Influencing Career Aspirations - Role of Business & Mentoring

In this UK report titled "Nothing in Common: The Career Aspirations of Young Britons Mapped against Projected Labor Market Demands (2010-2020)" the authors show that career aspirations for many youth do not align with available jobs and call for greater business involvement with education efforts to change this.

This lack of alignment is probably as common in the US as in the UK. So what are businesses and mentoring programs doing about it? Since I've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program for over 35 years I've come to believe that having mentors from different business and professional backgrounds involved with young people can expand the types of career choices youth might aspire to. The image below shows young people in the Cabrini Connections program engaged in performance activities. One of those young people, Tramaine Montel Ford, is now a professional actor in New York, who says his "acting bug" started with the video program at Cabrini Connections.



At Cabrini Connections every teen was in a one-on-one match with volunteers from different business backgrounds. However, since this was a site-based program, other volunteers were also able to participate, organizing small learning groups (we called clubs) focused on technology, art, video, writing, dance, etc. These never had funding for consistent staff support so the level of activity from year to year was inconsistent, but they all provided a range of extra learning opportunities for the teens who participated.

In the mid 1990s I tried to create a new term for this type of mentoring program. I called it "Total Quality Mentoring (TQM)" borrowing from the business concept of Total Quality Management. I was describing a type of mentoring that had many different influences, and was constantly looking for ways to improve its impact by engaging the talents of volunteers and youth in all phases of program operations. This graphic was created to demonstrate this program model.

The center of the "wheel" is a youth, with the spokes representing the different types of influences that a program might expose the youth to via the volunteers who participate and the activities the program offers. This graphic also is the model for a "program" which recruits volunteers from different work backgrounds and recruits youth in elementary or middle school and works to keep them involved all through high school. As the Internet became available, this vision extends to building a life-long network connecting youth and volunteers with each other in a virtual support system.

Each spoke of the wheel has an arrow going both ways. Every time a volunteer interacts with a youth in a weekly tutor/mentor session he/she is learning something about that child and the community he/she lives in. Every week that volunteer informally shares what is learned with his friends, family and co-workers. The longer the volunteer stays involved, the greater his empathy/understanding grows and the more he is willing to do to support the youth, and often the program. This animation illustrates this service-learning loop. If volunteers are well-supported by consistent staff involvement, they will stay involved longer and many will begin to bring other volunteers, other learning opportunities, and even financial support, to the organization.

Every spoke in the chart also points to a specific industry cluster that has different workforce readiness needs. In this graphic I emphasize the 12 years it takes to go from first grade through high school and the ways business could support this journey with volunteer involvement, technology, ideas and on-going funding. If companies were to look at this strategically, they could be supporting volunteers with ideas they could take to their tutor/mentor sessions. Thus, volunteers from engineering and manufacturing could be using clay and animation to teach thinking skills to elementary school kids, that might motivate aspirations for these types of careers. They also might organize field trips and job shadowing during middle school years. In addition they might offer part time jobs and internships during high school years, and even provide scholarship money and summer jobs during college years.

If political leaders recognized the importance of this strategy they could be recruiting and recognizing companies from every industry who were adopting this strategy. The result would be that volunteers and financial support would be coming to each program in the city from many different sectors, creating a broader base of funding needed to ensure that each program had talented staff that would stay with these programs longer, and that youth were surrounded with volunteers modeling many different career aspirations, not just one or two.

If you are a volunteer, alumni, student, parent, donor, etc. you can share this idea with people in your network who are involved in different industries, or who are in media, entertainment and/or politics and who might provide encouragement for companies to adopt the Total Quality Mentoring model.

If you're being asked to contribute $50 million for a new anti-violence strategy wouldn't it make sense if this was also a workforce development strategy?

CPS School Closings - Map Analysis

While I post stories on this site I also continue to post stories related to mapping and visualization on the Mapping for Justice blog site. Today I did a map analysis of the area around King Elementary School, which is on the CPS school closing list. Take a look at this and other mapping stories.

$50 million business commitment to anti violence. Is this ownership?

I encourage you to read the column by Phil Rosenthal in the Business Section of today's Chicago Tribune, titled "Business Makes Fighting Crime their Business".

The final paragraph says "This (crisis) didn't happen all at once. This happened failure by failure. Here we are 30-some years later and we're in a bad p lace. We need to take ownership for making it better."

This sounds like the front page editorial on October 15, 1992 Chicago SunTimes after 7-year old Dantrell Davis was shot while going to school. I've kept this front page as a reminder for my own responsibility, and have shared it often in my outreach in an effort to encourage business, political and philanthropic leaders to adopt a long-term responsibility for building and supporting birth to work programs that offer alternatives to gangs and violence, and more paths to jobs and careers. see article

So while business leaders are being asked to contribute $50 million to Chicago's anti violence program I urge you to review and adopt the commitment and strategy shown below.

Role of Business Leaders - Helping Kids From Poverty Areas Move to Careers from Daniel Bassill

To signal your commitment and share your leadership strategy, create a version of this strategy map, with your name in the box at the top, and post this on your web site, with links to the Tutor/Mentor Institute Chicago Crime Lab and other resources that people can learn from -- and connect with -- in supporting this long-term war on poverty and inner city violence.

Rather than a single leader, the city and country need many leaders, each innovating ways to mobilize resources to support the infrastructure and operations of a wide range of youth tutoring, mentoring, learning and jobs programs in communities where they do business, not just where the corporate office is located.

I've written countless articles showing strategy, leadership, network building, learning, etc since starting this blog in 2005. If you devote resources within your company to building your own strategy to support your commitment, I hope some of your leaders will read and reflect on some of these ideas, then put the ones that work for you into your own efforts.

Twenty years from now we can have another column like the one Phil Rosenthal wrote today, or a different one showing a city with a wide range of programs in every poverty neighborhood, each telling stories of young people who have gone through the programs and now work at the companies that made this possible.

Connecting Resource Providers and Tutor/Mentor Leaders

I keep looking for a simple way to describe what I do, and what I'm trying to do. If I were the Mayor, President or the head of a big company or foundation, it would be easy for people to understand my ideas because these are the traditional leaders expected to think in broad, system-wide strategies.

I read a book many years ago titled, JESUS, CEO (see article). I'm about as insignificant in power circles of Chicago as Jesus was among the religious leaders of his time. Yet his ideas changed the world. Without the Internet!

The Internet changed how ideas can be communicated, so anyone can post an idea that might change the world. However, world-changing is a complex, long-term process, involving many people and many resources. If you're not a recognized leader, most people won't spend enough time on your web site trying to understand your ideas, or trying to adjust what they are already doing to fit new ideas into their thinking.

Well, I keep trying. Today I created the graphic that you see below.

If we're trying to connect thousands of k-12 Chicago youth in well-organized non-school tutor/mentor programs, where there is a diversity of volunteers representing different career backgrounds, and a variety of learning and enrichment activities in addition to one-on-one tutoring/mentoring, those programs need to be in neighborhoods close enough for kids to participate regularly and safe enough to attract volunteers who don't live in the neighborhood.

In addition, the programs need staff who stay with the program five, 10, or 15 years, building experience, trust, knowledge, relationships with schools, families, donors, other programs, etc. which gives them the ability to organize on-going activities, respond to the changing needs of their youth and volunteer base, collect and evaluate data showing impact of the program, communicate effectively via social media, written grant proposals and reports, and deal with the unexpected daily crisis that take so much of their time.

The need to be constantly focusing on ways to transform young people and volunteers into learners, partners and co-CEOs of efforts to transform their futures. That's quite an extensive skill base. Oh, they also need to manage volunteer boards, diverse egos, ambiguity, stress, frustration, and work with inadequate resources to do most of what they know they need to do.

Chicago has more than 200,000 youth living in high poverty. For one quarter of those youth to be enrolled in the type of programs I've described, there would need to be at 500 to 600 of these programs scattered around the city. There would need to be a massive, and consistent effort to educate the general public and attract financial resources, volunteers and pro-bono support to EACH of these programs, not just the most visible.

I have about 200 youth serving organizations listed in the Chicago Program Links of my library. If you look at these web sites you see a wide range of programs described, and on many sites you can't tell what type of program, if any, is now offered. You don't see a consistent use of web sites to show strategy, theory of change, history of participation, progress of youth through school and into jobs. Yet, unless more of the programs are showing such information it will be difficult for them to attract volunteers and operating resources on a consistent basis.

Let's reverse how programs are supported.


I've posted many articles about challenges facing non profits, and many articles showing how volunteers in business, colleges, hospitals, professional groups, etc. could act as a virtual corporate office, mobilizing resources and providing services that help mentor-rich programs have the infrastructure, talent and dollars they need to grow into great mentoring organizations, then constantly improve each year as they learned from others and from their own efforts.

Until leaders in business are taking on a commitment to support this citywide infrastructure, for business reasons, as well as social, religious and ethical reasons, we won't have a system in place that can support such a large number of organizations distributed over so many neighborhoods.

If this graphic helps you think of the system of supports needed in Chicago or in other cities, then I hope you'll share these ideas and/or adopt them in your own actions. If you have graphic talents and would like to create a new version of this, please join with interns in the project described in this forum.

You can find more graphics that illustrate these ideas in other blog articles, in the library on Pinterest, in articles I've posted on Scribd.com, and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC pages.

No one can do all of this work without the help of many others. I can't do what I'm trying to do and each individual tutor/mentor program can't do all it needs to do. We need to connect.

Building Local Global Connections

On Tuesday I participated in a Google Hangout, connecting with people from Europe and South America, in a discussion of mapping. Below is the video:



Since then two of the participants have written summary blog articles, which you can see here, and here, and many have shared ideas in this Facebook group.

I've been incorporating maps since 1994 in my efforts to support the growth of volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, so I have a pretty good ideas of the challenges we face in doing this work. I created the TALENT MAP below to show the range of different talents that need to be consistently involved in this effort, which can't be consistently available through voluntary commitments alone. Since I've not had the funding needed, my progress toward building this system has been fragmented and painfully slow.



I have used concept maps to visualize the ideas and strategies that would lead to better information, more people looking at the information, more people understanding the information, and thus, more people acting consistently as volunteers, donors, staff, media, political leaders, etc. to support the growth and constant improvement of mentor-based programs focused on expanding networks of adult support, and helping kids through school and into jobs, in high poverty areas.



This work cannot be done by one person, or one small organization. Much needs to be done, as this strategy map shows. However, it does not need to be done by people who all live in the same city or country. The talent map can be filled in by people from around the world who use help build and share the tools that achieve the strategy, and use the strategy in their own communities.

Many people already do this work. But most are disconnected, and there's few ways to know who does what. In 1998 a grad student from the University of Kansas reached out to me, and began presenting workshops at T/MC conferences in Chicago. In 2000 he wrote a grant proposal which I was able to get funded, to build an on-line documentation system that would enable people working on this project to document what actions they were taking, and to show what part of the strategy their action was focusing on.



This graphic is the home page of the OHATS (Organizational History and Tracking System). Each time an action is documented the pie chart changes. A system like this can educate people on actions they need to take to build a citywide system of supports. It can also give recognition to those who actually are doing the work needed. With each graphic you can click to a discussion page and learn more about the meaning of that graphic. You can also log in as GUEST and Visitor to read actions documented.

Unfortunately, we were never able to get repeated funding after 2000 to update the technology and train people to become recorders. By 2003 spammers were attacking so often few people were sing it. Then, in 2007 a volunteer from Baltimore and his company in India, rebuild the OHATS, making it interactive in ways far beyond my own visions. This demonstrates how people from different countries can use their time and talent to help each other. Since money was not available to do additional work, it also shows how the lack of funding and philanthropic investment cripples innovations like this.

By participating in forms like this week's Google Hangout I hope to attract more people who are interested in these ideas, and who will become partners, and recorders, to do the work needed to build, maintain and share these tools with others throughout Chicago, and the world.

You can read many other articles I've posted on this blog, demonstrating uses of maps. I don't think any city will ever have a strategy that reaches most of its poverty neighborhoods, without a map-based strategy like I've been trying to build. Thus, if your passion is to close the gaps between rich and poor, or engage your business and its employees in activities that benefit the company, your current workforce, and your future work force, let's connect and find ways for you to become involved....regardless of where you are located.

Create a SWARM of engagement

This video was introduced to me via one of my Facebook groups today. I encourage you to take 15 minutes to view it.



As I review this I think of a book I read a few years ago, talking about the strength of decentralized organizations, called The Starfish and the Spider (see link) , and my own efforts to connect people, ideas and actions, as described in this presentation.

Tutor/Mentor Institute Strategy from Daniel Bassill

There are many ideas about creating an information hub that connects people from around the world with information related to a problem, such as poverty, the environment, global warming, etc. along with hubs that provide practical ideas for solving the problem, based on what people in some places are already doing.

As this graphic suggests, these ideas are all connected in a larger wheel of global well-being.



The challenge that we face now is finding ways to connect those who are already involved to each other, and creating linkages that connect groups to each other, so people and ideas and resources can flow through the network to support the many different efforts, and to act as a glue or gravity that pulls them closer together.

If we don't do this more and more hubs and platforms will launch, and instead of a gravity pulling us together there will be a vacuum in which we drift further and further apart, with random clusters forming and reforming as resources and public attention become available.

Did Jesus feel this way?

When Jesus was spreading his message did he understand how difficult it would be to change the hearts and habits of people throughout the world so everyone would have a sense of hope and opportunity? I'm not sure that was even his purpose, but I'm not writing with a goal of debating different religious history or philosophy.

I picked this graphic because it shows the heavy burden carried by anyone who works to provide hope and opportunity to oppressed people in the world, or who seeks to close the gaps between rich and poor, or reduce the greed and corruption in government and formal institutions of power.

It seems impossible, but many start out every day with this goal in mind.

I've written a blog article around EASTER Sunday every year since 2006. Just like scripture in the Bible or the Koran is over 2000 years old, it has a fresh message every time it is read. Thus, throughout the year I hope those who visit the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog will look back at messages, like these, posted in the past.

Bono, the Pope, Pallotta, Poverty & Data

I apologize for another long post. However, I’m trying to tie several streams of thought together. I hope you’ll follow and add your own thinking.

Last Sunday I read an article in the Chicago Tribune titled “Pope wants more focus on poor.” I’ve been working on a story about this all week.

Then today I saw this TED talk, where Bono talks about data and facts and ending extreme poverty.



If you’ve not been totally absorbed on your NCAA Basketball Brackets, you’ve probably read about the new Pope and his commitment to “walking the talk” when it comes to setting an example for other Catholics and people of faith.

While most people probably have read or listened to something about the new Pope, I suspect most have not been having a soul searching discussion about philanthropy and how the system of charitable giving does too little to support social sector organizations serving the poor and addressing complex environmental, social and health problems that plague the world.

I posted an article a couple of weeks ago about Dan Pallotta’s TED talk, titled The way we think about charity is dead wrong. That TED talk has stimulated a number of discussions on social media space. I’m part of three on Linked in, such as this one.

In one Linkedin post the writer compared the challenges of changing how charities are supported to the challenges facing the new Pope, saying:

This good debate here over definitions defining our entire industry does not hold a candle to the thousands-years-old debate in the church. Just these two NYT articles today about the power-grabbing intrigue in the Vatican ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/world/europe/pope-francis-faces-an-entrenched-curia.html?hp ) and the perceived goals of the new pope ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/europe/installation-of-pope-francis.html?hp ) mirror our debate here.

Bono’s TED talk describes the 3000 year old fight against poverty. He’s fighting the same fight as the POPE, but on a different battlefield. It’s the same fight Pallotta is fighting. It’s the same one I’ve been fighting for nearly 20 years.

When BONO talks about using data he does not mention the most important asset he offers to the war on poverty, which is his own celebrity visibility. He’s been blessed with the ability to draw the attention of millions of people, wealthy and poor. When Pallotta talks about lack of advertising available to social sector organizations, he is describing how so few organizations have the celebrity power of Bono, or the POPE, to attract and educate donors and keep them focused on their work for dozens of years.



When BONO talks about using data he uses charts and graphs. I want to see him using , geographic maps, showing at the zip code level where extreme poverty, or extreme gaps between rich an poor, are most concentrated. I’ve used maps in many articles to propose a marketing strategy that engages people from every Catholic Church in the Chicago region in on-going efforts that help existing volunteer based tutor/mentor programs get the talent, technology, operating dollars and ideas each needs to constantly improve what they do to connect youth and volunteers and transform the lives of both.

In addition, when BONO talks of using data, I hope that the collection of data, and responses to BONO’s outreach, will lead to web sites that visually map all of the issues that contribute to extreme poverty, or extreme disenfranchisement. The pie chart shown on this Glasgow site is one example of how this might be done.



The Internet has created the ability to mine data from all over the world, and for teams of design and visualization engineers to create concept maps, like the one above, that shows the range of age-appropriate supports kids need as they move from birth, through elementary school, high school, post high school and into jobs.

Similar maps could show how fighting disease in a poverty area also needs to be combined with concurrent efforts to fight corruption, improve education and technology access, and create jobs. If you’re building a skyscraper, every page of the blueprint show skills needed to complete the work described on that page. Everyone needs to be paid and have the highest level of skills. If we think of ending poverty as we do of building a new hotel, what are all the skills needed at different stages of the project?

Maps like this can be interactive, animated, three-dimensional, and connected to data libraries that a) include research that provides a better understanding of the problem, and potential solutions; and b) links to web sites of organizations in different places that are working to provide a solution, but work with limited resources in many cases.

This is where both Bono, the POPE and Pallotta’s TED talks intersect. Bono and the POPE provides celebrity power that is far greater than what Dan Pallotta or most of the rest of us in the social services sector, can generate. While Pallotta’s TED talk has received over 1 million hits, stimulating discussions in many places, how will this be sustained, expanded, then turned into actions that improve the flow of resources to thousands of places?

Who is talking about this?

Bono talks about ending poverty by 2028, and talks about the inertia that might prevent this, or the momentum that might make it a reality. The articles about Pope Francis show that efforts have been made to reform the Catholic Church for centuries, with little success.

If Bono and the Pope and other leaders were to build map-based data bases, and concept maps, that work like blueprints to show work that needs to be done in many places on an on-going basis, they could draw more consistent attention to the problems with philanthropy that Pallotta describes.

As I’ve written these articles I feel that I have three mountains of obstacles to overcome.

1) Donors, businesses, public leaders and individuals are already doing a lot to try to help youth and families living in poverty. Thus, asking them to do more, which is what the POPE is asking, meets a lot of resistance.

Pallotta’s message is that unless we find ways to draw more resources into social sector organizations, so they can innovate, hire and retain the best talent, experiment and even make mistakes that they learn from so they can get better at what they do, we’ll continue to not achieve our long-term goals of helping kids born in poverty live adult lives out of poverty because of the help they have received from birth to work.

2) If you’re already a secure, well funded non profit, who is challenging you to do more than what you are doing? If no one is advertising, or trying to educate the public so they can look at an organization's web site and make a judgment as to whether or not the organization deserves financial support, how can we move beyond superficial measures, such as money spent on "overhead"? If no one is aggregating information and web links pointing to organizations doing similar work, how can you benchmark yourself against what others are doing, to see where you can improve? What’s your motivation if your donor base is constantly giving you money because of your history and reputation, or the names of the people on your Board of Directors?

3) If we don’t map where the need is for social services, and where existing services are located, with information that maps categories of organizations serving similar population, we won’t know if the money we are spending is reaching all of the people who need that help. We could fill every NCAA Tournament Basketball stadium with fans, or fill a football stadium for a visit by the Pope, and still not have people from every poverty neighborhood represented.



This graphic shows the role of intermediaries who connect people who can help (volunteers, donors, idea generators, etc.) to organizations in places where help is needed. If the Pope, Bono, Pallotta and thousands of others use their daily visibility to draw people to information that shows where and why they are needed, and motivates them to give time, dollars, talent, etc. they can continue the momentum Bono describes and provide the advertising support and resource flow that Pallotta describes, to all of the places where the poor live in need of extra help.

I’ve posted articles like this on my blog and web site for 15 years with the goal that someone in the Vatican, Bono’s team, the Mayor’s office, etc. would read them and bring them to the attention of these leaders, so they can add the ideas into their own leadership efforts.

As I build a library of content on sites I host, I point to sites with additional ideas. Over the past few years I've written more about network building, learning and point to virtual events such as the Education, Technology and Media MOOC, ETMOOC which demonstrate how thousands of people could be connecting, sharing ideas and innovating ways to reach people in high poverty with resources that aid youth and families in overcoming the challenges they face.

I won’t be alive in 2028 to see if Bono's dream comes true, but these ideas can be if you read, reflect and share them with others.

Follow up Crain's story on Mentoring

I wrote about this series of Mentoring articles in this article yesterday.

After re-reading these mentoring articles in Crain's Chicago News, I see that I was quoted, saying: "To build an expertise and to build participation, you need a core group of people to keep it all running. That's why funding these organizations is so important," says longtime mentoring organizer Daniel Bassill, president of Tutor/Mentor Institute LLC, a Chicago organization that aggregates information about non-school tutoring and mentoring programs on a searchable website."

I repeat my message. Chicago and other cities need leaders to go beyond being mentors, to being marketers who plan strategies that make mentor-rich programs available to k-16 youth in all high poverty neighborhoods of the city and suburbs and keep them in place for the time it takes this year's class of 1st graders be starting jobs and careers in 15 to 20 years. We need the media to support this process with on-going articles that not only share the interaction of volunteers and youth and individual stories of success, but focus on the planning, data gathering, infrastructure building and on-going marketing needed to make mentor-rich programs available to k-16 youth in more places.

I host a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months (since May 1994) and would be delighted to have some of the business leaders profiled in the Crain's article become involved, as sponsors, and as workshop leaders who bring others into this discussion of "how we make good programs available to youth in more places".

The next conference will be Friday, June 7 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. Click here to find a workshop presenter form.

FOCUS on Mentoring in Crain's Chicago Business

I was contacted a few weeks ago by Shia Kapos, who was researching a story on Mentoring for Crain's Chicago Business. I'm pleased to see that the March 17th issues has a FOCUS on Mentoring. I encourage you to read these stories and be informed, and inspired.

How Chicago execs are transforming schools — and students, too - click here

The view from Brad Keywell's window turned an investor into an activist - click here

Veteran Mentors Share Tips and Perspectives - click here

From Mentee to Mentor. One CEO's Journey - click here

What you don't see in these stories is any of the information I provided when I talked to Shia, or from the web links I sent here. I talked about how I've been trying to collect and aggregate information on tutor/mentor programs reaching youth in the non-school hours, and to create maps that show where these programs are located and where more are needed. I told her that I've never had the funds to do this as well as it needs to be done, nor to try to understand the distribution of school based mentoring.

Yet I did invite her to look at the maps and write about what businesses could do to support the growth of mentor-rich programs in all parts of the Chicago region. This is THE REST OF THE STORY.

I encourage you to visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site to read how maps can be used to support the growth of mentor-rich programs, and to see graphics that illustrate the long-term support needed to help young people go from elementary school through high school and college into jobs and careers.

Visit the Program Locator to create your own maps and build a strategy that supports tutor/mentor programs around places where you do business.

Big companies support multiple stores with central office strategies, and with long-term commitments. A business publication like Crain's would be an ideal partner to talk about business strategies that would help volunteers from different companies connect with youth in many well organized programs throughout the city, which are good because they are supported by on-going flows of business talent, dollars and technology.

This is a deeper story than just the heart-warming stories of a few people connecting with a few kids. This is more than a sound-byte. It takes time to read, reflect, think, and innovate ways that the business community can do more than the good work it is already doing to reach more kids in more places with mentor-rich strategies.

Thank you Crain's Chicago Business for posting these stories. Please use your editorials and on-going media ownership to lead an effort to tell the REST OF the STORY, over and over.

Why Mentor? Does this Apply in Illinois?

Below is a video created by the Mass Mentoring Partnership, which I'm connected to on Linkedin. The speakers are all from Massachusetts, but the message applies to Illinois and every other state.



I've never had the resources, or found the local leadership, to be able to create a video like this. However, I have generated dozens of media stories and videos that talk about volunteer-based mentoring/tutoring and which point to a map-based Tutor/Mentor Program Locator Directory, that intends to draw volunteers and donors to constantly improving tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty part of the city.



As new groups step forward to draw attention to mentoring and the needs of youth in Illinois, many will develop their own directories, and their own list of programs. Some will have greater access to business and political leaders and philanthropic support, so may be able to create videos like this with Illinois leaders as speakers.

However, as they do this, I hope they will also point to the Strategy Maps, Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, and the library of ideas and resources that I've been building for nearly 20 years.

Illinois needs many leaders creating daily advertising and public involvement communications so that the number of people involved with mentoring grows, the resources available to individual programs grows, and the support continues to be provided for the next decade or more.

Change Way We Think About Charity

If we want to reach more youth living in poverty with mentor-rich programs that support those kids as they move through school and into jobs we need to change the way the programs attract resources, talent, ideas, etc. I first heard about Dan Pallotta a year ago and wrote about his ideas in this article. I mapped the ideas in this concept map.

This TED talk does a great job of conveying his ideas. I hope you'll watch it and then look for ways to support tutor/mentor programs with daily communications that draw volunteers and donors to all of the tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities ---based on what information they show on their web sites and what knowledge you build about the role these programs can have in the lives of kids.



Take a look at the article I wrote last Friday. If we can attract a greater share of business funding we can do more to make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available in high poverty neighborhoods.

What do I mean by "constantly improving"?

I don't think any organization starts out "great" even if they start out with millions of dollars. They grow to be great by learning from their own efforts, even their mistakes, and by learning from work done by peers and competitors. They become great by attracting and retaining talented people so that the knowledge and experience in the organization grows. They become a smarter organization that is constantly looking for ways to improve.

Jim Collins wrote a book titled "Good to Great and the Social Sectors" in which he described this idea of constant improvement. I wrote about it in this article.

We all want young people to move through school into jobs and careers, but few are doing the work that assures that constantly improving youth organizations are available in all the places where they are needed, with the constant flow of capital and operating resources needed to fuel the constant innovation needed to achieve this goal.

Without changing the way we are able to attract capital and daily operating income few non profits can grow to be good, then great.

Expanding Resources Available for NPO Sector

This graphic is from this PDF presentation which was presented by Kim Silver of Mission Measurement at a January 2012 Philanthropy Club of Chicago meeting. I hope you'll read it. It shows a path out of economic darkness for non profit sector organizations who are able to incorporate these ideas into their strategies.

When Kim presented this she repeatedly used examples of tutor/mentor programs to illustrate her message, but out of over 40 people in the room, there were only five or six such programs represented. I said to myself, "What would it take to bring this presentation to the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, where leaders of dozens of different programs could be engaged in an effort that identifies the "hot spots" that would motivate business leaders to dip into the $6 trillion dollar bucket of available funds to support programs throughout the city who do work that helps build a future workforce, while also providing learning and networking opportunities to their current workforce."

I spoke to Kim about this and she said one challenge would be that every tutor/mentor program has different goals and serves different age groups. It would be almost impossible to build a set of common metrics that CEOs would respond to. She also said that I could not afford their services.

The first challenge is that most programs use words to describe the services they provide, and those words don't communicate long-term or shared goals as well as pictures. Visit the Chicago Program Links and browse web sites of nearly 200 Chicago youth organizations to see how differently they each define mission.

I have used graphics for many years to communicate a vision of helping kids through school and into jobs and careers. If a program is working with 4th grade kids what does that organization do to help build the support system these kids need in 5th grade and beyond? If a program works with 10th through 12th graders, what does it do to assure the neighborhood has feeder programs working with elementary and middle school youth. What is the "hot spot" of a business that each of these programs addresses? Are their common hot spots?


How many programs define the different activities as part of an on-going, age-appropriate set of supports intended to help kids through school and into work?

How many businesses encourage volunteer involvement in programs throughout the city, in roles beyond tutor/mentor, which include board, communications, tech support, planning and leadership development activities? How many companies use maps to understand their footprint in the city and to plan future impact?
If CEOs would adopt this ROLE OF LEADERS strategy they would develop learning, research & development, and marketing teams in their companies, drawing from web libraries that show benefits to business, and that show what competitors are doing that they could duplicate in their own work.

While companies compete for business they should be working collectively to develop the talents and skills of current and future employees. With states like Illinois cutting funds for eduction it is up to business to take steps that assure they have the workforce they will need 10 and 20 years from now.

As I said, Kim told me I could not afford her company's services. That's the final challenge.

If we can see where the $6 Trillion dollars in corporate talent and resources reside, who can work with myself and other tutor/mentor program leaders in Chicago to help us define and communicate visions and strategies that motivate CEOs to reach into this pool of resources to support career-focused tutor/mentor programs as part of corporate self interest?

Instead of dozens of individual programs hiring consultants and trying to figure out ways to tap into this resource, why can't dozens of programs doing similar work try to find ways to motivate corporations to support all of us?

Going through my Rolodex. Guess who I found.

I've been collecting business cards for more than 20 years. While I have three full Rolodex files I also have cardboard boxes with hundreds, or thousands, of cards representing people who I've lost contact with. I keep these with hope that some researcher will want to do an analysis of the network I've been building to show how others might duplicate this effort. The people in my file represent just a fraction of those on my database who used to receive printed newsletters or in my email list who now get monthly email newsletters.

As I was going through the Rolodex this morning I came across this card, which I collected in the mid 1990s after a meeting with Michelle Obama when she was at the University of Chicago. Hmm. I wonder if this has any collectors value.

When I met the future First Lady I did not know who she was married to. In fact, when State Senator Barack Obama was a speaker at the 1999 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Confernece I did not know as much about him as our other speaker, Congressman Luis Guitierrez. I also did not make the association with him and Michelle Obama.

In this image from the Summer 1999 newsletter, you can see a photo of Barack Obama, who was a speaker at the May 1999 conference.

I wish I could say that these two connections, or the appearance of Congressman Guitierrez at the conference, had led to life long support for the ideas and strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, but that has not yet happened.

But it can happen tomorrow, or in the future because since 1999 I've put most of my ideas on web sites where anyone can find them and spend as much time as they want looking, reflecting, and thinking of ways to incorporate these into their own leadership.

Using Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, Google+, Mobile phones and other communications technologies we're all only a few steps away from each other and the most powerful people in the world. In the Education Technology & Media #ETMOOC that started in January I've been exposed to more than 1600 people and a wide range of ideas for digital learning and story telling. One participant, Paul Signorelli, from San Francisco, has written a series of articles showing the value of the #ETMOOC. I encourage you to read them and visit http://www.etmooc.org and read more about this way of connecting and learning from others.

As President and Michelle Obama leave the White House in a few years they will still be young people and well able to lend their time, talent and fame to bringing people together on-line and face-to-face to support this effort and many like it taking shape all over the country. We have time for them to find their way here. However, we have an urgency that they get here quickly as we lose young people to poverty, violence and poor schooling every day.

Invitation to Chicago Billionaires

Today the Chicago Tribune introduced us to 17 Chicago area residents who are among the richest people in the world. You can meet them here.

I saw another article in the paper talking about how the Chicago Bears were considering offering naming rights to their new facility in Lake Forest, which might generate up to $2 million a year in revenue.

That got me thinking. I wrote this article in August 2011 suggesting that we might offer naming rights to different components of the Tutor/Mentor Connection or Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, just the way sports teams, colleges, hospitals and art museums do.

Take a look at these logos. Could a local or national advertiser or benefactor put their name on one of these platforms?

How about the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference? The Broad Foundation funds a number of initiatives intended to build stronger leadership of public school systems. Why wouldn't a philanthropist fund an effort to build strong leadership for community based and non-school initiatives that expand learning opportunities and help prepare youth to come to the traditional school better prepared to learn?

I created this list of Think Tanks a year ago. Look at how many have the name of a benefactor. Why can't the Tutor/Mentor Institute have the name of one of Chicago's wealthiest people associated with it?

Or how about putting a sponsor name on the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator's Interactive Map. Investing more dollars will not only enhance the features of this map, but it can also increase the number of people in Chicago who use it to support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas. It could lead to the Program Locator being used in other cities, not just Chicago.

Attaching a benefactor's name to these assets can generate revenue to fully develop them and the ideas shown here. It can help us and others connect, share ideas and work together to enhance the growth of programs that help youth overcome poverty and reach their fullest potential. However, a benefactor making this investment would also be signaling his/her commitment to the strategy shown in this map.

It does not cost anything, or generate revenue for the Tutor/Mentor Institute, for a leader to adopt this strategy and put a page with this information on his/her web site. It does require a commitment to long-term actions that reach youth in more places with age-appropriate supports that help those young people grow up and find places in work and neighborhoods where they can raise their kids without worrying about someone shooting them while they come and go from school every day.

I've been a fan of the Internet since it was first introduced to me by one of my volunteers in 1997 or 1998. I love the potential that anyone can post an idea to a blog or web page and that idea can be viewed by anyone in the world, even by one of the seventeen billionaires in Chicago.

Or by someone who has less wealth but a deep commitment to use the wealth they have to support the ideas shared on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.

Using Past to Predict the Future

Over the past few months I've uploaded copies of newsletters from the 1990s and began to post maps showing participation in past Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences.

I use these to demonstrate work I've been doing for more than 20 years, and to invite support to continue this work in the future.

I've hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months since May 1994, to connect programs and supporters with each other, share ideas that can help each program constantly improve, and to create greater public attention for all tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.

From 2006 to 2011 I was supported by alumni from Northwestern University who were part of a Public Interest Fellowship Program. I encourage you to read articles they wrote about past conferences.

The November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference was a Success, Nov. 2008

Engaging Universities Workshop, June 2009

Become a Speaker at the May 2011 Conference!, April 2011

Conference Video, 2010, Nov. 2011


By organizing conferences every six months, and a Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign every August/Sept. from 1995 through 2003, I was able to generate a number of stories in print, radio, TV and the Internet, expanding attention and support for volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs all over the Chicago region, not just for the Cabrini Connections program I was leading in the Cabrini Green area of Chicago.

This strategy was part of an on-going effort intended to build greater support for tutor/mentor programs so each could borrow ideas from other programs in Chicago and the US and constantly improve their impact on young people. This strategy was never consistently supported by CPS, the Mayor's office, philanthropy or business, yet it continued year-after-year for 20 years.

Due to changes at Cabrini Connections in 2011 I'm no longer operating under a 501-c-3 non profit structure so it has been much more difficult to find the money needed to do this (even though it was almost impossible in the past!). Yet, as this article says, "the difficulty of success does not relieve one of the obligation to try".

I also have written about the conference on this site. In addition I've written about learning, network building, collaboration and leadership strategies.


The next conference will be held on June 7, 2013 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. I'm organizing workshops now. See this list of suggested topics and use this form to submit a workshop proposal.

I'm not operating as a non-profit yet still need sponsors to support the conference and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. I wrote this article to suggest that if companies are willing to put their names on race car driver uniforms, we should be able to encourage the same type of support for people helping youth become their future workers.

20th Year of Tutor/Mentor Connection.
I've shown what I've been able to do with a little money in the past. I hope you'll help shape the future with a donation or a sponsorship.

Story Telling. Violence. The Future.

In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune entertainment section Chris Jones wrote an article titled “Violence, Chicago and its story tellers.” I hope you'll read it.

Mr. Jones wrote about how the creative community has begun to use their talent and national platforms to draw attention to the gun violence in Chicago. He wrote that artist are not only trying to put a face on victims, but are "trying to search for causes, solutions and prevention".

He also wrote about a “common theme” that is gaining strength. “Geography, or where you live in the region, does not inoculate a city, a region, a nation, from responsibility.”

He asks “Are the stories behind the violence in Chicago understood in a Wheaton or Winnetka? and other communities far from high poverty neighborhoods?

To the past 20 years I've been using maps and the stories on this blog to try to tell the same story, with the goal of attracting support from people who don't live in poverty for volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and learning programs operating in high poverty neighborhoods. See example.

I posted an animation on Friday showing how sports stars could be more consistently drawing attention to these issues, and drawing needed resources to tutor/mentor programs in different neighborhoods.

Imagine how many different ways this story could be told by creative people. Imagine if when Anne Hathaway ended her Oscar acceptance speech by wishing for a day when stories of poverty were only in the movies and not in reality, if she had pointed to a web site where more videos were drawing fans to places where they could become personally involved in the lives of youth and families living in poverty.

Role of Athletes in Supporting Tutor/Mentor Programs

I've been exploring new ways to share the ideas from this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site. This animation demonstrates a role athletes and coaches can take to support the growth of mentor-rich programs in high poverty neighborhoods throughout the Chicago region, or in other cities.



This is a pilot video. Others can do this much better, with more creativity. Athletes with their access to high quality creative and video production talent could remake this video with themselves as the featured character. Point to the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and Chicago Program Links Library if you're in the Chicago region.

What do I do? What is a MOOC?

I’ve written many articles in the past about learning and network building and since mid January I’ve been part of an Education Technology and Media MOOC #ETMOOC where more than 1600 people are gathering on-line to share ideas about learning, digital story telling, on-line collaboration, etc.

Education Technology and Media which you can read about here While I could write a summary of everything I’ve learned, this recap by Paul Signorelli does a great job of showing the value of the ETMOOC.

Paul’s article includes this statement. “Outside of the course, on the other hand, I continue to see snarky comments from those who either haven’t had or aren’t willing to seek out these opportunities and the benefits they offer.”

I have this same problem. This week I was interviewed by a local newspaper reporter doing a story about mentoring. The reporter asked ‘what do I do” and expected a short, easy-to-understand response. I responded, “I collect and share information that is intended to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods. I try to bring people together to look at that information. I encourage the learning they do that supports their own actions and decision making.”

“What does that mean?” the reporter said.

I was not able to provide an easy answer in one sound byte.

When someone says MOOC, I immediately know what it means, because I’ve been following the growth of this process for more than 10 years. Others don’t know what I’m talking about or why I place so much value in the process.

I created this page to announce the 20 year anniversary of Tutor/Mentor Connection which I formed in late 1992 and launched in January 1994. I included a 2003 quote by Mr. Tim Wilmot. Chief Knowledge and Evaluation Officer, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation:
"When nonprofit and community leaders share ideas, insights and information in ways that promote social impact...knowledge-sharing can improve organizational effectiveness. When we share what works and what doesn't... it results in accelerated learning, less reinventing the wheel, better service, and measurable results."

To bring people together to share ideas means someone has to build a list of people a) who have ideas to share; and b) who might come to an event, or an online space, to connect with these ideas.

Since 1975 I’ve been building a list of volunteer based tutor/mentor programs, researchers, reporters, business and philanthropy leaders, etc. for over 30 years and have used this to share ideas via print and email newsletters, conferences, and in one-on-one mentoring of different people who are looking for help in finding a tutor/mentor program, starting a program, improving a program, etc. I formalized this process when launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection 20 years ago. I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to continue this work.

This information collection/sharing process requires constant updating. It’s no small task. Writing newsletters, blogs, maintaining a Twitter and Facebook presence, organizing conferences twice a year, meeting with people to expand the network, etc.are also time consuming, This has been no small task, especially in the third largest city in the US and with less than 2.5 full time staff devoted to the project at its peak. Yet this work is necessary to support the learning of much larger groups of people throughout the metropolitan Chicago region, and the nation, who are also concerned with the well-being of inner city youth and the productivity of our labor force.

In the ETMOOC there has been a lot of discussion about “content curation”. Here's one article.

In the Tutor/Mentor Connection links library I point to numerous web sites talking about “knowledge management” such as this article. To me these are versions of the same idea. Someone has to be collecting and organizing information so that others can use the information to support communities of practice and collective efforts intended to solve social problems.

I’ve been building a knowledge library for more than 20 years, intended to support the involvement of youth, adults, business, media, faith groups, philanthropy, political leaders and anyone else who wants to be part of the “village” needed to help kids in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers.

I’ve been learning from the ideas of people throughout the world and as I learn a good idea or find a good resource, I add it to my library and share it via my blog, email newsletter, or in one-on-one mentoring of other people.

The ETMOOC focuses mostly on how traditional classroom educators might use these ideas to engage k-12 youth in more effective and motivated learning. My target is adults, not for adult literacy, but to educate them on more ways they might use their own resources to build birth-to-work systems of support in inner city neighborhoods.

Yet the people I’m trying to engage in this MOOC-like learning and action planning process are people who have busy full-time lives. That means the first MOOC we need to build is one where many people are sharing ideas for engaging busy people in on-going learning intended to solve social/environmental/health problems that plague many different parts of the US and the world.

Knowledge Management and Content Curation involve collecting and making sense of information. However, there’s also a marketing process involved, intending to constantly increase the number of people to become involved in this learning, and who then become involved in supporting the growth of birth-to-work mentoring, tutoring and learning programs in local communities.

Using the internet we can gather information that helps us better understand a problem, and that shows how people in other places are working to solve the problem. Instead of constantly reinventing the wheel, or starting from scratch, we should be able to innovate ways to apply good ideas from other places to the work we do in our own communities.

This requires content curation, knowledge management, marketing, information facilitation and many other skills.

As I said to the reporter I spoke with, “Solving the problem of inner city poverty, youth violence, poorly performing schools and showing the role of mentors in volunteer based tutor/mentor programs is more than a sound byte and one media story”. It requires in-depth learning, thinking and planning that continues over many years with thousands of people involved.

I’m trying to support that process through the work I’ve been doing for the past 20 years. Until others spend time learning about the process and understanding its benefits to their own work and lives I’m not sure how I can explain the value to them, or describe what I do, in a few words.

That’s a problem.

Resource for Education Statistics, Maps

If you're not aware of it, the National Center for Education Statistics has a wealth of data that can be used to understand education issues in Illinois and the US. This map image is one that I created from the data set on this page.

This is an article about high school graduation and drop-out rates on a state-by-state level, using an interactive map and data from the NCES site.

Mayor wants Business to raise $50 million to support kids

I saw this article in today's Sun Times and posted my own comment to it, encouraging the Mayor to use some of the ideas I've shared on this blog so he supports constantly improving tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty neighborhood, not just the traditional high profile programs that attract the most support.

My first suggestion was to use maps, such as provided on the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, to identify and support programs in every high poverty neighborhood, and to encourage new programs to support where none exist.

My second suggestion was to support programs that show a strategy that supports youth for multiple years and engages volunteers from the business community as tutors, mentors, tech support, organizers, communicators, advocates, etc. Look for a "theory of change" or a "logic model" on the organization's web site with graphics and history that demonstrates this commitment.

My third suggestion was to encourage every industry and professional group to build a strategy that provides volunteers, operating dollars, technology and other needed support to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every part of the city, such as the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program has been doing since 1994. Note. the Lend-A-Hand Program launched it's on tutor/mentor program a few years ago and discontinued the grants to other tutor/mentor programs in 2021.

This ROLE of LEADERS PDF is one of many created by the Tutor/Mentor Connection since 1994 that the Mayor could share to encourage leaders in business to support the growth of mentor-rich programs.

This STRATEGY MAP is one the Mayor could adopt and put on his own web site, and that he could encourage other leader in business, religion, higher education and public health to adopt as part of their own commitment.

In a few years will we look back and see a few million dollars distributed to a small group of organizations or will we see a "virtual corporate office" created where volunteers and leaders from every sector are taking roles that support the growth of mentor-rich youth programs in every zip code of the Chicago region where kids have economic disadvantages that most kids don't face?

Or will we see a model of support that is being duplicated in every city in the country?

Black History Month - Learning Opportunity for All

In today's Chicago Tribune Salim Muwakkil wrote an article urging us to use Black History month to do more learning about the root causes of poverty and inner city violence. I agree. In fact, I think this learning should take place all year long and in many places. I've written numerous articles about learning and network building on this blog since 2005.

I've also created an extensive library of research articles that any group might use for reading, reflection, discussion and learning. And I've created a map based Tutor/Mentor Program Locator that anyone can use to find and support existing tutor/mentor programs or determine where new programs are needed.

However, I think that we must find ways to make this learning more important to people who don't live in poverty and who may not be people of color. In the Tribune article retired cop and 20th Ward Ald. Willie Cochran was quoted as saying, "If we are not going to address the traumatic and social and emotional issues, if we are not going to address the economic issues, if we are not going to address the education issues in an honest way, then we are going to continue to have these problems."

I go a step further to say if we don't figure ways to get thousand of additional people personally involved, building empathy, understanding and commitment to actions that support comprehensive youth and workforce development systems in high poverty neighborhoods we will continue to be looking at faces of innocent kids lost to inner city violence over the next 20 years or more.

I host a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every six months for this purpose and to help mentor-rich programs grow in high poverty neighborhoods. The next is June 7. I hope some of you who read this will help me find sponsors to pay for the event, and/or will organize workshops to attract more people who care about these issues.

Maps can visualize where youth need help

While I've incorporated maps in many of the articles I've written on this site, I've also hosted another site focused completely on maps, titled Mapping for Justice.

From 2008-2011 the maps and articles on this site were created by Mike Trakan, who was the GIS map maker on the Tutor/Mentor Connection staff. Due to funding cuts and changes in structure Mike's not been with me since early 2011. I've continued to post maps on the site and I encourage you to browse recent articles.

Recent map stories:

Class Divide in Chicago - New Maps - link

November 1998 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference Map - link

NY Times maps murder sites in Chicago - link

Twitter network map - link

No General Goes to War Without a Map - link

Chicago - Most Gangs in US? - link

I encourage you to add budget time monthly to browse the articles on this site and the Mapping for Justice site, and use the ideas to form coalitions that help build and sustain mentor-rich non-school programs in your neighborhood or your city.