Celebrate and support mentoring - National Mentoring Month

It's National Mentoring Month, when mentoring in all its different formats is celebrated across the world. I led two different volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago between 1975 and 2011 and that's what motivates me daily to try to raise visibility and draw operating resources to all of the youth serving programs operating in Chicago and other cities.

The graphic below shows a range of young people and volunteers who were involved in these programs. In the lower right corner is a photo of me with Leo Hall, who was in 4th grade when we were first introduced in 1973. We're still connected on Facebook and Instagram. 
 

Every January since the early 2000s I've written an article that highlights National Mentoring Month. I sent my January newsletter out this week and included links to Mentoring Month resources.  You can read the newsletter here.

Last January I wrote this article, showing the Mentoring Stamp released by the US Postal Service in 2001, and introduced at our spring Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. 

It's one of many articles where I use graphics like the one below to focus on the research needed to segment our understanding of all the different groups of people being served by various types of organized and informal mentoring.

During 2024 I shared several articles with maps like the one below that show areas where persistent poverty is concentrated in the USA.  These are places where organized, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are most needed. 

As you celebrate mentoring this month, and hopefully throughout the year, I encourage you to use the graphic shown below as a reminder of your ability to draw people from your network to my library of programs and to the websites of individual Chicago area tutor and/or mentor programs. Use the information to build your understanding of the work being done and of ways you can use your own time, talent and dollars to help.

You can create your own versions of this graphic, showing your city instead of Chicago, and pointing to lists of youth programs in your city, if someone is collecting and sharing that information.  If no one is doing this, share my articles with people at your local college and university, and with wealthy alumni. Encourage them to fund a multi-year Tutor/Mentor Connection type research and action program that involves students, faculty, alumni and the local community.  View these articles to see what's possible.

Thank you for reading.  I hope you'll connect with me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Mastodon. See links on this page.

I also invite you to make a contribution to help me pay the bills in 2025 and continue sharing this information. Visit this page. 

National Mentoring Month - Infrastructure Focus

Below is a photo from 2001 when the US Post Office issued a mentoring stamp to help celebrate and draw attention to mentoring in America.  My organization (Tutor/Mentor Connection, 1993-present) introduced it during the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago, which I began hosting in May 1994 and continued hosting every six months until May 2015.

The conference was part of an on-going effort to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reach K-12 kids in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places and help those kids through school and into jobs and careers, with the help of adults they met through these programs.

I began my volunteer involvement in 1973 when I joined the tutoring program at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago. I was matched with a 4th grade boy named Leo and we met every Tuesday after my work day ended.  We're still connected over 50 years later!

During mentoring month much of the focus will be on the "act" of mentoring, which could be workplace mentoring and could be mentoring of youth with disabilities.  

I want that to expand to focus on the infrastructure of mentoring.  I demonstrate this below.

I created the graphic below several years ago to visualize the many different reasons mentoring and/or tutoring are needed and the different types of organized programs needed to meet each category.

Below is an another graphic, showing this information in a different way.

I've posted several articles in the past few years (here, here and here) talking about building a "segmented understanding" of what types of mentoring and tutoring are needed based on "who" is being mentored.  During National Mentoring Month I urge you to read some of these.  

While the above graphics visualize the different needs of youth in America, they don't show where these kids live and/or where organized tutor/mentor programs are most needed.  I've been trying to use GIS maps since 1994 to do this.  Below is a concept map that shows my history of using maps.

Between 1993 and 2010 the Tutor/Mentor Connection was able to collect and maintain information about organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, which could be sorted by type of program (pure mentoring, tutor/mentor, pure tutoring), age group served (elementary, middle school, high school), time of day (school day, after school, evening/weekend), and location.

While we shared this information in a printed directory from 1994 to 2003 that rarely reached more than 1000 organizations (non profits, foundations, media, political, universities, etc.)  In 2004 a program locator was created that made this information available to the world. In 2008 a map-based program locator (shown above) was created that had the same search features as the 2004 program locator, but reversed the process, starting with a map of the Chicago region, then enabling a process of searching for programs and program supporters in specific zip codes, community areas or neighborhoods.

Visit this page to learn about our efforts to build the program locator and to find ideas for building your own version. 

Unfortunately, I've not been able to raise money or find partners since 2011 to systematically collect and segment information about Chicago programs or maintain the program locator directories. They are now only available as archives.  

That brings me back to National Mentoring Month.  

While most efforts will focus on the act of mentoring I hope leaders will step forward to build Tutor/Mentor Connection-type learning programs at one, or more universities in  Chicago and other urban areas, where students will duplicate the work my organization did from 1994 to 2010 and what I've tried to continue since then, through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

I urge leaders to build a segmented understanding that not only shows what types of programs are needed and where they are most needed, but shows what programs already operate in these areas and are constantly searching for volunteers and donors.  Here's another page that shows uses of geographic information systems and data. 

Use this blog, the MappingforJustice blog and the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net website as a text book to build your understanding of what a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy might be and how you might build it as part of a degree program on a college campus. 

Share what you are learning through your own blog articles and on social media so others can learn from you, just as I've been sharing so you can learn from me.  

Thanks for reading.  I hope you'll share this article with your network and connect with me on social media platforms (find links here). 

Finally, I want to give a special thank you to those who sent contributions in 2023 and in previous years to help me continue to do this work.  Please continue in 2024 and help me find a benefactor who will bring this strategy into a university. 

Visit this page to make a 2024 contribution. 

General Colin L. Powell leads January Mentor Mobilization

January is National Mentoring Month and in TV, radio and print media national celebrities like General Colin L. Powell, Grammy Award-winning R&B recording artist Usher and music icon Quincy Jones, and a variety of other celebrities will be raising attention and mobilizing volunteers and leaders to support mentoring activities throughout the country.

Follow these links to read the Press Release, see featured celebrities, and view actions that individuals, companies, civic and faith groups, can take to support volunteer-based mentoring programs throughout the country.

I've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program for more than 30 years and currently lead the Cabrini Connections program in Chicago. I strongly support this campaign and hope that the media messages will motivate more of our private and public sector leaders to spend time learning more about how they can use their leadership strategically to support the growth of volunteer-based mentoring, and tutoring, programs.

I've written about the Mentoring Month, and General Powell's leadership before. Thus, I encourage you to visit the links below to see what I mean by strategic, and how Generals should be using MAPS, to point to where tutor/mentor programs are most needed, and to point reinforcements to the programs that are already in these areas, and need consistent, flexible operating support to build and maintain long-term mentoring connections with hard-to-reach youth.

On the National Mentoring Month Page is a featured article on Drop Out Prevention. Read the articles I've posted here and here and follow the links that illustrate tutor/mentor programs as a workforce development strategy.

View the charts that show the PUSH/PULL relationship of programs that PUSH kids to make good decisions, and business strategies that link kids to jobs and PULL them through school toward jobs and careers. Read more about Mentoring as a Workforce Development Strategy here and here.

Finally, read the essay titled ROLE OF LEADERS. If the leader of your church, company, university, hospital, or community does not make a long-term commitment to use resources strategically, I think most of the media attention generated by this year's Mentoring Month will be just more money and time spent with too little results in return.

National Mentoring Month - Who Mentored You?

On December 26, 2006 I wrote this article. I've updated it as we head into the 2012 National Mentoring Month.

During January the attention of the nation will be focused on mentoring
through the 4th Annual National Mentoring Month campaign. During the month many celebrities will talk of how important a mentor has been in their lives.

A few months ago I heard a former US Attorney for Northern Illinois, Anton Valukas, talk about how his years as a mentor to 3 inner city boys was more important than the years he was the powerful US Attorney.

I've been a leader of a tutor/mentor program for more than 30 years, and I agree with how important mentoring is, to the youth we've connected with adults, and to the youth connected to mentors. I also know, that mentoring alone, is not enough to help kids living in high poverty, inner-city neighborhoods stay in school and move to jobs and careers. That's why I coined a term "Total Quality Mentoring, TQM", which describes the type of mentor-rich program we lead at Cabrini Connections in Chicago.


In a TQM program we surround youth with many adults, not just the primary one-on-one mentor, and we provide a range of learning, enrichment and skill building activities. This is a village of adults, all focused on helping raise the kids to reach jobs and careers by their mid 20s.

2011 note: Recent research based on social capital theory shows the value of expanding the network of adults and learning experiences surrounding inner city youth.

Good mentoring, regardless of the format, depends on an effective system of coaching and support for mentors. In a TQM program, that system of support requires funds to rent space, provide computers, and offer learning activities in addition to mentoring. Every tutor/mentor program in Chicago shares the same common needs. Leadership and innovative marketing strategies need to be developed to motivate donors and volunteers to support all of these programs, not just a few high profile groups.

That's why I hope that during the final days of 2006 (now 2012) you will think of who mentored you and look for ways to make a financial donation to support one or more of the programs included in the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Links list.

That's why I also hope investors, partners and donors will also support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so we can keep Tutor/Mentor Connection available to Chicago and help similar intermediary organizations grow in other cities.

My hope is that some of the lawyers and stock brokers who are making multi-million dollar bonuses this year will think of how a mentor has helped them have their success, and they will make major gifts to tutor/mentor programs, rather than the IRS, as a way of celebrating their success.

With such help some of our teens can be successful business leaders in the future. Can you help make that happen?

Thanks to everyone who has helped us connect inner-city Chicago youth with volunteer tutors and/or mentors during the past year. Your donations will help us do that again in 2012.

Focus on Youth Tutor Mentor Programs in High Poverty Areas

It's the annual January National Mentoring Month, where thousands of organizations are drawing attention to mentoring, of youth, and of adults.  If you do a Google search for National Mentoring Month, you'll find the images shown below. Mostly logos, with a mix of photos showing a mentor and mentee.   

Do web search for National Mentoring Month, then look at images

Now use "tutor/mentor"  and repeat the search. Look at the images and you'll see what's in this graphic.

We search for "tutor/mentor National Mentoring Month"

On this image I've circled graphics from posts I've made over the past 10-15 years, which focus on marketing and resource building strategies needed to develop well-organized, non-school, mentor-rich programs that reach kids in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

In both sets of graphics, you can click into a web site to see how it is used. Maybe you'll find maps and graphics like mine on the sites of many of the mentoring programs shown, but usually that's not the case.

I think the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), which I created in 1993 and now lead via the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, is fairly unique in how it hosts and information base and shares ideas focused on building the programs needed to make on-going and long-term connections with youth possible in more places.

One of the graphics you'll see is this one, that shows the Logic Model, driving why the Tutor/Mentor Connection was created.

From the left -

a) youth in high poverty areas benefit from support of mentors and extra, non-family adults

b) because of the size of big cities like Chicago, organized programs are needed to facilitate weekly involvement of volunteer tutors and mentors with inner city youth

c) using maps of Chicago and other cities, with demographic overlays showing indicators of need, you can see that there are many areas, and thousands of youth, who would benefit from well-organized programs.

Thus, leaders are needed to help such programs start and grow in all of these places.

Take some time to view this presentation. If you agree with the logic, support the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, and form a team to duplicate these ideas and strategies in your own city.

Expanding Network Of Adults... by on Scribd

I've been creating visual presentations like this since the late 1990s.  On this page you can find a complete list of the presentations I've created, along with links to places where you can view them.

I wrote a post last week under the "What the heck am I doing?" title, which contained a few of my graphics. To really understand what I've been trying to do,  you need to spend time looking through my complete library of presentations and past blog articles.

Here's another way to get involved.

On this page you can find visualizations created by interns between 2006 and 2015 to communicate ideas in my blog articles, web sites and these PDF presentations.

Anyone can duplicate this!

Anyone can use my presentations for personal learning, or to stimulate a group discussion.

Use these ideas.

As you go through January, and the next 12 months, I encourage you to use these ideas and resources to help build and sustain on-going, mentor-rich programs in all high poverty areas of your community. 

My hope is that some of  you will reach out to help me update and maintain this resource, and pay the bills. Click here if you'd like to do that.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN if you'd like to connect and start a conversation. I look forward to helping you dig through this extensive library.

National Mentoring Month - Time for Reflection

During the month of January local and national organizations will celebrate mentoring in media and events held throughout the country.  Visit the National Mentoring Month web site to learn about national events. Visit the Illinois Mentoring Partnership web site to learn about events taking place in the Chicago area.

While all of the attention is focused on mentoring, I think it's a good time to dig deeper, to  understand the different types of mentoring strategies that exists, and the different youth and adults who are the intended beneficiaries of mentoring. Furthermore, let's once again look at roles volunteers can take beyond being a mentor, or without being a mentor.

Let's look at this graphic first:

All youth and adults would benefit from mentors helping them journey through life. However, much research shows that youth living in high poverty, segregated, and/or isolated, areas need more help to move from first grade toward their adult lives.  Here's a concept map that illustrates this differently. People living in more affluent areas have more resources to help them overcome challenges.  This page on the YEARUP web site illustrates this "opportunity divide" effectively.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, started in 1993, and through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, started in 2011, I focus on youth living in high poverty areas of big cities like Chicago, where a wide range of mentoring, tutoring and learning supports are needed, in the lives of thousands of young people.   Ideally, such programs should reach youth early and stay connected for many years, if the end result is a life out of poverty with a network of people to help achieve that goal.

The above graphic illustrates this long term commitment.  It shows kids I connected with when they were in middle school, who I'm still connected with nearly 20 years later. Several have college degrees, including advanced degrees. These are just a few of the teens who were part of the tutor/mentor programs I led between 1975 and 2011.

While some children might join a tutor/mentor program when in elementary school others might not have access to this type of support until much older. Many mentoring formats focus on youth age  16-24 who have been involved in the juvenile justice system, or have dropped out of high school before graduation.  Such program require many different types of support to help a young person get his/her life back on track. 

Other mentoring formats, such as school based mentoring, are not structured for long-term connectivity. Many forms of involvement are "motivational speakers" or short duration classes. These are all part of a mix of needed services, but without at least one organization in a child's life offering a long-term support system, are the others enough to overcome the challenges poverty places in front of kids and families?

Regardless of when a tutor/mentor program first connects with a youth, the responsibility should be that the program, or other partners, provide a continuum of age appropriate learning, mentoring, experiences and work and skill-building opportunities that result in youth having the skills, education, network and opportunities needed to find work and build careers beyond the grasps of poverty.  Here's a concept map that illustrates this differently, showing that at each age groups youth need a variety of supports. Few tutor/mentor programs can provide all of these. 

Above is another set of graphics to stimulate your thinking. The middle one includes a map showing high poverty neighborhoods in Chicago.   It also compares operating a tutor/mentor program, or being a teacher, to Thomas Edison. Each child is different, and constantly changing. Thus, leaders, volunteers, parents and educators must be constantly learning ..and experimenting, in order to offer the greatest benefit. 

The question we should be asking ourselves, if our focus is on youth living in poverty, is "How can we fill all high poverty neighborhoods with organized, age specific programs, that can build and sustain long-term connections with children as the grow to become adults?    How do we pay for it? Where do we attract and retain talented leaders? How do we keep volunteers involved for multiple years?  

These are just a few of many questions to be asked an answered...in many places. For instance, of all of the organizations that offer mentoring, which focus on children living in high poverty poverty areas? Which have long-term strategies? Do cities have  maps showing what neighborhoods are being reached with existing programs? Do they use that information to expand the number of kids reach every year?

Furthermore, who's providing the money and talent to collect, organize, analyze and share this information on a continuous basis?  

So what role do volunteers, and people who don't  have the time to meet directly, and regularly, with youth, take to make this happen?  Here's one presentation titled "Mentor Role in a Larger Strategy".  I hope you'll look at it.

Mentor Role in Larger Youth Development Strategy by Daniel F. Bassill

The questions I've posted here just scratch the surface of the questions that might be asked.  Visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor Web library and read the research articles. Visit this section and read the blog articles.

During this month, and throughout the year, I invite volunteers, program leaders, media, donors and policy makers to dig into this and other articles I've posted since 2005 on this blog, and in my library on Scribd.com.  Do a Google search for "tutor mentor", then look at the images. You'll find dozens more intended to stimulate your thinking.

Build a deeper  understanding of what types of  programs serve the different needs of youth from different age groups and different social/economic backgrounds. Talk about proactive roles business, volunteers and donors can take to help strong, long-lasting tutor/mentor programs reach youth in more places. Create a "learning organization' where many are involved in this effort.

Every child is special. Every child deserves a support system that offers hope and opportunity. Some have this when they are born. Others won't have this unless many adults who don't live in poverty make a consistent, heroic, on-going effort to make such supports available. 

If you're writing similar articles on your own blog, or host on-line forums where people are discussing these questions, use the comment box to share a link to your web sites or forums. I hope there are many leading this discussion.

Help me continue to write and share articles like this. Visit my FUND T/MI page and add your support. 

Support Mentoring in Your Community

During January National Mentoring Month a variety of national events will attempt to draw greater attention to mentoring strategies in different cities and states. Visit the Mentoring Month web site and see a list of 10 things you can do to support mentoring.

Then take a look at this graphic and past articles I've written about National Mentoring Month.

Start a discussion in your company, faith group, family and social network, using maps like this to focus attention on all of the high poverty neighborhoods where mentor-rich programs are needed to help youth connect with people, ideas and opportunities beyond what is available in their own community.

Start a discussion about ways you can help raise dollars and recruit talent to support programs throughout the city, or in different zip codes. While there are some really great and well known programs, even the largest only serve a small fraction of all of the k-16 youth in Chicago or any other city who need such programs in their lives.

If you don't have a group to connect and share your ideas, join groups I host on Facebook, Linked in or at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com

While we need to recognize and celebrate the role mentors are taking, we need to think of ways to support the infrastructure that enables long-term connections of mentors and youth to take place.

General Powell does a great job as spokesperson for Mentoring. Let's help him build the logistics needed to make great mentoring programs available in more places.



During January start this discussion. Keep it going throughout the year. Next January celebrate what you have accomplished and build new activities to add greater support in 2014.

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.

Mentoring as Part of Larger Strategy

I've led this effort
since 1993

I'm updating the Tutor/Mentor web library this month, in advance of the site moving to an upgraded platform. I found a link to an article by Gary Walker, president of Public/Private Ventures, titled "Mentoring, Policy and Politics.  After I read it I posted my own thinking on the T/MC web site. I'm reposting it here:

---------

This Public/Private Ventures article's titled, "Mentoring, Policy and Politics", written by Gary Walker. It focuses on the promise and the reality of mentoring.

The final sentence of this report, in a section titled “Future Directions” states “Infiltration, not consolidation, is where mentoring’s greatest usefulness lies in the years ahead.”

Over the past 40 years my understanding of mentoring or tutoring, as a stand-alone strategy have evolved to where I understand these as part of a “comprehensive” or “long-term” strategy, that reaches youth in high risk neighborhoods, such as in inner-city Chicago, New York, Detroit, etc. , and supports youth in many ways that are aimed at helping these kids be entering jobs and careers by their mid 20s.

As I’ve built a database of Chicago organizations that offer various forms of youth development, tutoring and/or mentoring, I’ve divided our database by different categories, such as pure mentoring, pure tutoring/homework help, or a combination tutor/mentor program.

In each category, programs self-select, telling us what type of program they are. As you look at the web sites of the various organizations, it’s easy to see that there is a great variation in what programs do, how they describe themselves, and how they integrate mentoring, and the adult volunteer, into their actions.

This is Total Quality
Mentoring vision

If you think of a wheel, which we use in many of our graphics, the hub of the Tutor/Mentor wheel is a strategy which reaches kids early, and sticks with kids until they are in jobs. The spokes of this wheel represent the many different types of organizational strategies that are present in Chicago, ranging from tutoring, mentoring, to arts, sports, recreation, workforce development, tutor/mentoring, etc.

By sharing information about poverty, high school drop out rates, the changes in the workforce, youth violence, etc. we build a case for longer term strategies that combine many different age appropriate supports, in individual programs. By helping organizations recruit volunteers, find dollars, and find networking and training opportunities, we help programs learn from each other, and hopefully, move toward the hub of this wheel, so that ultimately many program strategies converge around mentoring as part of a comprehensive, long-term workforce development strategy and public policy.

I encourage you to read the P/PV report with this goal in mind. Where does your mentoring strategy fit in this long term goal? How does your funding strategy support the operations and constant improvement of programs that need to stay in a community for decades, not two or three years?

As I read this report, it became clear to me that the tutor/mentor strategy I’ve been advocating is different from the mainstream views of mentoring, and. why I’m not connecting strategically with the national leaders of the mentoring movement.

In this report, Walker writes about how the promotion of the BBBS brand of mentoring, based on 1995 P/PV research, creates the illusion that “volunteers can transform the lives of youth” and that we don’t need big government. Big Brothers Big Sisters is the brand name and face of this publicly accepted form of the mentoring movement, and has grown dramatically as a result.

Walker writes about how mentoring has earned its growing support because it has “results”, “referring to P/PV’s 1995 impact study of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program, which produced evidence that mentoring had positive impacts on a range of important elements in a youth’s life.”

Yet, in the report, Walker concedes that the BBBS results research are limited. “Though the impact findings are real and impressive, in fact they apply only to the 18 months after mentoring began … thus “we have no scientific evidence that mentoring turns lives around.”

He also shares that it’s not the most at-risk youth who are likely to be in traditional BBBS type mentoring programs. He writes, “Mentoring’s strengths, based on experience and data, are generally in the 8-through 13-year age range, and concentrated on 9-11-year olds.” As Walker states “They are youth with responsible parents or teachers who want to connect them with mentors”, not the youth who are most in need of mentors and more extensive adult support.

I’ve recognized this limit in the mentoring research for a long time, as well as the need for mentoring, as part of a larger strategy, to be reaching kids in high poverty areas. At one point, I coned the term “Total Quality Mentoring (TQM)” to give a name to this larger and more comprehensive form of mentoring, borrowing from a business concept of Total Quality Management.

Walker’s report recognized the challenges of reaching this higher risk youth population. He talks about the challenges of recruiting volunteers to reach this more at risk population, and points to programs, such as Friends of the Children, in Portland, Oregon, who recognize that “These kids need help and support, lots of it, and they’re going to need it for a long time.”

Walker's conclusion does not recommend a one-size fits all national mentoring policy, rather, he encourages a strategy of “infiltration” where mentoring is a core component of many different strategies related to youth outcomes.

This is where we align, and I hope we can find ways to do that strategically.

I focus on "programs", or "organized, intentional structures", where the one-on-one mentor is one of many volunteers surrounding kids, and where the program itself, with its staff, facility, technology, are part of the glue that keeps kids and volunteers connected to each other for many years, or longer.

In such programs, the effort to engage the volunteer as leader and capacity builder is critically important to the long-term impact of the program on the youth. It’s just as important as is the direct involvement of the volunteer with the youth.

In fact, this is symbiotic. A strong connection of a youth and volunteer can lead a volunteer to become a stronger supporter of the mentoring program, and the youth.

I also differentiate between the needs of kids in huge cities, vs smaller communities, as well as the challenges of building strong and long-lasting programs in big cities. New York City has 1 million children in its public school system. LA has 720,000. Chicago has 420,000.

This creates much more complicated problems of connecting and staying connected to kids than do cities with 25,000 or fewer school children. This KidsCount site is just one where you can find more information showing the growing gaps between kids in urban poverty and others.

define mentoring by who
is being served

I feel research on tutoring and mentoring needs to segment the differences in mentoring, mentoring program design, availability and access, and infrastructure by the size of the city and the demographics of the population, as well as the availability and distribution of programs and resources to support programs in different zip codes of big cities. It's not enough to have a great program in 60640 and not in 60619 because these are two different sections of Chicago. (see PDF titled "Defining Terms".

Finally, I focus on mentoring kids from 1st grade to careers. While the P/PV article talked about "the village it takes to raise a child" the BBBS model only takes the child for a few years and the BBBS research only showed impact after 18 months.

The nation’s workforce is calling on schools to produce more work ready young people, and the nation cannot afford to leave out minority kids living in big city neighborhoods. Thus, when I talk about mentoring, I'm talking about building a network of adults who are still connected to a kid, through a program, when that kid is beginning to look for a job.

Reading this policy brief made it clear to me that although I stand in the same crowd as the mentoring movement’s leaders, I’m on the edge, and am just as much in a youth development and workforce development crowd.

However, as leaders like Gary Walker point to future directions, we begin to align. There are numerous organizations beyond Big Brothers Big Sisters who offer various forms of mentoring and integrate volunteerism into the core strategies of their organizations. Search on the tutor/mentor category in the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and you’ll find many that are headed in this direction. In this slideshare pdf you’ll see how the Cabrini Connections program (which I led from 1993 to 2011)  integrated mentoring and tutoring into a long term Success Steps strategy.

I have not found much research that supports the type of long-term mentoring I'm talking about. However, the individual stories told by various tutor/mentor programs who have links on the web site, and our own personal experience support this broader strategy.

One of the things this article has prompted me to do is search via Google for organizations that include “comprehensive, long-term” in their program descriptions, or in their research reports.

If you integrate mentoring into your youth development, or career development program, or if you do research or write articles on this topic, please introduce yourself and submit your web site to be included on the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org site. If your company or foundation supports this type of strategy, we’d like to include you as well.

As we connect more and more leaders who integrate mentoring into larger strategies, we move from the corner of the conversation, to the middle, and then the lead. Ultimately, this can become the policy that is supported by government, business and philanthropy, and which leads more kids from poverty to 21st century jobs and careers.

What do you think? What’s your long-term vision? Do you share this on a blog? Or on your website? Can you join us?

---- end 2007 article ----

I feel the same now as I did when I write this in 2007.  Many organizations, including BBBS have added a site-based model in the past few years. Many were creating eMentor and eTutor strategis prior to the Covid19 pandemic of 2020, and more have moved in this direction since then. Many support youth for many years, but still too few.

See more graphics like
this in other blog articles

As we move to the future we still need to figure how we reach k-12 youth in every high poverty area of Chicago and other places with long-term, mentor-rich support programs that help these kids move through school and into adult lives, with an expanded network of peers and adults who help them along the way.

I've been sharing ideas like this since the 1990s and began using this blog in 2005. Thus, if you browse past articles you'll see many that focus on the strategies needed to build mentor-rich programs in more places.

I'm still just a whisper in the wilderness, with too few reading and responding to these ideas. However, if you share your own  understanding, on your blog or web site, we become a louder voice.

I look forward to connecting with all who are interested in this issue. I'm on these social media spaces. Let's connect.

Connecting those you know to tutor/mentor programs

We're nearing the end of National Mentoring Month. Now, what do we do for the next 11 months to assure that more kids who need mentors and would benefit from being part of comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, are given that opportunity?

I don't know what the budget was for the National Mentoring Month advertising, but to get high profile celebrities, and to have PSAs in media all over the country, represents an expense beyond what any single tutor/mentor program, or any citywide network has.

Furthermore, I don't know what impact the Mentoring Month campaign has because I'm not sure how often the person speaking about his/her mentoring experience is pointing to the place where he/she volunteers, with a goal of drawing new volunteers and new donors to that place.

I do know that in tutor/mentor programs around Chicago and in every city there are great stories taking place every day. Here's a blog on the Cabrini Connections site that introduces you to teens in our art club and shows work they and volunteers have been doing.

In January I pointed to a blog discussion where people were discussing the relative merits of story telling vs metrics as a fund raising strategy.

I believe in story telling and believe that if the thousands of men and women around the country who have been mentors, or have been helped by mentors, would tell their story consistently, they would attract more attention to tutoring/mentoring in general. If they go a step further and provide contact information for the place or places where they have been involved, the story telling can serve as advertising, to draw volunteers and donors to those places.

If they go a step further and say "where I was involved is not the only place in my city where kids need help, or the only program where people are offering tutoring/mentoring" then they can point to resources like the Tutor/Mentor Connection's Chicago Program Locator (archive since 2020) , which enable volunteers and donors and parents to search by zip code to locate programs, and to differentiate those programs between the age group served, as well as the type of tutoring and/or mentoring they offer.

I've created a Make the Connection PDF to illustrate this role of our volunteers and alumni. If more of the people who have been enriched by the tutor/mentor experience, talk about the program where they were involved, and the need that program has for volunteers and donors, the weight of these stories can become 12-months a year advertising that increases support for existing programs and helps new programs grow.

If you can incorporate the ideas of this PDF into a YouTube video, or other forms of training, please do, then send me a copy that I can post on our web site.

President-Elect Obama Promotes Mentoring

The December 19, 2008 edition of The New York Times included a public service advertisement showing President-elect Barack Obama encouraging readers to "Be the change: mentor a child."

The advertisement is a call to action from ServiceNation and National Mentoring Month partners - The Harvard School of Public Health, MENTOR and the Corporation for National and Community Service - and is timed to coincide with January's National Mentoring Month activities. The call to action also is benefiting from the leadership of Be the Change, Civic Enterprises, City Year, and the Points of Light Institute.

Newsweek magazine has also agreed to print the Obama ad pro bono, and additional publications are being approached to do the same.

See the full New York Times story.

On the National Mentoring Month web site, a section points to 10 Things You Can Do In January. Number 10 is Make a Donation to a Mentoring Program in your Community.



I'd like to see the nation get a jump on the January campaign by emphasizing point Number 10 in December, when donors are making holiday gift decisions and year-end tax decisions. Without building the funding infrastructure of volunteer-based mentoring and tutoring the PR campaign will send new volunteers into battle as ill equipped as we've sent soldiers in war in Iraq.

Furthermore, I'd like to encourage people from around the country to think of the meaning of the charts and maps on this blog. What are all of the ways we need to work together, using our time, dollars, talent, and the leadership of people like President-Elect Obama, to create a infrastructure that would support on-going, mentor-rich programs in high poverty neighborhoods of every city in America?

We can't find this solution until we get more and more citizens involved. With President-Elect Obama's commitment to service, and out-of-the box thinking, we have a great opportunity.

National Mentoring Month - Who Mentored You?

During January the attention of the nation will be focused on mentoring
through the 4th Annual National Mentoring Month campaign. During the month many celebrities will talk of how important a mentor has been in their lives.

A few months ago I heard a former US Attorney for Northern Illinois, Anton Valukas, talk about how his years as a mentor to 3 inner city boys was more important than the years he was the powerful US Attorney.

I've been a leader of a tutor/mentor program for more than 30 years, and I agree with how important mentoring is, to the youth we've connected with adults, and to the youth connected to mentors. I also know, that mentoring alone, is not enough to help kids living in high poverty, inner-city neighborhoods stay in school and move to jobs and careers. That's why I coined a term "Total Quality Mentoring, TQM", which describes the type of mentor-rich program we lead at Cabrini Connections in Chicago.

In a TQM program we surround youth with many adults, not just the primary one-on-one mentor, and we provide a range of learning, enrichment and skill building activities. This is a village of adults, all focused on helping raise the kids to reach jobs and careers by their mid 20s.

Good mentoring, regardless of the format, depends on an effective system of coaching and support for mentors. In a TQM program, that system of support requires funds to rent space, provide computers, and offer learning activities in addition to mentoring.

That's why I hope that during the final days of 2006 you will think of who
mentored you and look for ways to make a financial donation to support Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, or one of the other volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago or in other cities.

My hope is that some of the lawyers and stock brokers who are making multi-million dollar bonuses this year will think of how a mentor has helped them have their success, and they will make major gifts to tutor/mentor programs, rather than the IRS, as a way of celebrating their success.

With such help some of our teens can be successful business leaders in the future. Can you help make that happen?

Thanks to everyone who has helped us connect inner-city Chicago youth with volunteer tutors and/or mentors during the past year. Your donations will help us do that again in 2007.

Final notes from 1/24-25 National Mentoring Summit

I received an email from MENTOR today announcing that photos, videos and workshop presentations are now available at this link.

I’ve been working on a final recap expressing some of my observations. I wrote here and here showing some of the people I met and comments I heard.

President Obama is coming to Chicago this Friday in response to the shooting of 15 year old Hadiya Pendleton. Thus, I hope some leaders will read what I share below, and browse some of the other articles I’ve written, and develop comprehensive, long-term youth development strategies in high poverty neighborhoods of the city and suburbs. This is not a problem that will go away after the high profile attention of this past two weeks.

As I listened to Congressman Elijah Cummings, MD, talk about mentors in his life, saying “I’ve had one mentor since I was 16;” and “We must do our part so they can deliver their gifts to the world;” I though of my own mentee, Leo, who I met in 1973 when he was in 4th grade. We’ve stayed connected ever since then. A few years ago we met on Thanksgiving morning at a Starbucks in Chicago and passed a video camera back and forth recording how important each of us had been to the life of the other.

Lack of market-based data
While many workshops focused on data and evaluation and accountability, I was struck by how little data was used in keynote presentations to show the distribution of programs and resources in different parts of the country. Furthermore other than showing a commitment to build the public will, I did not see an outline of a year-round strategy, or the engagement of partners from many different sectors to support the advertising frequency and reach needed to gain and sustain public and private sector support for a decade or longer. I did not hear anyone talking about building a distribution plan to make programs available in more places.

This does not surprise me. In my frequent Google searches I can’t find sites that focus on this the way I have done since 1993.

Use of Maps

In the main sessions of the Summit I saw lots of story telling, but too little data showing where mentoring is most needed, or where programs are already available. What numbers of kids need mentoring, based on age, demographics, economics, or other indicators?

If the data were being collected, it can also be mapped. No maps were used in the keynote sessions, or in workshops I attended, to show what populations of young people MENTOR seeks to serve, based on poverty, school performance, violence, or any other indicator. Such information is being mapped in many places and could be used on a national level to focus attention on areas with greatest need. The New York City initiative could have included maps in its presentation but did not.

Maps could also be used to demonstrate level of program distribution in these areas, and to highlight under-served areas. Without this information it’s difficult to lead any kind of on-going effort intended to reach kids in more areas, and to know if there is a growth in program reach from year to year.

Unclear priorities
New forms of mentoring, such as those targeted at adopted youth and youth with special learning needs (ADHD, etc)are exciting. However, they make the target for mentoring a mixed bowl of fruit. I think that in most forms of mentoring, our goal is to help youth grow up to be good citizens and productive adults (is it?). However, youth from different social/economic backgrounds have different levels of support already available in their lives. I think maps could help clarify the areas of the country where kids need the most help, while other forms of visual organization can still show that kids from many different backgrounds have a need for specialized forms of mentoring and extra adult support.

Marketing and Year-Round Strategy
I also did not find any workshops that showed strategies, or talked about building strategies, that would support year-round efforts intended to reach some of the goals of MENTOR, such as building public will, or increasing the number of volunteers, or the number of dollars supporting tutor/mentor programs. While National Mentoring Month is in January, events need to be taking place in other months. National Mentoring Month is led by the Harvard School of Public Health, not MENTOR. Perhaps other events throughout the year could become part of a year-round effort to draw attention and mobilize resources for mentoring programs and networks in various cities and states.

Expand Role of Media
With the need for year-round strategies that mobilize resources for programs in different neighborhoods and cities, I feel the media also have an expanded responsibility. The PBS American Graduate effort and the NBC Education Nation campaign are two of many media campaigns that focus on different parts of the same overall problem, but seem to compete for attention. If every media outlet in each city included a "take action" section on their web site, encouraging companies, faith groups, universities and individuals to do something today -- volunteer, donate, partner, etc. --, every story could be part of a larger on-going effort to build public will and draw needed operating resources and talent to all tutor/mentor programs in each city.

MENTOR could put together a calendar showing all of the different media events, and work to have them point to the MENTOR web site and other sites where people can become involved in local programs. As media become more focused on generating resources, not just attention, I’d like to see the September American Graduate and Graduation Nation events move into late August, or have a build up that starts in late August, to have greater impact on volunteer recruitment in the first few weeks of Sept. Programs have screening, matching and other work to do with a volunteer before they are matched with a youth, which could last until mid October, which means the first six weeks of the school year is lost and for some kids who get into the wrong peer group, they may be lost forever.

In the same line of thinking, National Mentoring Month could have a December launch, intended to influence more charitable support of mentoring programs, not just the intermediary organizations.

Need better data collection tools
I’ve been trying to automate the collection of information about tutor/mentor programs since 2004. I’ve also been working to create maps that show who attends a conference and the composition of my network. I’m doing this with volunteers, but learning from some of the brightest people in the world through forums like the Education Technology and Media MOOC #ETMOOC at http://www.etmooc.org

Tracking impact of our campaigns and showing flow of attention and resources directly to local programs would be a useful tool. I created this graphic to illustrate the idea. Can we develop tacking system that automatically captures “opens” on different web sites resulting from a “campaign” such as the Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska Coaches Recruitment Competition?


The Coaches Competition organized by Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska is pretty unique and could be duplicated in other states if the leaders and resources were available. Lots of work was involved in organizing this. Playbook of the three states organizing this is available.

However, this is not the only effort involving celebrities and athletes. I know sports organizations are involved in other cities, like Memphis Grizzlies Foundation is in Memphis. A national effort is the United Way Team NFL which has a goal of 1 million mentors. 300 United Ways involved. Another national effort is the Corporate Mentoring Challenge

It would be great to have someone keeping a master list of such campaigns. A map showing colleges or sports teams with mentor mobilization campaigns could be useful. A map showing businesses with strategies for mobilizing and supporting volunteer-based mentoring programs would be useful.

It would be even better if every city had a master database of tutor/mentor programs that various campaigns were using throughout the year to point volunteers and donors to, and that were being used to show the effect such campaigns were having on the distribution of programs in places where they are needed.

I wrote down many of these thoughts as I attended workshops at the Summit this year and in 2012. I could only attend a few of the workshops and probably won't find time to go through all of the archives to learn what else was presented in other workshops and planning sessions. However, I did not see any presentations outlining tipping points, or theory of change, focusing on strategies that build and sustain mentor-rich programs in high poverty areas of big cities for the many years it takes for a youth to go from first grade to first job.

Perhaps these were being shared in workshops I did not attend, or are on web sites of some of the organizations partnering with MENTOR to host the Summit. If they are, please share links so I can expand my own library of strategies and collaborations. As we learn more of what works in different parts of the country we can use blogs, MOOCs, Facebook, Linked in and other on-line media to share these ideas so they can work in more places.

I hope that by sharing my ideas others will be stimulated to share their own thinking on blogs like this or on wikis and web pages and that we can connect and gain greater attention to such strategies as we move from this year’s Summit to next year’s summit.

If you’re writing on topics like this please share a link to your web site in the comment box or submit a link to the library at http://tinyurl.com/TMC-Library