Expanding the network - Role of Interns

Below is a screenshot taken from a new flash animation launched today. It was created in one week, by a graduate student from the University of Michigan's Alternative Spring Break Program.



Click this link to view the presentation. As you click each circle, you will go around the cycle four times, showing how a volunteer who joins a tutor/mentor program today, might be a leader mobilizing others, in a few years.

We apply this thinking at Cabrini Connections. Imagine if there were fifty or more programs in Chicago, Houston, LA, NYC and other big cities, each building volunteer involvement this way.

What's special, is that this project was created by Li Li, a graduate student from the University of Michigan. She was part of a one-week Alternative Spring Break Program. She read this blog article, then interpreted it in here presentation.

Furthermore, this is not just some classroom exercise. Li Li's presentation is now in the list of articles that we share in the Tutor/Mentor Institute. Anyone in the world can now look at this and apply these ideas to their own work.

Li Li is one of a growing number of interns who are coming to the Tutor/Mentor Connection to create new interpretations of ideas we've posted on the web site for many years.

If you and your college, or high school, would like to become part of this process, just introduce yourself here, or on our Tutor/Mentor Connection site.

Using the Ning Network

This graphic is part of a flash animation created to illustrate the year-round event cycle, and strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. It was created by two interns from Korea who were with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection for six weeks in Jan/Feb. 2010. You can read more about this in this blog article.

These interns and other volunteers are connected to each other in the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning group. This is more than Facebook. It's a planning and collaboration space. If you browse the groups you can see how I'm able to coach the work each volunteer is doing, and how they are beginning to network and share ideas with each other.

You can review work done over the past few years, and you can follow work being done right now. You can add your own ideas, or you can borrow these ideas to help you in your own program, or your own community or country.

If you appreciate what the Tutor/Mentor Connection is offering, I hope you'll take a moment to vote for us in the Pepsi Refresh Project. You can help us get funding for an entire year! This means we'll be able to do more of this type of work and bring more attention and support to tutor/mentor programs in many places.

Vote in Pepsi Refresh for Tutor/Mentor

Yesterday I wrote about President Obama asking for $900 million to reduce the high school drop out rate.

I don't have much influence with my single vote on how the Federal government uses my tax dollars, but I can influence the futures of inner city kids by what I do as leader of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Now you can have an influence on what the Tutor/Mentor Connection does to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow, and thrive, in all parts of the Chicago region.

Here's a pdf showing resources provided by T/MC

Here's some articles showing the Network of Purpose.

View the Program Locator and see how it helps you find where tutor/mentor programs in Chicago are located.

Vote for us in the Pepsi Refresh Project.

With your help we can win a grant of $250,000, which is a full year of funding for the Tutor/Mentor Connection. With this we upgrade the maps, the web library, the outreach and we help every tutor/mentor program in the city get the ideas, the volunteers and the dollars they also need.

If you help the Tutor/Mentor Connection grow in Chicago you also help similar strategies grow in your own city because your leaders can borrow ideas from the T/MC and the resources we share in our library and through the May and November Conferences, as well as on-line forums.

This contest runs through March 2010. Right now we're in 284th place. We need to be in the top two to win the grant. Can you help?

Obama wants $900 million to fight dropout epidemic

The Chicago SunTimes has a story today, showing how President Barack Obama seeks to "fight the nation's school dropout epidemic by providing $900 million to states and education districts that agree to drastically change or even shutter their worst performing schools."

Closing poorly performing schools is a popular solution, but it does not change the poverty that causes youth to come to school poorly prepared to learn. This map shows poorly performing school in Chicago. It's one of many maps you can find on the T/MC Map Gallery that show the impact of poverty on how inner city kids learn.

On the Interactive Program Locator you can build your own map, showing where poorly performing schools are located, along with concentrations of poverty.

Our maps are intended to draw more people from beyond poverty to the various volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs operating in the non-school hours. Such programs can expand the network of adults surrounding kids, and broaden student learning aspirations ....IF, those programs have the type of leadership and funding needed to connect youth and volunteers and keep them connected for multiple years.

I don't see this concept in the education reform ideas coming from Washington, or locally. Yet, unless we expand the network of people working to help poor kids to careers, I'm not sure that $900 million more invested in schools will have the impact everyone wants.

Lawyers award $217,000 in grants to Chicago area tutoring and mentoring programs

In January2010 the Lawyers Lend a Hand to Youth Program sent out contributions to 33 different tutoring and/or mentoring organizations serving youth in the Chicago region. You can see the list, with links to each organization, at this article.

Cabrini Connections received one of these grants, and we are thankful. However, no foundation funds all of a non profit's total annual budget, or even more than a small percent.

Thus, as we applaud the leadership of members of the legal community who are helping raise these funds, we encourage leaders in every other industry to form similar programs, using the Tutor/Mentor Connection maps, and library of programs, to choose where you distributed operating dollars, and encourage employee volunteer involvement.

We also encourage non profits who operate tutor/mentor programs to network with T/MC in conferences and on-line forums, so we can work together to help expand the revenue available to operate, and share ideas that help us use these dollars to build constantly improving programs in all parts of the Chicago region.

Putting ideas into action

The previous article talked about how businesses can use their resources to "Pull" kids through school. Bradley Troast, our Northwestern University PIP Fellow wrote this article, showing how ContextMedia, donated and installed a beautiful 32" flat-screen television at Cabrini Connections, to enhance our communications to our students and volunteers.

This is an example of how a company can use its own technology to help a non profit. Watch for future articles showing how we continue to work with this company.

Strategy Maps - helping kids to careers

This is a graphic I use often in this blog, and in the Theory of Change page on the Cabrini Connections web site. It conveys a lot of information, but I'm not sure how many people can really look at this, and understand what messages it is communicating.

When I'm able to sit with someone and explain this concept it might make more sense (I hope) but I am not able to meet with all of the people in Chicago or around the country who need to understand and embrace this concept in their own strategic uses of time, talent and dollars.

Thus, I'm constantly looking for people to help me communicate these ideas in different ways. Below is a screen shot from a new flash animated created by Jawon Koo, an intern from IIT who has been at Cabrini Connections since late January.

(2020 update) This was originally created using Adobe Flash Animation.  Since that no longer works I've put the presentation into this video, which you can play to see the animation.  

In the photos and blogs on the Cabrini Connections web site, and on those of other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, you can see volunteers connecting with youth. In some cases they are working with art, technology, or video. Thus the volunteers are transferring work skills to the kids. They are also expanding the network of people who will help the kids reach life goals.

The volunteers are also expanding their own networks at the same time. Thus, if a business encourages volunteer involvement in a tutor/mentor program, as part of their own workforce development strategies, they help pull kids from first grade to a job, while expanding the skills and networks of their own employees. This "Managing the 21st Century Organization" article illustrates why this is so important.

Read more of the articles on this blog, and become a sponsor and partner of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections.

Student Video Supports Two Non Profits

This is a video created by Cabrini Connections film makers and members Shaquille Strauther, Melissa Young and Ashaunti Roby, who wrote, produced, edited and directed this video to promote their upcoming fundraiser this Saturday 2/27/10 from 4pm-7pm at the Green Heart Shop .

Buy tickets here to come to this fun event and support Cabrini Connections: http://theawesomes.eventbrite.com

The video not only supports the Cabrini Madness fund raising effort of this team, but also tells of the work being done by the Green Heart Shop ()1911 W. Division St. in Chicago, which is another non profit group that is hosting the fund raising event.

This video demonstrates that workplace volunteers, working with inner city kids, can teach skills that they youth apply in their own service to others. These are skills that can lead these teens to part time jobs as they go through high school, and into jobs and careers.

However, without the investment of donor dollars, programs like Cabrini Connections can not make such extra learning available for these teens. I hope you'll help by attending the fund raiser Saturday, or by supporting The Awesomes in the Cabrini Madness campaign.

Cabrini Madness #1 Draft Pick is...

Watch this Cabrini Madness video, showing how teens, volunteers and staff make fund raising FUN.

Be a Fan! Be a Booster! Pick a team and support it with your donation.

40 Years Ago

I'm trying to figure out how to use a PhotoStudio Darkroom program to copy slides to my computer and convert them to JPG images. This picture was taken while I served in the Army in Korea in 1970.

This next photo was taken at the Korean National Military Cemetery in Seoul. I think it captures a since of peace, and honor, for those who have given their lives for their country.

I've got a lot to learn to convert these pictures the way I need to, with the right lighting. I'm also trying to figure a way to crop, using this program.

Illinois Schools: Income-based gap proves hard to close

Two stories in today's Chicago Tribune that I encourage you to read:

Income-based gap proves hard to close shows that since 2002 the achievement gap has actually grown wider between low-income students and higher income students in Illinois.

Lesson from the street: Don’t back down is the second story.

Unfortunately, other than being in the same paper, I don't see an effort to link the two stories. As you're looking for solutions, and ways Tribune readers can get involved, I encourage you to read stories I've written in the past about strategy, leadership, violence, media, etc. The tags on the side of my site, are like chapters in a text book.

Follow the links in these articles and you'll be more informed, and hopefully find more ways to be involved.

Tutor/Mentor through the eyes of Breakthrough Urban Ministries

This video from Breakthrough Urban Ministries does a wonderful job of showing how a tutor/mentor program builds a network of support for inner city kids. Show it to people you work with, and encourage them to be volunteers and donors to help programs like this grow in all poverty areas.

Give us this day our daily ... attention!

As a non profit leader I need to find ways to reach more people every day, with ideas that motivate them to support my organization with time, talent and dollars. However, my cause is not the only social issue on the minds of potential volunteers and donors. Everyone has many issues, ranging from family, job, health, politics, etc. that they are concerned about.

Thus, we need to constantly innovate ways to draw attention to all tutor/mentor programs, as a way to draw attention and resources to our Cabrini Connections program. If you read some of the 500 or so articles I've posted on this blog, you'll see that they almost all focus on this challenge.

Since my organization is smaller than a five-man basketball team, my job is to recruit volunteers and other people who will take a role in this huge vision. I have done that consistently for the past 35 years, and I keep looking for new help every day.

One source of help are interns who come to me from various colleges, and various countries. Eunsoo Lee and Jawon Koo are college students from Korea who have spent five months at Illinois Institute of Technology, and the past six weeks at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I asked them to try to convert this pdf essay on collaboration into an animated presentation that more people might look at and respond to.



This is the result. It's a flash animation. It's in two parts. Eunsoo Lee did the first part and Jawon Koo did the second part, which you can see here.

I hope you'll look at these, and share them with people where you work, worship, socialize, and study. Not only can you implement these ideas, you can even start a student project where you create your own versions of these presentations. As more and more groups work to create new ways to share these ideas, we'll attract a growing number of leaders who help tutor/mentor programs find the dollars, volunteers, technology and other resources needed to connect youth and volunteers and keep them connected for many years.

This is a way of giving each of us the daily attention we need in a very cluttered communications environment.

Non Profit Groups Struggle to Pay Bills

Today's Chicago Tribune had an article titled, Nonprofit groups hang by a thread waiting for state funds. In this case the non profit is Youth Crossroads, a Berwyn, Il. group that is included in the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs Links Library and has attended Tutor/Mentor Conferences in the past.

Below is a map showing where Youth Crossroads is located in the Chicago area. On the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator the green stars represent volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs. Each one of these groups is struggling to find donors and operating dollars. We create these maps, and this blog article, to show how others can point their friends, and philanthropy dollars, at all of the tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region, on a consistent, year-round basis, so they call all stay in the business of helping young people.



Last night I attended a "Speed Dating" Volunteer Recruitment event hosted by Women-OnCall.org. It was intended to introduce busy professional women to volunteer opportunities in non profits. Out of about 70 registered organizations, I was one of 3 or 4 of the 170-plus tutor/mentor programs in Chicago who attended.



As I talked to volunteers, my goal was to enlist people who would use T/MC maps, and the ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute site, and lead on-going efforts that would help women business professionals take on leader and volunteer roles at ALL of the tutor/mentor programs, not just one or two who were able to successfully recruit a few of the volunteers attending last night's event.

I find this a difficult concept to communicate. In every business, leadership and marketing teams work every day to expand the number of customers they have, and the number of stores they have in all parts of the city. I even show this distribution of businesses in the ASSET MAPS on the Program Locator web site.

Yet, I find it difficult to find volunteers who can transfer these skills into the non profit sector, and work to build an entire system of well-organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reaching kids in all poverty neighborhoods of the city.

Most of the articles I've written for the past 5 years focus on this strategy. I know people in different parts of the world are reading some of these. I was contacted by someone from the United Way in Detroit this week who said he's been following my blogs for many years.

One way I've been trying to help more people understand these ideas is to convert them into animated presentations. This link goes to a new presentation that's going live this week. It illustrates the year-round strategy of the T/MC and the role individuals and organizations can take to help programs like Youth Crossroads have the operating resources they need on a continuous basis.

If you'd like to volunteer your time, talent, even dollars to help the Tutor/Mentor Connection communicate these ideas, or to lead efforts that distribute volunteers from your industry into every tutor/mentor program in the City of Chicago, or in your own community, join me on our Ning site, or call 312-492-9614 to discuss ways we can help you get involved.

Tutor/Mentor Conference needs sponsors

Mentoring Partnerships in other states have annual conferences which are generously supported by big companies and foundations. How do we get that type of support for the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Leadership and Networking Conference that we host in May and November? That's what Nicole White of the T/MC is writing about today.

Cabrini Madness Broadcast 1

Think of all the ways volunteers, interns, students and friends of a tutor/mentor program can connect, learn from each other, and take on leadership roles that encourage other people to get involved.

This video was created last week by Bradley Troast, a Northwestern University Public Interest Program Fellow, working with Cabrini Connections from July 2009 through June 2010. The announcer is E. Wilson, an intern from Loyola.

The two people being interviewed are volunteers at Cabrini Connections. They are part of Team Impeccable, one of 13 teams of students, volunteers, board members and friends who are part of Cabrini Madness 2010.

Each team is trying to raise money to keep Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection in business. They are competing with each other to see who can raise the most by April 1, 2010.

You can follow the progress of each team at our Cabrini Madness page. You can adopt a team by making a donation, then encourage other people to get involved, just by passing on this blog address, or links to the weekly videos that will be produced.

This is a team building activities, a leadership development activity, and a service-learning activity for our teens and volunteers. It's just one of many learning and network-building experiences that happen each week in a program like Cabrini Connections.

If you look at the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy map, you'll see that our goal is to help programs like this be operating in all high poverty areas of the Chicago region.

Can you help us?

Race for the Top. T/MC 2.0

It's February. It's time to start thinking of the type of tutor/mentor programs that will be available in Chicago and other cities in the 2010-11 school year. With resources scarce, it's time for volunteer-based organizations to be thinking of how they convert current tutors/mentors into leaders and capacity builders.

My thinking on this is expressed in articles like this.

However, I'd like to encourage you to read some thinking from others:

"WSM estimates there are more than 240,00 children in Washington State who could benefit from having a mentor and only 30,000 who have one. This leaves a gap of more than 200,000. With your help, we can close that gap.

The challenge is not simply a matter of recruiting more mentors. Low capacity to meet demand and inconsistent quality of service are among the most persistent challenges facing the mentoring field. We need to ensure that all programs have the resources they need to meet the demand for their services."

This quote is from the Washington State Mentors web site. It could just as easily been referring to Chicago.

"At every step of schooling, the tendency is to breath a sigh of relief when a youngster moves on to the next grade. Concern for specific individuals creeps in when learning, behavior, and emotional problems interfere with progress. Public Health concerns arise when large numbers of youngsters are reported as not doing well. Civil rights concerns spring forth when large scale disparities become evident. And economic concerns spring forth with enhanced visibility about the costs to society of so many students dropping out before high school graduation and the impact on global competitiveness of too few students going on to and succeeding in post secondary education.

Reducing dropouts, increasing graduation rates, and closing the achievement gap require more than improving preK-12 instruction, enhancing school management and increasing the school's role in providing health and social services."
From the front page of the Winter 2010 newsletter from the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools.

"By connecting young people to caring adult mentors and role models, we can dare students to dream and inspire them to achieve the academic success that will prepare them for better life opportunities and good careers". Ron Gonzalez, Mayor, City of San Jose (2002)

"We need to have the best and the brightest in the industry go and teach for a year or two. If you expose students to real people in high-tech, role models that are passionate about what they do, that will motivate them." Dan Walker, Chief Talent Officer Apple (2002)

Both of these quotes were from a 2002 report prepared by A.T. Kearney, titled Connecting Today's Youth with Tomorrow's Technology Careers

"Child poverty in the U.S. costs at least $500 billion per year, the equivalent of four percent of GDP."

"If poverty has an associated cost, then the reduction of poverty should generate an economic return. This return would be realized both for individuals in forms of increased earnings as well as for the entire province in the form of reduced social expenditures and higher tax revenues." Quotes from THE COST of POVERTY: An Analysis of the Economic Cost of Poverty in Ontario, Canada.


Don't these ideas apply to Chicago and Illinois just as much as they apply to California and Canada?

Now how are leaders using this information, and their own marketing and communications resources, and personal networking, to educate more people and mobilize more resources so that business mentors can connect with inner city youth in volunteer-based programs like Cabrini Connections or those shown on this Chicago Program Locator map?

Here's a new video showing one way we're encouraging our volunteers to become leaders. As they reach out to invite friends and co-workers to support Cabrini Connections, we hope they will use the ideas in this blog to educate those potential supporters so they go beyond a "random act of kindness and generosity" to becoming strategic supporters of mentoring kids to careers.

Happy Valentine's Day To All our Volunteers and Students

This photo was taken more than 30 years ago. Yet it still symbolizes what Cabrini Connections, and volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, is all about. These are two kids who were part of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program which I joined in 1973. I became its leader in 1975. I was the primary photographer for the next 20 years.

What's great about this photo is that is shows the "love" that was represented in this program, and can still be found in Cabrini Connections. It's love that connects kids living in poverty with adults who don't live in poverty.

If we're going to close the economic and social gaps in this country, there needs to be more connections like this.

However, this picture stands for more. It is one of many that we've posted on a new Cabrini Connections Alumni web site, where we are re-connecting many of the alumni that we've met on Facebook, with each other, and many of our former volunteers.

In this web site the write says "It's all about your network". Kids in poverty don't have the same network to open doors for them that is available to kids in more affluent areas. This problem continues into adult lives.

Thus, if Cabrini Connections can create a web hub connecting people across forty years of tutoring/mentoring, we can create a network that can help people with the challenges of adult lives.

If you believe in this, why not become a sponsor and donor to help us continue to build and maintain these connections.

Ending poverty easy. Just end private schools.

Imagine if wealthy kids, the children of political leaders and diplomats, and those of high paid executives all had to attend the same schools that inner city kids attend.

Things would change quickly.

This blog article by Michelle Rhee is Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, offers this and many other challenges, saying "The obstacle is not one of knowledge but of social and political will, with education as the lynchpin."

What I don't see in this article is a vision, or a strategy, for increasing the number of people who don't live in poverty who will read articles like this, then become part of the "team of adults who decided it was possible for lives and outcomes to move in other direction"

In her article, Rhee is referring to people in schools who make a commitment to do something different. I'm referring to the people beyond schools who become tutors/mentors, business partners, donors, and make a network of non-school supports available in inner city neighborhoods.

Such a network of programs can expand the number of adults who become personally engaged, and who begin to see poverty through the eyes of the kids they mentor. When these people begin to get involved, in large enough numbers, we'll expand the number of people who are reading and responding to blogs written by Rhees and others.

Super Bowl, Olympics, Politics, Cabrini Madness

Tonight about 130 million people will watch the Super Bowl. 30 second TV ads will cost over $2 million each.

Today in the Chicago Tribune I read about crooked politicians and how they reap millions in state contracts, and control who gets elected in Illinois and other states.

Next week millions will tune into watch the Winter Olympics.

While all this may make us feel better, and feed the economy, and make the rich richer, my goal is that by posting messages with these topics in them today and next week, I can attract donors to Cabrini Madness, our own competition to raise needed dollars to fund the work of Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.



This photo illustrates why it's important to attract some donors to support our work. This was taken more than 20 years ago when these kids were participating in the tutoring program hosted at the Montgomery Ward complex in Chicago. Today, many are connected to me on Facebook, and some are joining a new alumni group we've formed on Ning.com

What this illustrates is that "connecting a youth and volunteer in a tutor/mentor program is only the beginning. Keeping them connected to each other, and the program, is an on-going process" that must be continuously funded if the youth will experience the real benefit of an expanded social network consisting of people who don't live in poverty, and who hold jobs in many different industries, when they are adults. This PDF essay illustrates this concept.

I don't have the dollars to have an on TV today, or any day of the year. However, if you find this article via a Google Search, Twitter, or Facebook, please choose a Cabrini Madness team to support and make a donation, then pass the message on to your own friends, so they can help too.

Does Obama Believe in School Integration?

I encourage you to read the material and join this discussion at Fireside Learning's community portal.

What should the goals of public education be? Another discussion worth following on Fireside Learning.

The reason I feel volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs are important is that I grew up in a small Illinois town with just a few minorities. I attended a college with just a few minorities. Most of the people making policy decisions are not people who grew up in high poverty, segregated big city neighborhoods.

The only way I became interested in this topic was through my many years of personal involvement with the kids and families of Cabrini Green and inner city Chicago.

If we want to change public policy we need to find ways to get more people who don't live in poverty, personally involved so they spend more time trying to understand problems and solutions.

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

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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.

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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.