010 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference held at Loyola. This was the 16th year we've offered a May conference. It's only possible because so many people volunteer to be speakers and because we've been able to scrape together a few dollars to organize these.



One participant was Charles Cameron, who hosts discussions on the Social Edge forum. This week, Charles has taken the discussion from the Conference in Chicago, back to the Social Edge web site, where it is connecting our network with people from throughout the world who might use our ideas to help kids in their own community, or who might add their time, talent, or dollars, to help us provide these services in Chicago.

Join in and see how we're connecting networks. Then visit the Social Network Analysis group on our Ning site, and learn how we're trying to map network growth, showing the role of an intermediary like T/MC in helping connect people from around the city, and the world, with each other. As you browse this group, you can also see how we're trying to show how a tutor/mentor program expands the network for youth, and adults.

This article says "it's who you know, not just what you know". We agree, and we hope that investors will also agree, and provide the dollars that each tutor/mentor program needs to build and sustain this type of network surrounding inner city kids.

Connecting networks - Conference Follow up

This is the first of many photos taken at the May 27 and 28 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference that will be uploaded to our Ning photo gallery in the coming week.

We'll also be posting the pdf presentations of many of the speakers and workshop presenters, such as this one, from Charles Cameron, who is a discussion facilitator on the www.socialedge.org forum.

The first speaker, Professor James Garbarino, Loyola University Chicago, author of "Lost Boys," on Violence and Young Men, provided a framework and focus for the conference.

He said, "it is essential to build a deeper understanding. Good intentions are not enough." And he said "It matters where you live", showing the connection between high poverty and high violence.

Then on Friday morning, Bill Curry, Executive Director, and founder, of Breakthrough Urban Ministries, introduced The Breakthrough Model for Tutoring and Mentoring. I'll post his presentation when I get it, but this video shows the model, and illustrates a vision that the T/MC fully supports.

More than 130 people attended the conference, and presented experience from many different types of tutoring and/or mentoring programs, as well as research on poverty and violence, that we can all learn from. I encourage you to browse the speaker list and visit web sites, and to use the attendee list to make contact and build relationships.

Follow this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Connection newsletter, and connect your ideas and strategies to the T/MC and each other, so we can do more to attract the resources, ideas and talent we need to implement and sustain these strategies for many years.

Finally, if you value what the Tutor/Mentor Connection is trying to do, to connect all of these organizations with a constantly expanding library of ideas, we need your donations and sponsorship to keep doing this work. You can sponsor the conference, or sponsor one of our fund raising events. Or you can just send a small donation.

I hope you'll help us help all of these organizations help thousands of kids living in poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.

The Tragedy of Englewood

On page 1 of the March 13, 2006 Chicago Sun Times the feature headline is WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO STOP KILLING OUR KIDS? The headline in the Chicago Tribune is Another Stray bullet shatters Englewood.

On October 15, 1992 the front page of the Chicago Sun Times feature headline was “THE KILING GROUND: 7-Year-Old’s Death at Cabrini Requires Action.

In the 14 years between these two headlines there have been dozens of smaller stories about violence, and hundreds of unreported stories. In addition there have been feature stories about poverty, gangs, poorly performing schools, ex-offenders being released into poverty neighborhoods, etc. You can find copies of many of these stories in the files of the Tutor/Mentor Connection’s offices at 800 W. Huron in Chicago.

What I cannot find, are web sites that link these stories and show how they are interrelated. What I cannot find are stories that talk about comprehensive efforts to build community support systems in neighborhoods like Englewood that provide youth with a variety of learning and enrichment opportunities and surround them with a network of adults who are committed to helping kids move through school safely and into jobs and careers.

Stopping the killing in Englewood is not just about getting guns off the street. Ending the war in our inner cities is no easier than ending the war on terrorism. This is a complex social problem that will take the involvement of many people over many years. The solutions must enlist business as self-interested partners, along with universities, faith networks, media, hospitals and the entire orchestra of civic and social organizations.

When Dantrell Davis was killed in 1992, most of us did not even know that the Internet existed. Things have changed. People from around the world are connecting with each other via the Internet. Complex ideas are being discussed by many people in many different places.

Here’s a sample. At http://www.socialedge.org/Events/Workshops/63 is a forum titled Balancing act: the alchemy of the social entrepreneur . This discussion talks about dealing with change and solving complex problems. In one posts, Charles Cameron writes about “keys to real social change” and refers to an article by Donella Meadows about Places to Intervene in a System: http://www.donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

I read the article. I encourage you to read it to. It shows the importance of knowledge and information, which is the primary currency of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Other than maintaining a Program Locator database of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs, we don’t create new knowledge. What we do is collect, aggregate and organize it on our various web sites.

This Social Edge discussion, and many like it that I’ve participated in for the past 10 years, challenge me to think in more complex and long-term ways about what must be done to solve the problems of Englewood. I express many of my ideas in Power Point essays posted at the Tutor/Mentor Institute section of http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/library

The reason I support volunteer based tutor/mentor programs like www.cabriniconnections.org is not because they solve all of the problems facing inner city youth, but because they engage more people personally in the lives of these kids and create a bridge linking poor neighborhoods with more affluent communities, with business, with universities and with others who must be more passionately and strategically involved, for many years, if there is to be a paradigm shift in what is happening in high poverty neighborhoods around Chicago and in the rest of the world.

When a person gets Cancer, he becomes a big supporter of Cancer Research. When a father loses a child to a school yard shooting, he becomes a gun control advocate. What do we need to do to create this type of personal involvement and commitment before a tragedy occurs?

Getting people involved in volunteer-based organizations that create a weekly, monthly and long-term connection with poverty is a place to start.

Unfortunately, too few of these organizations exist. Search the Program Locator at http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/Prgloc.aspx for the 60636, 60621 and 60620 zip codes (the Englewood Neighborhood). You’ll find very few comprehensive tutor/mentor programs. Ask the leaders of any tutor/mentor program in Chicago, and you’ll also find that there is too little funding to help tutor/mentor programs grow and sustain volunteer involvement.

Ask the Tutor/Mentor Connection and we’ll tell you how difficult it is to find dollars to support the Program Locator and other services of the T/MC.

I don’t expect the news media to change the way they sensationalize bad news. It sells papers and they are in business to make a profit. What I do hope to do is engage the media and the business communities in innovative thinking of how they can use their resources, their leadership and their visibility to draw daily attention to the issues, like advertisers draw daily attention to their products and services.

We don’t need a front page headline every 14 years. We need this emphasis from someone in business, media, politics, religion, etc. every day.

We need them to point to web sites like http://www.tutormentorexchange.net so that people can find where to get involved, why to get involved, and how to be smarter when they do get involved.

The tragedy of Englewood is that too few people will read this and respond, which means the tragedy will repeat over and over again.