Too much to do, too little time

I can't believe I've not posted anything this week. I've not been on vacation. What I have been doing is create some new images to help illustrate our goals, work with interns to help them communicate our messages, and reach out through our networks to find donors to fund my organization, as well as all other tutor/mentor programs in the city.
Let me give you a brief tour. I hope you'll follow the links I'm pointing to.



First, a reminder of why we do what we do. This is not headline from this week's Chicago Tribune. It is from 1994. Not much has changes since then to help city kids because few people are following a master plan, that would put programs and resources in city neighborhoods with the highest poverty, that could influence what happens in non-school hours to influence how kids move through school and into jobs.



This is one of many graphics I use to show that I believe the companies that are looking for workers and customers should be providing the leadership, and research, that engages more people from their industries in birth to work strategies that reach kids in schools, and in non school programs.

This is a graphic I've posted on this blog many times in the past. It illustrates the role of individuals, and organizations, who can mobilize people to be volunteers and donors in programs all over the Chicago region, not just in one or two well-known locations.



The next graphic is the first slide in an animated project being created by Jawon Koo, and intern from IIT and Korea, who is working with T/MC. This is a flash animation, with a recorded narration. Jawon did not know how to create one of these three weeks ago. Thus, he first had to learn about flash, then figure out how to interpret the idea, then find a way to write a script and record it. You can see follow his work on our ning page.

The next graphic is a another project being developed by our second IIT intern, Eunson Lee. He also had to learn flash in order to create this project. Follow his work here.



Jawon and Eunson are just two new interns working with us. We have four interns from Loyola University. Follow Jordan, E Wilson, Emily, and Jonathon as they help communicate the ideas we're developing.

While I work to create an infrastructure that would help every tutor/mentor program in the Chicago region get the consistent resources each needs to grow from Good to Great, I also continue to support that process at Cabrini Connections. We launched a Cabrini Madness fund raising competition this week, and already donors are responding to appeals from teams of students, volunteers, friends and staff. The logo shown here was created by student in our Technology Club, who have been creating graphics for each of our events since last November.

It's been a busy week.

Olympic Gold and UK Reading Resource

The Winter Olympics will be starting soon and millions of people will be focused on gold medals.

I started exchanging blogs almost five years ago, as part of a NonProfit Blog Exchange. Through this I've been introduced to many people and organizations which I had not known previously.

This time, I'm assigned to write about a blog titled Getting Reading: Tips and Ideas, which happens to be hosted by an organization titled Reading Matters, based in the UK.

I skimmed through their web site and blog and there are many tips that volunteers, educators and parents in Chicago might include in their own efforts to help young people read better. What I really liked was the map they used to show schools that are using the Reading Matters program.



As you know, I use maps, too. Our aim is to connect resource providers, volunteers, students and parents with existing tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Such a map would enable organizations like Reading Matters to target all of the tutor/mentor programs in the city, in their effort to distribute their expertise to more of the places where they are needed.

I was in the UK in June 2008, to speak at a Conference hosted by Learning Mentors, which is primarily a school-based support service for at-risk students. My goal then, as it is now in connecting with Reading Matters, is to share ideas, and forge alliances. If they can use the information on my site to help build more supports for kids in the UK, that's good. If this results in people from Oxford and other universities in the UK, or companies like HSBC Holdings, helping us do what we do, that's even better.

So what does this have with the Winter Olympics?

In researching past blog exchange articles I found this one that I wrote titled Do They Give Gold Medals for Ending Poverty?

Right now nations throughout the world are earning Gold Medals for how well they are responding to the needs of the people in Haiti. However, what type of medals were they earning a month ago? What sort of medals will they be earning for help they give to people in Haiti a year from now?

And while worldwide attention is focused on Haiti, what happens to all of the other social benefit organizations in the world, such as tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and AIDS organizations in Africa, who depend on charity donations to provide a constant level of support to their own clients?

It would be ideal if donors would divide their charity dollars into three categories so some would be available for emergencies, some would be available to fund issues of importance to the donor and his/her personal family or community, and some would be consistent donations made over many years to help social benefit organizations do work that cannot be done with an inconsistent and undependable flow of dollars.



I created this chart to illustrate this idea. I'd like to see Gold Medals awarded for every giving category, supporting causes on every continent. That would really be the Olympic spirit and an outcome of blog exchanges like this.

What is a Tutor/Mentor Program?

With so much emphasis on tutoring and mentoring, I wonder what the "mental picture" is in the minds of people who hear these words? I think that depending on where you live, how you were raised, what level of education your parents and neighbors have, you will see a different image in your mind when these words are said.

That makes if difficult to develop a national strategy that would make the "right kind" of tutor/mentor program available for the different circumstances that youth are dealing with in neighborhoods across America.

I created a short power point essay a few years ago, which I call Defining Terms. I encourage you to read it.



However, I also encourage you to look at the blogs I've listed below. Each one shows an activity that some of the teens at Cabrini Connections engage in each week. Each activity is led by different volunteers. Kids can participate in these for one or more years while they also have a separate one-on-one mentor/tutor who they meet with each week on either Wednesday or Thursday evening.

It's the combination of all of these activities, where everyone is focusing on helping kids go through school, college or vocational school, and into jobs and careers.

Art Club blog
Tech Club blog
Video Club blog
Writing Club blog
Profiles of students and volunteers.

This is all part of a strategy shown here on the Cabrini Connections web site.




Finding the money to pay the rent, salaries of our small staff of leaders who coordinate the work of more than 90 volunteers and 75 teens, is extremely difficult and constantly frustrating. Thus we need to be creative. This month we've launched Cabrini Madness, where teams of students, volunteers, staff and friends are each competing with each other to see which team can raise the most money by April first.

If you want to borrow ideas from what we do, to build or expand your own tutor/mentor program, please do. If you'd like to support us to help us keep helping the teens and alumni of Cabrini Connections, make a donation to support one of the Cabrini Madness teams, and encourage your friends to do the same.

57 million watch NFL game. How Many Spend time Thinking about Consequences of Dropping Out of School?

Yesterday I attended a public forum hosted by The Chicago Urban League, The Illinois State Council on Re-Enrolling Students who Dropped Out of School, the Alternative Schools Network and the Latino Policy Forum.

The highlight of the meeting was testimony by youth who attend alternative schools in Chicago who talked about how important it is for teens to have jobs, as stepping stones to college and careers, to help pay the bills for their own families, and to keep from being involved in negative activities.

More than 20 elected officials attended, along with myself and over 100 other interested organizations.

Jack Wuest does a great job of organizing events like this, and the Alternative Schools Network has all of the publications and media links on their web site.

There were feature stories in Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago SunTimes, but how many people are spending as much time reading and reflecting on these stories, as they spent last weekend watching National Football League games?

Jack said "this is important to our Democracy". Is NFL Football as important?

Even if we had millions of people reading the articles on Drop Out Crisis from this week's media, and from the efforts of groups like America's Promise, how do we keep the attention focused on these issues every day, so more people understand the problems, then act in some way to help kids from many locations come through school and into jobs and careers?

One suggestion would be to enlist students as researchers, communicators and leaders in this process. The testimony of students at yesterday's meeting was great. One student did a "rap" that received a standing ovation. However, these were just drawing attention to the problem. They did not draw volunteers, resources and jobs to places on the map of Chicago where youth need jobs, and where youth need business mentors to help them find paths to jobs.

At the right is a graphic created this week by one of the interns working at Cabrini Connections. It shows a map of Chicago, and how one person can recruit his/her friends, employees, faith community, and point them to information such as hosted on the Alternative Schools Web site, or the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site, and point them to programs all over the city where volunteers and donors can help.



In the Video section of the Cabrini Connections web site you can see other ways students can be involved in creating, and distributing the "get informed, get involved" messages on a daily basis, which are needed to build an audience of fans who will take a personal, and passionate, interest in helping youth in America become the leaders of America's future.

Youth as leaders, starts with youth as learners and researchers, then grows to youth as communicators, and youth as mobilizers. These graphics and videos illustrate how youth can use the new social media of the Internet, to mobilize forces for change, and to help them in their own pathways to careers.

Looking Forward

Each year since 1976 I've started January with two goals in mind. One was to keep the current group of youth and volunteers involved through the end of the school year. The second was to enlist some of the students and volunteers as leaders who would work with me and other volunteers to help the program improve, and grow, as it moved into the next school year starting in late Augusts.

This is a business process, based on Total Quality Management. We learn from what we are doing at Cabrini Connections, and what others are doing in their own programs. We learn from our network, and the ideas that are all around us.

I use graphics to illustrate these ideas this one can be found in this blog article

In 1976 I did not have the Internet as a resource, and frankly, I did not know nearly as much, or have as much sense of purpose, as I have today. I've learned this over many years, one year at a time. I've learned from my experiences as a retail advertising manager with Montgomery Ward, from three years in Army Intelligence, and from my college years in the 1960s. I've learned from our students, and from our volunteers. I've dramatically expanded what I've learned from using the Internet to expand my network and the range of ideas that influence my actions.

I'm trying to help our students and volunteers expand their networks, and learn from the same library of resources that I learn from. That's why I point to www.tutormentorconnection.org as a resource.

Thus, if we can keep most of our students and volunteers involved through June 2010, and have some become leaders who provide time, talent and sweat-equity to help improve the program, we'll start the 2010-11 school year with even more hope for helping our kids to careers than we have in the past.

I share this planning cycle on the Internet, along with these blog articles, so other programs in Chicago and in other cities can learn from our experience as they build their own programs.

Read the "strategy" articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog and add your own talents to the work of sustaining, and constantly improving, the quality and impact of Cabrini Connections

------------------------------------

CABRINI MADNESS has begun!
Read more about Cabrini Madness

Support one of these teams with a donation and help us continue to share what we're learning with our own students and volunteers, and with leaders of other tutor/mentor programs.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you all for your help.

Contact El Da Sheon Nix or Dan Bassill
Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection
800 W. Huron, First Floor
Chicago, Il. 60642
312-492-9614

Celebrate Mentoring. Support Mentoring.

View the video. See what our teens have to say about their mentors. Support this work at Cabrini Connections with a personal donation, a grant, or by encouraging others to give.

What makes our non profit unique, is that while we operate a single program, we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to help every poverty neighborhood in the Chicago region have great volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs. Visit our web site to learn more about how we do this.

Support us with a donation and you will help us with both Cabrini Connections, and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

School Shakeup in Chicago - Think out of the Box

The Chicago SunTimes reported today that "Phillips High and Marshall High School are among 14 Chicago public schools expected to face massive shakeups, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

The map below shows the location of Phillips High School, and the levels of poverty around it.



Our aim is to encourage the growth of non-school tutoring, mentoring, arts, technology and learning programs in the area around failing schools, so kids have a wider range of people to model jobs and careers, and to help them come to school more prepared to learn.

The Program Locator map is just one tool to do that. It enables you to zoom into a section of the city, build layers of information, such as poverty, poorly performing schools, existing tutoring and/or mentoring programs. It also enables you to add other layers showing faith groups, businesses, hospitals and/or universities who might be in the same area, and that could provide volunteers, technology and dollars to support innovative non-school, and school-based involvement.

About 10 years ago I created a map anlaysis of the area around Phillips HS. Such a report could be prepared by any of the local leaders, or even by students at one of the schools.

Using the other resources on the Tutor/Mentor Connection site, a strategy could be developed that engages all of the resources of the local and expanded community, to help kids prepare for school, and for jobs and careers.

What is a tutor/mentor program? Visit the Chicago Program Links and browse the list of web sites. This shows a wide variety of organizations. However, if you use this list, and links to other tutoring/mentoring programs in other cities, local leaders can borrow ideas from each, and make their own programs the best of them all.

This can happen if business and philanthropic resources become consistently available for the long-term growth of constantly improving programs.

Life without hope..

It is sad that the earthquake in Haiti has caused more pain and suffering to people who already have more than their fair share.

I encourage those who can, to provide donations to help those in need.

However, after the dead are buried, and roads and buildings are repaired, the poverty that was there in the first place, and the problems that caused it, will still be there.

This is no different than the poverty in urban America. Here's a research article showing how "believing that you won't be alive beyond your teens" fuels negative actions and calls for different policy and solutions.

Finding ways to get people who don't live in poverty, personally connected with the youth and families who do, so they become personally interested, and thus more willing to go beyond "random acts of kindness" in the ways they use their time, talent and dollars, is the goal of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

This thinking can help people build better lives in Haiti, New Orleans, and many other places, not just Chicago.

Precious and a Princess

This article was written by Phil Wilson, a college fraternity brother of mine who lives in LA and works in the AIDS sector. It's worth reading.

This is a follow up written by Phil, titled Young Black Men are Precious, too.

The more we understand the challenges inner city youth face, the more we can support a tutor/mentor strategy that expands the network of adults who support them.

New Reasons to Support Tutor/Mentor Programs

Today the Chicago Tribune featured a story about a program in Baltimore that is working with high risk youth. This is the program Chicago Public Schools is bringing to Chicago.

This week Time Magazine featured an article about the decline of jobs for teens in America.

These represent two parts of the same problem, but are they connected in the media, or in public policy? Youth without jobs living in high poverty areas represent a breeding ground for negative behavior and illegal commerce. Youth without mentors, extra learning, or role models to show paths through school and into careers, are more vulnerable to be recruited by the negative forces in their lives.

What are leaders doing to help all youth move through school to jobs and careers? Do you see any of these ideas from the people who want to be elected to be Governor, Senator, local representatives in Illinois?



Our maps show that there are already too few volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, and they are poorly distributed around the city. Unless volunteers and donors step forward in January and this spring, some of the existing programs may run out of the money needed to continue. Unless other leaders step forward, we'll never increase the number of good programs. Unless businesses connect these programs to their workforce development strategies, we won't have jobs/vocational training to help kids stay in school and move to legitimate careers.

Who is writing about this? Who is advocating for this?

In other cities and states there are "mentoring partnerships" which are funded by state, government, business and foundation donations. According to the National Mentoring Partnership, these operate with budgets ranging from $300,000 to $1 million per year.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection operates with less than $225,000 in the third largest city in the country. Yet we do much with our money to draw volunteers and donors to individual programs, and to help programs grow in areas where none now exist.

If we want to address the issues of poverty, gangs, violence, poor schools, future workforce, we need leaders who will support the growth of individual tutor/mentor programs throughout the region, and we need leaders who will provide funding to the Tutor/Mentor Connection at a level that is near what other partnerships receive.

If you can help, use the resources on the T/MC site to connect directly with individual programs, or call the T/MC at 312-492-9614.

Investing in Mentoring is Good Business

"Experts say that dropping out of high school affects not just students and their families, but the country overall – including businesses, government and communities. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that high school dropouts from the Class of 2006-07 will cost the U.S. more than $329 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetimes."

I encourage you to read the article Mike Trakan (of the T/MC) has written that makes a case for everyone being invested in mentoring throughout America.

Mike creates most of the maps we show on our blogs. These are intended to focus this investment in high poverty areas, and locations with the greatest number of youth failing to finish high school, or get the skills they need to fill the 21st century jobs that industry is trying to fill.

During National Mentoring Month, as you see images of mentoring, I hope you'll read some of the articles Mike and I have written, and follow the links, to build a deeper understanding of of what we mean, and how the tutor/mentor strategies can be adopted by any business, university, faith group, as their own.

Obama Supports Mentoring. What's the Strategy?

This is a powerful invitation for citizens to become involved in tutoring and mentoring programs. Following are some images that we hope you'll consider, so your involvement has the desired impact.

What do you want to happen? I urge you to look at this chart and think of what our aims are from National Mentoring Month, or from all of the money we put toward volunteer service, mentoring, tutoring, etc.

Isn't the goal to help kids grow up to be strong, contributing adults? If the youth is just starting first grade in 2010, the support system may need to be in place for 15 or 20 years. If a youth lives in a high poverty neighborhood, or a broken home, then the types of support, beyond mentoring, will need to be even greater.



If the goal of Mentoring Month, or any other form of civic engagement, is to encourage people to be volunteers or leaders in tutor/mentor programs, what strategy and resources are in place to help people find programs in their community?

What strategy is in place to help every program be able to support those volunteers so they become effective tutors/mentors and have an impact on the growth of the youth they mentor toward a job and career? This graphic shows a map of Chicago, and you can use the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to zoom into different sections of the city to learn what programs are available, or what neighborhoods may need more programs.

However, every program has the same needs for volunteers, donors, technology, etc. and these needs must be filled every day, every year if the program is to continue as a support system to help the young person move through elementary school, middle school, high school then to a job.

Big cities like Chicago have a need for several hundred great tutor/mentor programs. What leadership is in place to make that happen?



How many of you are thinking of a planning calendar as you consider where and how to volunteer? What are programs doing in January that assure they will be starting the 2010-11 school year in August with good ideas, more volunteers, and adequate funding? What are business leaders and volunteers doing to support this process?

I'll write more about this in the next few weeks as the National Mentoring Month media draws attention to this issue. I encourage you to read the articles on the Tutor/Mentor Institute site that expand upon these concepts.

If your in a consulting, training, facilitation, marketing or technology role, I encourage you to think of ways you can use your talent and resources to support this process, and help your community have a full range of mentoring and tutoring resources to help kids through school and into careers.

New Interns from Loyola University Chicago

The goal of the Tutor/Mentor Connection is to collect information that other people can use in their own communications and leadership. The more this happens, the louder the roar will be from the tutor/mentor community, and the more we'll be able to draw resources to support growing tutor/mentor programs in many places.

Two interns have joined us from Loyola University in Chicago and they are both writing blog articles to share their understanding of what we do, with people they know.

Iesha Wilson joined us yesterday, and wrote a beautiful introduction on her Ning blog.

Jordan Merlo joined us before Christmas, so she has already written a few articles on her Ning blog.

We will have additional interns joining us in late January and you can meet them in the Groups on our Ning site, or read about them on our Intern blog, which was started by and Intern from Hong Kong a few years ago.

Celebrate Mentoring. National Mentoring Month

January is National Mentoring Month . It's intended to celebrate mentoring and hopefully encourage more people to be volunteers and donors who help make mentoring programs possible.

 This picture shows me in 1973 with the first boy I mentored. He's now an adult, raising his own family, and we're still connected on Facebook...36 years later! Leo is one of more than 4500 Cabrini Green area young people I have met since 1973. I'm connected to many of these former students via the Internet, along with many of our former staff and volunteers.

 We make a statement when people join Cabrini Connections. "Once in Cabrini Connections, Always in Cabrini Connections." It was hard to make this a reality in the past because we've never had enough money to support the 7th to 12th grade student/volunteer pairs with us each year, let alone reach out to maintain the network of alumni. Now Facebook and Linked in are making this easier than ever. In 2010 and beyond we hope to be offering networking and career support activities that help strengthen our alumni network, while keeping our promise to "do all we can to assure that our kids are in jobs and careers by age 25."

 We can't do that unless our volunteers and donors also "do everything they can" to help. Thus, when you see a TV ad talking about mentoring, I hope you'll immediately be motivated to search for Cabrini Connections, or another tutor/mentor program where you can give financial support so that program is able to maintain it's connections between kids, volunteers and alumni.

How can you tell what kind of program it is?

National Mentoring Month is starting in a few days and there will be many ads and public service announcements showing how mentors have been an important part of someone's life.

Hopefully this will motivate many people to go to the internet and search for programs where they can volunteer time, talent and hopefully dollars. One place they can look is the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which has an interactive, searchable map that enables people to zoom into different sections of the Chicago area to learn what non profits, if any, offer tutoring/mentoring. Another feature is a library of links to more than 200 web sites of youth serving programs, organized by sections of the city and suburbs.

But, how does someone tell the difference between one organization, and another?

I ponder this often, and as I was cleaning my desk today (what a mess!) I found some notes that I had written more than a year ago. Here's what I'd encourage you to look for when searching for places to get involved:

a) does the organization have a web site, blog, or other written material that outlines the vision, mission and strategy of the organization?

b) does the web site include a "theory of change" showing how volunteers in that tutoring and/or mentoring program help youth; and how the overall activities of the organization help youth and volunteers meet regularly, stay connected, and build long-term (more than one year) relationships?

c) does the web site of organization show a "learning strategy" meaning, it points its volunteers, students and donors to other tutor/mentor programs, and resources, that can be used to benchmark, and compare, or to find help that is not available at that specific program location?

d) does the web site include a history of performance, including some statistics showing how many youth and adults have participated on a regular basis each year, and for multiple years. Such a history would show how long the organization has offered tutoring and/or mentoring, and how many years the organization has been continuously connected to youth in the same neighborhood of Chicago, or any other city.

e) If the organization makes claims of "graduation and college attendance rates" do they base this on the number of youth who started with the program, and who are still participating when they graduated? Or do they fudge the numbers as the Kauffman Scholars were accused of doing in the Dec/Jan 2010 issue of Youth Today? By fudging, I mean they do not include kids who dropped out of the program in early years when they report graduation or college attendance rates.

f) does the web site include testimonials/stories of impact from youth and alumni who have been part of the program in the current or former years

g) how does this organization work with others in its zip code, city or state to share ideas, build capacity, and assure that more kids have access to great programs, not just the kids in that program?

h) does the organization post financial reports, such as audits or 990 reports, on its web site?

While the Tutor/Mentor Connection maintains a directory of Chicago area volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs, and a links library, we don't have the manpower to be doing an ongoing review of each program to determine which meet these criteria. Our goal is to educate consumers (volunteers, parents, donors, program leaders, etc.) so they can compare one program to another, with a goal that all programs are constantly trying to be the best at what they do. This is because each program serves different kids in a different part of the city.

They all need to be as good as they can be.

Many organizations will not demonstrate everything I've listed. There may be other criteria that some people might want to add to this list. My point is, no program can reach this level of excellence, and stay there, without continuous investment of time, talent and flexible operating dollars, from people and partners, who get involved, and stay involved, for many years.

If you are looking to get involved, think beyond being a tutor or mentor. Inventory your talent, resources and networks, and look for ways that you can help one or more tutoring/mentoring programs on our Chicago Programs list, or in your own community, become the best at what they do, and the model everyone else is trying to duplicate.

We created a forum on our Ning Site where you can post reviews of programs, and discuss what it takes to help a program move from being good, to being great.

Obama supports Promise Zone. How in Chicago?

Today's Chicago Tribune features a story about the Harlem Children's Zone, which is a highly visible effort to provide a wide range of educational and community support services for people in an 97 block stretch of the Harlem Area of NYC.



The Tutor/Mentor Connection has been proposing geographic based strategies for many years, and uses maps to help draw investment (talent and dollars) to all of the tutor/mentor programs operating in different parts of the city.

This link shows the location of the Harlem Children's Zone headquarters in the Harlem Area of NYC. (If you know of anyone mapping youth serving organizations in NYC, please share the link.)

We've also been creating an information based library, so that leaders in Chicago can build their own understanding of strategies that they read about in the media. This link points to a section of the T/MC discussion forums (inactive since 2013) where you can find more information about the Harlem's Children's Zone, as well as challenges that face anyone who wants to duplicate that in Chicago or elsewhere.

According to the Tribune article, "The Harlem Children's Zone offers educational, medical and social services from cradle to college." On the HCZ web site you'll see different sections describing services for pre school, elementary school, middle school, high school and college. This has been so well publicized that at this page you'll see efforts to spread the model all over the country.


What I don't see on the web site are maps, that show the Harlem Zone, or show how HCZ is interacting with other community agencies that also work in the area? Do they compete with HCZ? does the HCZ use all of its media attention to draw volunteers and needed resources to programs on every block in the zone. The graphic below illustrates what such a leadership role might look like.



Kids and families living in high poverty area need a wide range of supports. If you think of building a new building, the architectural drawings show diagrams of how many people work together at each stage of the project, so that the end result is a completed building. Every worker at each stage needs to do their job correctly, and each needs to be fairly paid. This concept map illustrates a first grade, to first job pipeline showing how extra adult tutors/mentors, donors, leaders, etc. need to be involved in providing age-appropriate supports as kids grow up.

Unless someone is creating a map, showing the organizations already operating in a neighborhood, and segmenting this by type of activity, it would be difficult to know if all of the talent and services needed were available in a neighborhood. It would also be difficult to mobilize the continuous resources to make sure everyone was getting paid to do what needs to be done.

The Tutor/Mentor Interactive map is a sample of what is possible. We only map tutor/mentor programs because that is the focus of our work. We don't do this as well as we'd like because we can't find donors to invest consistently in this work. Yet, you can turn layers of information on, and of, or zoom into specific areas, to learn what programs, if any, are in any specific area.

If you've been reading about Promise Zones, or inner city violence, or the state of Chicago Schools, and you are concerned about how the next $30 million or so of public money will be spent, I encourage you to take a look at our maps, and some of the articles we're pointing to. There are many strategies that leaders can take right now to make poor neighborhoods "neighborhoods of promise". There are many strategies that might cost millions, that may never come close to that goal.

Did St.Paul Have a Map of the Road to Damascus?

Throughout the world Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths are celebrating the year end holidays. Many people will be spending time reflecting the meaning of these holidays, and the depth of their faith.

I hope that some will read this article and add it to their thinking. I used the story of St. Paul on the Road to Damascus in my title because, most people who travel, use maps to find their way.

I use maps too. Shown is a map of the Chicago region, with areas of poverty highlighted, and with locations of Catholic Churches shown.



Mike Trakan makes these maps for the Tutor/Mentor Connection. This week he posted three blog articles that show how faith groups might use these maps to build strategic involvement in many places, and for many years, so that the lives of inner city kids living in poverty are transformed, just as the lives of people of faith have been transformed by their beliefs.


Merry Christmas, Christians! Love Thy Neighbor! (Dec. 22)

Christmas Week! Help Us Spread Charity, Kindness, and Love! (Dec. 21)

Happy Hanukkah! How Jewish Faith Leaders Might Rally Against Poverty (Dec. 17)

These articles are not intended to suggest that people in faith communities are not already very generous in the way they help the poor. Our goal is that leaders use maps to build an understanding of where they are having an impact on tutoring/mentoring programs, and where there are programs that need faith partners to help them. Our aim is that there are numerous partnership supporting each of the tutor/mentor programs already operating in the Chicago region, or helping new programs form in areas with poverty, but without programs currently operating. Without mapping where you are involved, it's easy to look at what you are doing and think that this is enough.

Until we reach every poverty neighborhood, with well supported, ongoing programs, we are not doing enough to assure that more of these kids are staying in school and will be prepared for 21st century jobs and careers by the time they are adults.

If you would like help in mapping the current outreach of your faith community, contact the T/MC and we may be able to help you use maps for your planning and evaluation.

I hope that people in faith communities will use these maps throughout the year, not just during these periods of special celebration.

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?

Network Building - Understanding T/MC

I've written more than 500 article in the past few years, all aimed at one goal of "connecting people who can help, with places, programs and youth, where help will be needed for many years.

I point to articles written by people who are smarter than I am, and who write better than I do. If you read these articles and apply what you are reading to the articles and ideas I'm sharing, you'll see how powerful the ideas we share can be in helping solve some of the complex social issues facing our country.

Here are two articles that I hope will stimulate your thinking.

Managing the 21st Century Organization, by Valdis Krebs

Social Capital, Glue for Sustainability (a slideshare) by Victoria Axelrod, William Becker, and Jenny Ambrozek

In October 2008, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, was in Chicago following the beating death of a Chicago teen. He was quote in the newspaper 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." .. Arne Duncan

In the article written by Valdis Krebs, he says "Why not use the power of the network itself to create a solution? Improve the organizational network and then use technology to help people communicate across wide spans of the human network."

The Tutor/Mentor Connection has been connecting people and organizations for more than 16 years, and providing a library of information for people to share the same resources, ideas and their own ideas. We have create maps that anyone can use in their collective work, or their individual efforts, to help build and sustain mentor-rich organizations that constantly learn from the work each other is doing, and constantly expand their impact on the lives of inner city kids.

At Cabrini Connections, we apply this network-building concept directly to our own efforts to help a small group of young people move from 7th grade, through high school, and into college, then jobs and careers. This is a long-term process, which will only be successful as we expand the network of adults who are involved, and committed to this same goal.

Our aim is that when you look at our maps of Chicago, every program that is operating will be using some of these ideas to build their own systems of long-term support for the kids they are working with. When you look at asset maps, showing businesses, faith groups, colleges and hospitals, you'll see a growing number of groups who are providing the resources needed by each of these programs, and Cabrini Connections, to do this work.

This can happen if these organizations and resource providers are applying the ideas we're sharing on this blog.

As you read about networks on this blog, and about knowledge management, innovation, and problem solving, we hope you will include the T/MC in your network, and that you'll also help us find investors and benefactors to stimulate our own role as an intermediary and catalyst for this network building process.

Make your Holiday Donation at http://www.giveforward.org/cabrinitmc

Thank you.

"The underlying issue here is racism and poverty"

The front page story in the 12/18 Chicago SunTimes was Health gap kills 3,200 black Chicagoans every year. In the Chicago Tribune the front page story was Saving Michael: Mom’s efforts to help Son. The report on health disparities was on an inside page of the Tribune, with the title Health Gap Widens between Blacks and Whites.

This "media map" shows how people who our outraged or emotionally connected to these stories can look at research, or competitive intelligence, that the Tutor/Mentor Connection has collected, then build neighborhood, business, or faith based strategies, that become long-term solutions to these programs.

Articles I point to in this map are:

Reframing School Drop out as a Public Health Issue

Supporting volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs as public health strategy

Role of Hospitals – Mt Sinai Map and Strategy

Role of Faith Groups – Woodlawn area map

Tutor/Mentor Birth to Work Pipeline Strategy Map

I've been writing about these issues for 16 years. However, we’re just a small voice, like a Prophet, that very few people are taking time to listen to. I've encouraged others on the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection team to do the same.

The links I’ve pointed to are just a few of the articles that can be studied by any big, or small, groups of people who want to change the headlines by finding solutions. Contact the Tutor/Mentor Connection if you'd like to have our help. We're at 312-492-9614

Network Building for Inner City Youth

This video shows the interaction on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009 between teens living in inner city Chicago and volunteers who work in various industries and who live in neighborhoods beyond the inner city. Here's an album with two other videos showing our work.

This would not be happening if Cabrini Connections did not exist, and if donors and volunteers had not been willing to put time and dollars into this organization every year since 1993.



I'm one of the founders of Cabrini Connections, and the Tutor/Mentor Connection. I've been the leader since 1992. As this photo shows, I'll do almost anything to find the resources it takes to keep kids and volunteers connected to each other.

This has been a tough year. Hell, it's been a tough decade. And it wasn't much easier in the 1990s.

When you look at the maps of Chicago that Mike Trakan makes, how many neighborhoods have places where kids and volunteers have been connecting for the past 16 years? How many have managed to keep connected to many of these youth, and adults, so they are now able to help each other with adult lives and challenges?



Read the mission statement of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. What other organization in the Chicago region has as complete a strategy intended to help every poverty neighborhood have high-quality, mentor-rich programs? Look at the conference maps to see how programs throughout the region are connecting with each other because we spend time, and money, to organize these events.

We need your year-end donations and support in 2010 to continue this work, and to expand our impact. Chicago is too big a city for us to have an impact when we are struggling each month just to pay our rent.

Give me a call at 312-492-9614 if you'd like to talk about more ways to help, or that we can help you.

White House Mentoring. What's the Strategy?

I'm part of a Youth Mentoring Listserv hosted by Dr. David DuBois. Today someone shared an article about Michelle Obama launching a White House Mentoring program.

The consensus of the group was "good" and "why didn't she draw upon the collective wisdom of some of these experts to design the program?"



While the White House is launching its own mentoring strategy, we have plenty of problems in Chicago. Mike Trakan, Map Maker for the Tutor/Mentor Connection, created this map, and this article, showing the location of the most recent high-profile youth murder in Chicago.

Mike and the Tutor/Mentor Connection provide a lot of information and resources that leaders in Chicago, and the White House, could be using to build their own mentoring strategies. I updated a couple of the Essays in the Tutor/Mentor Institute today to help with such research.

In Defining Terms and Building a Network of Purpose, I ask people to build programs based on what youth they want to help, and what result they want to achieve.

At Cabrini Connections we're celebrating the holidays this week. We've been doing this every year since 1993. Our roots extend back to 1965 when employees of the Montgomery Ward Corporation started meeting every Tuesday evening after work with elementary school kids in the Cabrini Green area.

I think this represents one of the longest running tutor/mentor programs in the country. We have a lot of experience. Maybe the White House would want to talk to us?



I hope you'll value this knowledge and what we've been doing enough to make a Holiday Donation so we're able to keep doing this work, and sharing our ideas, in 2010.

Searching for Mr. Right

This is an important week for Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection. We sent out 4000 appeals for donations last week, and are reaching out to more people through our internet networking.

Without year end donations from a lot of individuals and a few corporate and foundation donors, we won't have the money to operate in 2010. Every day I'll be looking at our Holiday Fund and in our mail box, for checks ranging from $25 to $5,000 or more. This is our biggest, and most important fund raising period of the year. The money has to carry us through the first quarter of 2010.

This Local Global graphic illustrates the bigger picture, which I describe as "searching for Mr. Right". While I'm searching for donors to help us fund our Cabrini Connections program, which serves 80 teens living in the Cabrini Green area, and a network of more than 450 alumni which we're reconnecting to on the internet, the Tutor/Mentor Connection seeks to create a system of support that would make several hundred programs like this available to youth in high poverty neighborhoods.

To do that we need a few benefactors who will provide up to $1 million a year in funding for the marketing, team building, training, and work we need to do to help make this happen. We've been operating on less than $225,00 a year since 1998. That does not have a big impact in a city as large as Chicago.

Thus, if you're reading this, and want to help more of the 200,000 kids living in poverty have access to well organized, mentor-rich, long-term programs like Cabrini Connections, help us find Mr. Right, and help us with a few donations to keep the tutoring/mentoring at Cabrini Connections ongoing in 2010.

Connections to world of work and civic life.

I encourage you to visit Bob Pearlman's web site and read some of the articles. In this one, a quote that stands out is that "a social network is a student’s human connections to the real world of work and civic life."

This is what a program like Cabrini Connections offers. We connect kids who live in high-poverty inner city neighborhoods with people who can model a wide range of jobs and careers. We try to keep these kids and volunteers connected for many years, to expand their aspirations of what they can be, and to help them put these goals into the work needed to achieve those goals.

What the Tutor/Mentor Connection does is try to help such programs be available to youth in all of the high poverty neighborhoods of the Chicago region.

In some cities and states mentoring partnerships, with annual budgets of $350,000 to $1 million are trying to support mentoring programs. We have never had more than $225,000 in a single year, and we started in 1993 with no money and just an idea of what we were trying to create.

If you want to help us build this connection, why not make an endowment to the Tutor/Mentor Connection instead of building another building at your alma mater or at the local Hospital?

You don't need to be in Chicago, or the US, to offer this help. This Chicago Tribune article talks about virtual volunteering. You can be anywhere to help us, and you can be anywhere to draw ideas from what we do to help kids in your own community.

If you can make a donation to a Holiday Fund, you're helping us help these kids.

System needs to be fixed

In my last blog I pointed to the future of philanthropy, if we create it. Right after that I received an email from a local organization that I had worked with to help them submit a proposal for the government Stimulus Funding for Mentoring Programs.

In the rejection letter they were told that they had a good proposal, but only 23 out of over 1400 proposals were funded.

Think of this. I spent a little time investigating doing a proposal for this grant. It cost me $600 for the time a grant writer spend investigating this. She would have charged me $1600 for the full proposal.

If each agency who submitted a proposal spent just $1600, then the total fund raising cost was over $2.4 million dollars.

I'm sure the time and labor of many of the organizations who submitted these proposals was much more than $1600. What a waste!

We need to find a more effective system of drawing dollars to doers. Who wants to help?

One way is to use map/databases like the Chicago Program Locator. Anyone can search by zip code, to find contact information, and web sites, for more than 160 organizations offering volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring in the Chicago area. Using this information, you can choose who to fund, and how much to give.

If we can find ways to increase the volume of potential donors who search the maps, we can push dollars to doers, without them spending the time, money, and emotional energy, that goes into writing these un-funded grant proposals.

If we can apply the ideas in the Disrupting Philanthropy 2.0 article, we can do this even more effectively.

A look to the future

I encourage you to read this article titled Disrupting Philanthropy 2.0. It's about 55 pages, so budget time to read it. This offers a broad review of how philanthropy and the organizations supported by it, will change in the coming years.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection is already involved in some of this work, more as an inventor tinkering with ideas, than a social innovator with a working model to fund our innovations.

However, when you ready about FasterCures, how much different is its work than what the Tutor/Mentor Connection is trying to do?

While it's important that the leaders of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection be reviewing this information, it's also to our best interest that leaders in industry, philanthropy, other non profits, colleges and so on, also be looking at this so we can team up to build better solutions, using our combined imagination and innovation.

I look forward to connecting with you in this innovative digital future.

State of Funding for Tutor/Mentor Programs

Jill Zimmerman, a Vice President with The Alford Group, was a featured speaker at the November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. She talked about The State of Funding for Tutoring and Mentoring Programs and Non-Profits. The presentation is now available on-line.



Mike Trakan created this map to show organizations that attended the conference, and what neighborhoods of the Chicago region they were from. The Attendee List on the conference web site enables you to contact these organizations. The Program Locator enables you to visit their web sites (if they have one).

We can change the fund raising picture for every one of the non profits who attended the conference if we can increase the number of people who reach out to provide big and small donations during the month of December, and in 2010.

If you want the same goals we want, which are expressed in this "Ready by 21" web site, and in the T/MC mission statement, then I encourage you to reach out and encourage people you know to become the donors and benefactors these programs need.

Internships and fellowships

One way we expand the manpower at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection is through volunteers. Another is through internships. Here are some places where you can learn how interns are helping us.

Bradley Troast, NU Public Interest Program Fellow. See story on NU web site. Read his blog.

Jordan Merlo, Loyola University Chicago intern. Follow her blog.

Joe Piaskowy, a graduate student at Northwestern, and former Cabrini Connections video club volunteer, created this story about the Cabrini Connections art club for a class project.

Learn about other interns from IIT, University of Michigan, Hong Kong Baptist and more.

While these articles show how interns from various universities work directly from our office in Chicago, this DePaul University blog illustrates how students can support the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Connection as part of a class project. We'd like to see this duplicated in many places.

While these volunteer provide tremendous talent, we still need to find donations to pay the rent and other expenses of operating, so we can provide this service opportunity. Can you help with a holiday donation?

Business and Schools - Who's Right?

Here's an article by Diane Ravitch titled "Why Business Leaders Should Not Be in the Driver's Seat". You can discuss this with others on the Fireside Learning forum.

Make a difference. Use your vote. Enlist others.

If we get enough votes on Facebook we can win a $25,000 grant from the Chase Foundation.


While a vote for us on Facebook gives us a chance at finding the dollars we need, a donation to our Holiday Fund by you and people you know, can assure that our team has the dollars it needs.

Read about how Cabrini Connections was recognized for excellence.

Volunteering is not Free

In four weeks National Mentoring Month will celebrate the connections between young people and volunteers in many places around the country, including Cabrini Connections.

While this campaign supports the involvement of volunteers, all of the research on mentoring says it works best when the youth and volunteer are well supported by professional staff, and when programs are able to keep youth and involvement connected to each other longer than a few months or a year. Here's a report evaluating mentoring strategies in the UK, which points out the lack of infrastructure and unrealistic expectations.


So how do we find the money? In Minnesota, $14 million was raised in a single day to support 3,434 charities. The campaign was hosted on Razoo, a fund raising portal.

Right now every non-profit in the country is sending out Holiday Fund appeals, asking for donations. Some are spending huge sums of money on elaborate marketing. Others, like Cabrini Connections, are using email for most of our efforts, because we don't have much money, and because the money we do have should be spent on helping our kids and volunteers stay connected.

I helped the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program at the Chicago Bar Association grow from a $2,000 award in 1994 to a foundation that awarded over $200,000 to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago in 2007, and 2008, because I feel that businesses, professional groups and similar intermediaries could mobilize their entire industry to support all tutor/mentor programs in the city, with a lot more long-term impact than having each of us spend precious dollars competing for a shrinking donor pool.

Now, I challenge, and plead, for leaders who want to help youth stay in school, make healthy choices, and prepare for jobs and careers, to find ways to duplicate the Minnesota effort. Build campaigns in December that draw holiday dollars to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs. Do the same in January.

Use the Chicago Program Locator to find out what tutoring and/or mentoring programs are in different parts of Chicago, and which are near where you do business, worship, or attended college. Build a strategy that support all programs in a zip code, not just the one, or two, highly visible programs.


If we can dramatically increase the pool of donors, Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection will get its share, and the money we need to help other programs grow. If we continue to compete with each other, few will have the long-term support to dramatically make a difference in the lives of more than a few inner city kids.

In fact, do this every month of the year, so we have the resources to keep our kids and volunteers connected to each other, every month and for many years.