My Mentor. The Father I never Had.

On Tuesday, September 17 I attended the Tenth Annual My Hero Awards Luncheon, hosted by the Lawyers Lend A Hand to Youth Program. This is a group of lawyers from Chicago who have raised more than $1.4 million since 1994 to fund the general operations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. Read more about this event.

During the late 1990s the Lend A Hand Program was part of the Chicago Bar Foundation and held an annual event in November which attracted more than 1500 lawyers, friends and families. Since 2002 a My Hero Awards Lunch in the spring or fall has attracted more than 200 participants to give recognition to lawyers, law firms, business and judges who are involved with volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in the Chicago region.

During this week's event Doug Wambach, a shareholder at Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C. received one "Making a Difference Award" and Richard Gleason, managing partner of O'Mara, Gleason & O'Callaghan, LLC, received a second award.

Wambach has been involved in many roles supporting Boys Hope Girls Hope for more than a decade. He was nominated by a youth he has mentored for the past several years. In the nomination letter, the youth wrote "I haven't been writing about a mentor; I'm writing about a father I never had." In his acceptance comments, Wambach said "He's the one who made a difference in my life, and in my family's life."

Gleason has been involved with the mentoring program at the Logan Square Boys & Girls Club in Chicago since 2006. The boy he has mentored for the past 6 years is now working at the club and gave the nomination speech. He said "If it wasn't for Rich, I don't know where I'd be now."

Over my 35 years of leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program I've heard comments like this from many alumni and volunteers of the programs I've led, and of other programs I've connected with. This has led me to three levels of understanding, which are reflected in the graphic below, and in this Logic Model pdf essay.

First, the testimony of young people and volunteers convinces me that connecting youth with volunteers from the business community, and keeping them connected for multiple years, is something we should try to do.

Second, to connect youth living in high poverty neighborhoods with volunteers who don't live in the neighborhood, but model many types of work and career experiences that youth might aspire to, structured, well-organized, and well funded programs like Boys Hope Girls Hope and the Logan Square Boys & Girls are needed.

Third, since there are more than 125,000 high poverty youth living in Chicago, and many more in the suburbs, we need hundreds of well organized programs, not just the few that are now in existence. For such programs to be in place and well organized, we need organizations like the Lawyers Lend A Hand to be raising millions of dollars from their industry and spreading this money each year to on-going programs throughout the city and suburbs.

If every industry, fraternal and alumni organization forms a Lend A Hand type program, the result would be multiple sources of on-going funding, and a diversity of volunteers, supporting tutor/mentor programs in every high poverty zip code, thus enabling each program to have a higher percent of the total dollars each needs to operate, as well as a diversity of volunteer talent helping the program innovate ways to constantly improve their impact on the lives of kids....and volunteers.

I've been broadcasting this idea for nearly 20 years, yet there are few leaders who have embraced the idea to the point that they should be receiving awards for how well they support "birth to work" mentoring programs in places where they do business or where employees and customers live. Why is this?

1) Maybe I'm the wrong messenger. I'm not from a wealthy family. I'm not the CEO of a big company. I'm not politically connected. I'm not of a minority racial background.

2) The non profits who would benefit most from increased resources, are not embracing the strategy. There's too much fear of losing volunteers or donors by talking about the need for tutor/mentor programs all over the city, rather than just their own program. The competitive nature of philanthropy reinforces this.

3) Business leaders who lead multiple store corporations via central office strategies don't apply the same thinking to what they do to support multiple non profits in all neighborhoods where they are needed. It's easy to adopt one or two high profile programs, or run a small in-house volunteer program. It's harder to take on a role intended to build an distribution of these programs, and a supply system to support them. Read more about how businesses might help programs grow.

4) I've never been able to keep consistent funding or build a large enough funding base to spread these ideas consistently, draw people together for conferences, or teach leaders to adopt and use the ideas.

I've written more than 1000 articles on this blog since 2005, all intended to build consistent support for constantly improving tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. In addition, I've created a variety of essays to illustrate ideas that leaders might adopt in support of multiple tutor/mentor programs. Finally, I've created a web library with more than 2000 links to ideas of other people around the world which can be applied to building and sustaining individual programs as well as networks of programs.

This is all part of a 4 part strategy, illustrated in this strategy pdf and this concept map. Since 2011 I've not had a non profit organizational structure to support this strategy, and I'm reaching out to find volunteers and partners to re-build this. However, I'm more interested in finding ways to embed these ideas and strategies in many other organizations, in Chicago and around the country, so more owners carry this forward in future years, and so it's not dependent on any single organization or individual. If you're interested in this let's find a way to talk.

These ideas and web resources are free to anyone who wants to see more young adults standing up in front of crowds saying "my mentor made a difference in my life." I hope you'll spend some time getting to know them.

Using Street Violence to Sell Newspaper

This photo was on the front page of my Chicago Tribune yesterday. If you're a subscriber to the Tribune's internet site you can read the full story online. The print version included two full pages of stories about kids in Chicago who have been victims of street violence.

Included was a map showing where these shootings occurred, which is mostly on the West and South parts of Chicago. I've been pointing to media stories like these for the past 20 years as part of an effort to get more people involved in strategies that build and sustain a wide range of youth serving organizations in these areas.

Here's one story I wrote in July 2010. It includes a copy of the Chicago SunTimes from October 1992 after Dantrell Davis was killed. Here's a story I wrote in 2008 following a SunTimes series about how street violence impacts inner city kids. In this I posted maps of neighborhoods where violence was taking place, with a call for people to be involved in supporting those programs.

I've been following media stories with map-stories since 1993 when I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Since I never have had advertising dollars to attract public attention, I try to build off of the attention the media have generated with negative news, and images of kids and suffering parents. In my stories I always post a link to the story I'm talking about. However, after a year or two, maybe shorter, these stories are no longer available at the same link. Thus, they don't have an accumulated weight that might motivate more people to become involved in trying to reduce the conditions that cause the violence in the first place. Recently the papers have been hiding these stories behind subscription services, and I feel that further reduces the number of people who will read the story and be motivated to get involved.

While the Tribune and SunTimes and other media have community service and charitable foundations, these only provide funding to a small group of the youth serving organizations in the city and suburbs, and only a small portion of the total funds every youth organization needs every year. Using the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, and drawing from maps that are produced by media and other organizations, I've been able to create graphics and map stories, like below, to try to draw people together who would innovate ways to build a better distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods where youth serving organizations and other services are needed on an on-going basis.

I think youth can learn to create these visualizations. Interns working with me have been doing this for several years. You can see examples at this page.

I'm hosting another Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago on Monday, November 4 and will be doing a series of workshops showing how to use maps to create stories, and how youth can create and communicate these stories as part of their own learning and service. I'm still looking for additional volunteers to host workshops at this conference, and others who will help build participation. If you'd like to get involved email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net or fill out the workshop presenter form on this page.

I've collected media stories that draw attention to violence and poorly performing schools for almost 20 years. I've seen passionate editorials saying we need to do something. Yet, I've not seen a consistent effort to draw people together and draw resources to youth serving organizations and schools that works like the advertising done by most corporations every day to draw people to their stores and sell products and services.

Since media outlets are in business to generate profit we need to find others who will provide the resources and leadership that makes the archive of media stories more open to community activists, and that encourages media stories to point to directories of youth serving organizations throughout the region so more are supported by the people who are reading and following the daily news.

What would you do to make this happen?

Arts Education in Chicago - A Collective Effort

I attended a Chicago Arts Partnership meeting on Friday, hosted by Ingenuity, Inc and the Arts Education Department of Chicago Public Schools. Ingenuity, Inc. is led by Paul Sznewajs, who founded Snow City Arts Foundation in the 1990s, which is when we first met.

Much has been written about Collective Impact in the past couple of years. Paul and his group have done much to bring together more than 600 arts education groups in Chicago with a vision that "all Chicago Public School students, from the day they start school until the day they graduate, will receive quality arts education at every grade level"

During Friday's meeting Paul and others provided a history of how arts education organizations have come together in this effort and a vision for the future. One of the resources Inginuity, Inc. has created is an Arts Look portal that maps locations of arts education providers, with layers of information showing providers of different types of arts education.

This network building started many years ago and has reached out to engage many different arts initiatives. It's supported by the Mayor, and has generated a $1 million a year commitment to fund arts education programs in schools. Friday's meeting was a celebration of progress and an announcement of next steps. Very impressive. Well done.



I'm impressed by what Ingenuity, Inc has accomplished because this is much of what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been attempting to do since being formed in 1993. Our focus has been to help mentor-rich non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning organizations reach k-12 youth in high poverty neighborhoods. Our strategy has been to build a directory of existing programs and a library of information, then a larger on-going public eduction effort that would draw more consistent operating support to existing and emerging organizations. This strategy has been share in on-line maps, essays, graphics, etc. since 1998. It's a strategy that needs many leaders, but can be supported by a few who build knowledge libraries and tools that support collective efforts.