Following Bad News in Media with "Rest of Story"

If you read the Chicago Tribune on February 7, 2014 you might have seen this story. Note where it says "there have been at least 11 other shootings withing four blocks since June 2011". Have you seen any marches, or editorials, or visits by the Mayor mobilizing resources to change the conditions that cause these acts of violence?

I created a "Rest of the Story" strategy in 1993 when I was launching the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Recognizing that I had no advertising dollars to draw regular attention to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, I felt that a strategy that followed media stories could build public awareness and lead more people to be involved in helping mentor-rich programs grow in more places.

On the Mapping for Justice blog you can see many past map stories. On this section of this blog you can see more.

I think map stories like this could be created by student advocates, working in middle and high schools, or in faith groups and local youth organizations. The week #3 topic on the Deeper Learning MOOC #DLMOOC has focused on internships engaging youth in real world learning.

Imagine a steam of student/volunteers taking ownership of this process.

Once a student recognizes that a new story has been given feature attention in the local media, meaning thousands of people have been reached by the story, the address for where the incident happened is given to a map maker, who uses the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and other on-line resources to create a series of maps.

This map shows where the shooting took place, at the corner of Pratt Ave and Clark Street in the Rogers Park area of Chicago's North Side. It also shows demographic information, locations of poorly performing schools (from 2008) and locations of any non-school tutor/mentor programs in the area (green stars) based on available data in the Tutor/Mentor library.

This map uses data provided by the Social IMPACT Research Center at Heartland Alliance to show the number of youth age 6 to 17 below the poverty line in each Chicago Community area. While the map only shows one area of poverty concentration above 25% it shows nearly 6,000 youth in the three surrounding community areas who might benefit from being part of well-organized, mentor-rich non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs.

This next map shows assets in the area, such as banks, universities, hospitals, faith groups, etc. who should have comprehensive strategies in place to reduce poverty, and violence, in the area, because they share the geography. They are part of the neighborhood.

A team of youth and volunteers could create maps, and create a story like this, post it on a blog as I have done, then use social media to demand that the adult leaders in the community come together to make more and better youth programs available. As they do this they can point to information in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC library that can be used to help innovate new strategies to support these programs.

They can also point to online learning events, such as the Deeper Learning MOOC that is taking place now.

They can even organize their own GooglePlus community and learning MOOC to share ideas of ways youth can be leaders in drawing attention to problems in their communities, and in drawing people together to learn new ways to solve those problems.

As they do this they can learn to create maps such as this one used to analyze participation in the Deeper Learning MOOC. If you zoom into this map you'll see that very few people from the Chicago region are involved. If you look at the map showing participation in past Tutor/Mentor Conferences, you'll see that very few people from business, philanthropy, media and/or government are involved. Future blog articles and outreach can target these groups so that over time, more and more people who need to be involved in helping youth in the community are participating in a wide range of actions.

Who could lead this effort? A map of Catholic schools supported by the Big Shoulders Fund shows schools in the Rogers Park area where teams of students, working with volunteer support, could create articles like this. Any of the Chicago Public Schools in the area could also support such activities as part of service learning, or as part of deeper learning and internships.

If this Rest of the Story activity is adopted in schools throughout the Chicago region, and in other cities, the neighborhood can unleash a new generation of talent and leadership needed to draw consistent attention to a problem that only gets random coverage in traditional media. It can unleash a new generation of leaders who understand how the Internet can be used for network building, learning and collective actions.

I posted this story on Scribd at this link. You can see fifty other stories I've posted since October 2011. Collectively these have been read over 80,000 readers. Imagine how many more readers there might be if there were collections of "Rest of the Story" articles posted on hundreds of sites, created by young people and adults who want to turn bad news into better news.

What if. Looking at past. Looking forward.

A main part of the strategy that I launched in 1993 when we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection was an effort to draw more consistent media attention to places in Chicago where news stories were showing "bad things happening" to kids.  I used maps and my database of youth tutor/mentor programs to create story-maps like the one at the left. Unfortunately, this was before the Internet, and too few people ever saw these.

For today's article I want to jump from 1993 to 2005, and an article that I wrote, titled "A Tutor/Mentor Program is a Place where Idealism meets Reality."  Below is that article. I've highlighted some key passages. 

--------------- start 2005 --------------------

I was only able to attend the O-net conference for half a day Saturday. However, I read through all of the summary reports and blogs this morning. I hosted a conversation on Saturday, focused on creating a group of active o-net members who work to draw people from universities into o-net conversations, with the goal of recruiting resources to support o-net projects.

As I said after Friday's day-long session, I'm really impressed with the talent of the people who are participating in the conference, and who have posted introductions at www.omidyar.net. One person I talked to yesterday was a PhD student at Purdue, who is organizing information intended to be used to help connect people doing good work with resource providers. Another person was a technologist who had great ideas of creating alternative currencies that would encourage people to share talent with each other. A third was a women with an idea of creating visual databases to map assets.

I was really inspired by the Peace Tiles project. I hope we can duplicate this in Chicago tutor/mentor programs and connect our kids with kids in African and on other continents.

When I read one of the blogs, one person was questioning whether or not O-net was just a lot of talk, or if it was stimulating action (providing resources for O-net members to do their various projects). I'm hoping that my participation accelerates the rate at which people help each other, or draw new resources into o-net that end up helping members of the community do their work.

However, until this happens it is idealism within a world where the daily papers remind us of reality. A few weeks ago I did a Mind Map of the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Today I did another. I found a really great story written by Mary Schmich, one of my favorite writers, telling how people had responded to an earlier story about a computer center in Cabrini-Green being flooded, with all computers destroyed. Because of her first story, people provided new computers, and everything else needed to get this site up and running again. That demonstrates the power of the media.

However, in the same section of the Tribune Metro section was a story about a boy being fatally shot at a playground on the far South side of Chicago. There was another story on the same page about a Muslim teen center re opening, after being closed since 2003. These neighborhoods don't have a feature writer of the Chicago Tribune, or SunTimes, writing regular stories about life in these neighborhoods. Most of the times they get in the news is when something bad happens.

My mind map linked these stories. Every time I read a story about Cabrini-Green, written by Mary Schmich, I just wish she'd end with "and this is just one neighborhood of Chicago where kids live in poverty and need extra help with volunteers, donors, technologist, etc." (and provide a link to web sites that people could use to learn about other places where volunteers, donors and technology are needed).

If she and other reporters were doing this regularly, maybe people would have been helping the Muslim teen center get computers, and maybe the boy shot on a playground (or the shooter) would have been inside sitting at a computer rather than out on the street where something terrible happened.

When I sit with my friends at O-net and talk about ideas, it is with an urgency of putting these ideas to work to help more kids in cities like Chicago have safe places where they can gather to learn, be mentored, have access to computers and the world around them. The reality is that while we talk of great ideas, we are losing kids to the streets and to poverty.

Maybe I cannot convince the media to consistently tell the rest of the story when they write their stories about individual tragedies or triumphs, but maybe I can enlist a few technologist at O-Net to help me create a map gallery that would show where negative news happens and where volunteers and donors are needed. If hundreds of friends at communities like o-net were to take on the same goal, we might create a much larger public involvement and flow of resources to every place in the world where good people are trying to do good work to help people who need extra help.

What about you? Can you help?

--------- end 2005 article ---------------

Since 2005 I've created a presentation, and many articles, like these, showing this "Rest of the Story" idea and how students and volunteers from schools throughout Chicago, and other places,  could be creating their own stories, modeled after the ones I've been doing.

Below is a presentation showing this strategy:

Rest of the story: A Strategy to Draw Attention and Resources to Youth Serving Organizations from Daniel Bassill

This continues to be missing from media thinking.  This week WTTW shared an article showing the effectiveness of Chicago Youth Programs, which I had included among featured programs in this 2019 article. 

I think it's wonderful that Chicago Youth Program gets this attention.  However, I just wish every story would end with something saying, "This is just one of many youth programs in Chicago who need constant help to do good work.  They all need help.  Look at the list hosted by the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and get to know others".  

I launched this strategy in 1993. I launched this blog in 2005, so the article I pointed to was one of the first that I wrote.  Today, in July 2022, we still have the same problems, plus new ones.  Getting people on social media and traditional media to connect "bad news" to "idea libraries" and then to places where time, talent and dollars are needed to change conditions, still is my purpose for writing these articles.

I thank you for reading and invite you to share this, and your own version.  

Violence in Chicago. The Rest of the Story

Below is a screen shot from today's Chicago SunTimes, of a story about the high homicide rate in the 11th Police District of Chicago. The map shows where this district is in the city and shows that high levels of violence are mostly in the SW and NE side of the district, along with a section just East of Garfield Park.

Since 1993 when starting the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC)  in Chicago I've tried to help comprehensive, non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in all high poverty areas. I've maintained a database of such programs since then and developed what I call "The Rest of the Story" strategy to draw attention to programs in neighborhoods featured in local newspapers because of bad things that happen there.  

So today, I created a second graphic, using the SunTimes map, along with a screen shot from a Tutor/Mentor Program map that I launched in 2016.  It's shown below.

You can find my Chicago area map and my list of programs in this blog article.  I zoomed into the same area as shown on the SunTimes map, then created a screenshot.  On my map I show seven green icons, representing youth serving programs. Enlarge my graphic and you can see their names. 

It looks like there is only one youth organization, The Off The Street club in the lower left section and none in the upper right. There's a YMCA along Holman Avenue near Augusta, just outside of the high violence area in the NE corner of the map.  There are three programs in the SE part of the district and one to the far East.  

In 2018 I  used data from the Heartland Alliance to create a set of maps showing the number of high poverty youth age 6-17 living in each community area. The image below shows the West side of Chicago, including the 11th Police District.  There are about 9500 high poverty kids in the area  (and about 20,000 in total). The percent shown in the blue boxes represents what percent that number is of the total youth population in the area. 

I first created this report in 2011, so the numbers shown in yellow boxes are from then. The blue boxes are from 2018, thus you can see changes in population.

Last month I posted a story using the map at the left, emphasizing that commuters using Chicago's expressways or trains to come and go from the LOOP to the suburbs are riding right past high poverty neighborhoods.  

I've long encouraged people in these areas to work together to build public awareness campaigns that would motivate these people to spend time getting to know about the neighborhood, and its need for youth serving organizations, and showing the ones that already exist.  Then pick one or two and make a long-term commitment to help them be the best in the world at helping kids through school and into jobs.

Below is a map story created in the mid 1990s for a group on the West side of Chicago. I've highlighted in yellow the section where I encouraged them to set up a campaign along Grand Avenue that would attract commuter volunteers.  I've been preaching this story for many years.

However, too few have ever seen my map-stories or my blog.  Yet, youth from schools all over the Chicago region could be creating "Rest of the Story" strategy, following negative news they see in the local media.  In publishing their stories they could be adding their "call to action" to my own and those of others, resulting in greater visibility, and a greater flow of dollars to help youth programs grow where they are most needed.

The Mayor, the Police Department, local politicians, businesses, faith groups, universities, etc. all could have been doing this for the past 25 years.

If they had, maybe the story about the 11th Police District in today's paper would have been different.

If they start now, maybe those stories will be different in 10 or 20 years.

I'd be happy to help anyone think through this strategy.  I'm on Twitter and these social media platforms.  

If you value the stories and program list that I share please consider a small year-end contribution.  Click here to learn more. 

Follow Negative News with the "Rest of the Story"

There's plenty of bad news in the media and many non-profits working to change conditions that lead to these stories. I focus on volunteer-based youth tutor and/or mentor programs and have led a strategy for the past 28 years intended to help such programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.  You can find more than 1200 articles on this blog that focus on this.

One challenge that most programs have is finding the operating dollars needed each year to host a space where kids and volunteers can meet, fill it with learning resources, such as computers and Internet access, and with paid staff who support both youth and volunteer involvement.

Most tutor/mentor programs are relatively small and don't have the type of staff most businesses do to advertise regularly and draw customers (donors, volunteers) to their locations.  Thus, they struggle to stay funded, or raise the level of funds needed.

Thus, in 1994 when I was launching the first survey of Tutor/Mentor programs in Chicago we began using maps to show where they were.  We published our list of programs in a Directory, starting in May 1994, and used maps to show where poverty was greatest and where existing programs were located.  We started putting this on-line in 1998 and launched an interactive program locator in 2004 and a map-based version in 2008.  Unfortunately after 2011 I was not able to keep these updated and the sites are now only available as an archive,.

I still plot program locations on a map, which you can find in this article, but no longer have the interactive features of the original program locator.

However, you can still zoom in and build an understanding of what programs are in different parts of the Chicago region.

We never had much money for advertising, and recognized that this was a weakness of many programs. Thus, we began a strategy I call "The Rest of the Story".  

When we saw media giving feature space attention to a "bad news" story, like one about poorly performing schools, gangs, or violence, we created a map showing where the incident took place, then used overlays to show the role of poverty.  We also showed locations of existing tutor/mentor programs in the area, and assets, like banks, drug stores, colleges, hospitals and faith groups, who are in the neighborhood and should be supporting efforts to make high quality, mentor-rich programs available to a growing number of k-12 youth.  

In the 1990s we put these map-stories in our newsletters and shared them at conferences.  We created maps for other youth programs, too.  In the 2000s we began to share these via email and our websites and in 2005 started putting them in blog articles.

However, too few people were seeing what we were publishing. Thus, I created a presentation showing how students and volunteers from schools throughout Chicago could be creating their own stories, modeled after the ones I've been doing.

Below is a presentation showing this strategy:

Rest of the story: A Strategy to Draw Attention and Resources to Youth Serving Organizations from Daniel Bassill

Note: I've been updating all of my Slideshare presentations and the ones I've embedded in past articles will no longer appear, since my updates have new locations.  I encourage you to visit my collection and bookmark it for future referral.

While I've struggled to keep my own mapping platform on-line others are creating robust data-mapping platforms.  Below is a concept map I created a few years ago to share some of these. 

Anyone creating "Rest of the Story" articles can use one or more of these platforms to build the base map you use in your article by zooming into the geographic area you're interested in, adding layers of information, then creating an image that you paste into Power Point or similar publishing tool. Then you can add additional information to the map. Once you're satisfied, save it as a JPG and you're ready to put it into a blog article, Tweet or Facebook/LinkedIn post.

If you're doing this please share your articles with me on Twitter or any of the social media platforms that you find in this link. 

If enough people adopt this strategy we can do much to make safe spaces available that help kids living in poverty areas move through school and into adult lives.

Cabrini Green in the news – The Rest of the Story

Today’s Chicago Sun Times front page headline was “ Fake Gun, Real Anger”. The headline was caused by the shooting of a 14-year old boy by Chicago police. The anger was caused by a long-term lack of trust between inner city youth and police, as well as the way residents feel they are being “pushed out of the Cabrini Green area by developers” and gentrification.

On page two, columnist Mark Brown wrote “Emotions run high in constant struggle between residents, cops.” The editors of Mr. Brown’s column highlighted one quote which read, “This was Cabrini in its natural state – raw and untamed as ever, a perpetual battleground between police and residents despite all the changes to the neighborhood.”

On page 14 and 15, the Sun Times devoted two full pages to this story. One part provided the justification by police. A second article talked about the frustration of residents who are being pushed out by the new development in Cabrini Green.

On page 37 the feature editorial headline was “Tension, anger, building up.” The editorial reflected the “air of apprehension” of residents who are not sure where they will be moved to, or if they will be able to return and live in the new, mixed income Cabrini Green. The editorial said, “Police have been taking steps to diffuse the tensions, holding meetings between police and local political, religious and business groups that are intended to reduce the risk of confrontation between citizens and police.”

This is what was in the paper. What comes next is “The Rest of the Story”.
If you want to get involved and change what's happening in inner city neighborhoods, please read on, and encourage your friends and co-workers to also read this message.

With school starting in a few weeks, it would be great if there were two full pages in the Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, Cranes, and other Chicago media focusing on the way volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs can help kids make better life choices, and have better success in schools.

Mr. Brown’s article focused on the sensational history of Cabrini Green. It did not tell the story of kids who have finished school, thanks to volunteers like those who are buying condos in Cabrini Green. The editorial could have suggested that volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs like Cabrini Connections, or Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, are places where the people buying these high priced condos, and the kids living in the neighborhood (now or in the future) , might meet to learn more about each other, and to build community and family type bonds centered around helping raise the kids living in this new mixed income village.

The SunTimes story did mention that the father of youth who was shot is a “former gang member with 33 arrests on his rap sheet and a conviction for misdemeanor battery” and that some of the boy’s siblings are ‘bad kids’, according to the father.

The people moving into Cabrini Green condos probably have not spent much time learning about poverty, other than reading news stories like today’s paper. If they did, they’d learn that some of Chicago’s neighborhoods are “dumping grounds for ex-convicts” meaning that the most common role model might be someone who has a rap sheet, or who is currently an active gang member.

If we don’t surround young people with mentors who don’t have “rap sheets” or who have gone to college and work in a variety of honest jobs and careers every day, how can we change the aspirations and expectations for these kids? If we don’t create informal places where inner city kids and people who don’t live in poverty can meet and build bridges of understanding, how can we expect to reduce the tension?

School starts in a few weeks and there are many high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago where kids like Ellis Woodland live. Tutor/Mentor programs in these neighborhoods, and in Cabrini Green are seeking volunteers. They are also seeking donors who will help provide the money to operate these programs.

This is the rest of the Story. It’s not what is in the media. It’s what you can do to change what gets into the media. You can learn more about tutor/mentor programs serving the Cabrini Green area by searching the 60610, 60611 and 60622 zip codes of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator section of http://www.tutormentorconnection.org

Turn Bad News into Good News - Rest of the Story

In Thursday, June 7th's Chicago SunTimes, a few stories caught my attention. One was about a 29 year old man accused of killing a bank teller in a recent bank robbery. In describing the man's background the story said "he had a lot of time without parental oversight".

Another story was headlined with "College Bound Sisters". This one was a good news story about how two sisters overcame obstacles and are headed for college. One of the reasons was they were supported by the Mike Trout and the Young Men's Educational Network.

I've been clipping stories from the SunTimes and Chicago Tribune for several years to use as research and evidence showing why and where comprehensive, long-term, mentor-rich, tutor/mentor programs are needed in Chicago. I occasionally map these stories creating concept diagrams like the one on this page. These show a linkage between media stories. However, this linkage is not supported by any obvious media strategy.

Almost every day, one, or more, media stories highlight a serious social problem caused by poverty in Chicago (Rev. Jesse Jackson lables the recent string of shootings a "State of Emergency in Chicago"). Some of these reach a point of public outrage that they are followed by editorials, and/or a series of articles by featured columnist.

While reports of bad news are given more space and featured more often, occasionally, the newspapers will tell stories of students overcoming the challenges of poverty, such as the story about two sisters graduating from high school. Out of a full page only the last few paragraphs showed the help these girls received for at least six consecutive years from the YMEN program.

This is the type of program I have in mind when I say "long-term tutor/mentor program".

However, there doesn't seem to be any consistent strategy from the media (or from public leaders) to connect the bad news stories, the good news stories and editorial commentary, in a daily effort to reduce poverty by mobilizing community resources.

While media might highlight a single act of kindness, like YMEN, they don't use their maps and charts and web sites to point to all of the places in Chiago where there is poverty and poorly performing schools, and where programs like YMEN are needed to help kids avoid gangs and negative behaviors.

Why is this important? Non profits who provide these services, don't have the advertising dollars needed to advertise their products and services every day like fast food or credit card companies do. Thus, they struggle to find donors who provide the flexible operating dollars needed every year to keep these programs available to kids in high poverty neighborhoods.

Only business, media and faith institutions have the ability to communicate this message daily. We need some leaders to step forward to take this role consistently, like lawyers are doing at the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend A Hand Program.

If you use the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to search the zip codes of neighborhoods where there is high poverty, or where the bad news took place, you'll see if there are any tutor/mentor programs like YMEN in those areas. If you scan the program links section of the T/MC web site you can begin to discern the differences between programs like YMEN, Midtown, East Village Youth Program, Chicago Youth Programs, Inc, and Cabrini Connections and programs that exist in these areas.

When you look at this information, we want you to say "ENOUGH." We hope you'll take the advise of another story I saw in a recent SunTimes. It said "You don't have to be Oprah to help kids."

Tonight, June 8th, Cabrini Connections will celebrate its 15th anniversary year end dinner. In other parts of Chicago similar programs will be celebrating another year of tutoring/mentoring. Unfortunately too many neighborhoods don't have programs.

I encourage our media, business leaders and candidates for public office to integrate this "REST Of The Story" message into their own strategies. Every time you talk about bad news, or the need for better schools, end your message by pointing to web sites with resources like the Program Locator and Chicago Program Links, so that your actions are helping people who want to end violence and poverty find places to shop and choose where, and how, they will use their time, talent and treasure to help tutor/mentor programs stay part of the lives of inner city kids in Chicago and other cities.

#TakeAKnee - Apply to "Rest of the Story" strategy

In 1993 I and a few others launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) with a goal of helping well-organized volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs reach youth in every high poverty neighborhood of the Chicago region.

During 1993 a local public relations firm, PCI, Inc. helped me develop a 10-point strategy that we narrowed down to four steps over the next few years.

Step 2 in that strategy focused on creating a greater frequency of news stories about tutoring and mentoring and why programs are needed so that more volunteers and donors would reach out and support existing programs.  This page shows print media stories resulting from that strategy. There were many other Radio/TV interviews and much has been done using the Internet since 1998. Most of these interviews were generated from events we organized each year, such as the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference and Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment campaign.

However, we also developed another strategy, which I called "The Rest of The Story".

When the major Chicago newspapers gave full or half page attention to violence, poorly performing schools, gangs and/or poverty, we recognized that more than a half million readers might be looking at that story. So we created maps showing where the incident happened, and added poverty overlays and schools-on-probation overlays to show why it was happening.

We also added icons to show existing non-school tutor and mentor programs in the map area, and icons to show assets, such as banks, colleges, hospitals, faith groups, etc. who were in the area and who should be helping tutor/mentor programs grow.  We than put these in our print newsletters and shared them at conferences and other events.

The goal was to capture reader attention and desire to help within a few days of when the story took place. Over the past 20 years many map-stories have been created with this goal in mind. You can find some here, and others here.

My goal has always been that the articles I write serve as inspiration and models for articles that would be written by others. Students in public and private schools, colleges and or working in faith groups, libraries and/or non-school programs could be writing stories following violence in their neighborhoods.

Here's an article from 2014 that outlines how this could happen.

If I'm the only one writing these stories too few will ever see them and even fewer will be influenced to reach out and support tutor/mentor programs throughout the city.  If hundreds of youth from different schools are doing this, stories would appear every day, just as often as we're seeing stories about athletes and others who #takeaknee to protest poverty, injustice and inequality.

Here's a presentation describing the Rest of the Story strategy.

Rest of the Story - Leveraging Traditional Media to Increase Attention for Social Issues by Daniel F. Bassill on Scribd

There are dozens of other articles on this blog that focus on the challenge of building attention and a flow of resources to tutor/mentor programs throughout the city, and keeping that attention and those resources flowing for many years.

Students could read these articles and rewrite them using their own talent and skills, reaching more people and creating a future they want for themselves and for others.  Visit this page to see work interns have done in past years.

If you're interested in doing this work go ahead. If you'd like my help just reach out to me here or on Twitter or Facebook.

4-20-2018  update - Here's an article by Peter Levine, who leads the Center for Information & Research on Civic Engagement - CIRCLE project. It's titled "What does youth civic engagement have to do with inequality?"

Network Building - Learning from the Past

Today I participated in ZOOM meeting organized by the Social Capital Research Group who I connected with first on Twitter, then on Facebook.. Today's speaker was Daniel P. Aldrich, who I'd met last year on Twitter. After the formal session I was invited to host a breakout, which I did. I was joined by Christopher Chinapoo from Jamaica, and Marion Cornish, from the RCRG. I was able to share resources of the T/MC and Tutor/Mentor Institute and opened connection with Christopher on Twitter.  

I've been entering this type of event for 25  years and it's never certain who I'll meet or what will happen.  Below is an example taken from two articles I wrote in July 2005, the first year I wrote this blog.

On July 29, 2005 I wrote this: 

I attended the O-Net conference in Chicago (Oak Park) today. More than 20 people from different parts of the world gathered to brainstorm ideas on how we might work together to make this a better world. 

The wonderful thing about this is that up till today, most of the people had never met face to face. They had met in the www.omidyar.net portal (available now only in web archive). The conference was the result of the efforts of just a few people who said, "let's get together" and who then used the o-net space to plan the entire event, even raising nearly $4,000 to provide scholarships so that seven people could attend, from as far away as Germany!

I met many people who shared exciting ideas and who may someday be partners with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. I even met one person who had come to a Tutor/Mentor Conference many years before. The conference will continue tomorrow, and hopefully on the Internet after that.

I hope that tutor/mentor stakeholders participate, and that some begin to use the new www.tutormentorconnection.org portal as a meeting space where some of them can launch actions that lead to more people coming together to help each other do good.  Thanks gang. 

Then on July 31, 2005 I wrote this: 

I was only able to attend the O-net conference for half a day Saturday. However, I read through all of the summary reports and blogs this morning. I hosted a conversation on Saturday, focused on creating a group of active o-net members who work to draw people from universities into o-net conversations, with the goal of recruiting resources to support o-net projects. 

 As I said after Friday's day-long session, I'm really impressed with the talent of the people who are participating in the conference, and who have posted introductions at www.omidyar.net. One person I talked to yesterday was a PhD student at Purdue, who is organizing information intended to be used to help connect people doing good work with resource providers. Another person was a technologist who had great ideas of creating alternative currencies that would encourage people to share talent with each other. A third was a women with an idea of creating visual databases to map assets. 

I was really inspired by the Peace Tiles project. I hope we can duplicate this in Chicago tutor/mentor programs and connect our kids with kids in African and on other continents. 

When I read one of the blogs, one person was questioning whether or not O-net was just a lot of talk, or if it was stimulating action (providing resources for O-net members to do their various projects). I'm hoping that my participation accelerates the rate at which people help each other, or draw new resources into o-net that end up helping members of the community do their work. 

One of the people I met through the Omidyar network was Steve Habib Rose. He took time to get to know what the Tutor/Mentor Connection was attempting and started this conversation in 2007 to help me find others who would help. Unfortunately, Steve died suddenly shortly after starting this and the potential support never was realized. However, his demonstrated interest and initiative of starting the conversation, is what motivates me to keep joining in new conversations, such as today's ZOOM meeting.

Unfortunately, until on-line events and forums like Omidyar.net actually draw attention and resources to participants on a regular basis,  it is just idealism within a world where the daily papers remind us of reality. 

A few weeks ago I did a Mind Map of the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Today I did another. I found a really great story written by Mary Schmich, one of my favorite writers, telling how people had responded to an earlier story about a computer center in Cabrini-Green being flooded, with all computers destroyed. Because of her first story, people provided new computers, and everything else needed to get this site up and running again. That demonstrates the power of the media. 

Below is a media map from 2007, which demonstrates what I had created in 2005.

However, in the same section of the Tribune Metro section was a story about a boy being fatally shot at a playground on the far South side of Chicago. There was another story on the same page about a Muslim teen center re opening, after being closed since 2003. These neighborhoods don't have a feature writer of the Chicago Tribune, or SunTimes, writing regular stories about life in these neighborhoods. Most of the times they get in the news is when something bad happens.

My mind map linked these stories. Every time I read a story about Cabrini-Green, written by Mary Schmich, I just wish she'd end with "and this is just one neighborhood of Chicago where kids live in poverty and need extra help with volunteers, donors, technologist, etc." (and provide a link to web sites that people could use to learn about other places where volunteers, donors and technology are needed).

If she and other reporters were doing this regularly, maybe people would have been helping the Muslim teen center get computers, and maybe the boy shot on a playground (or the shooter) would have been inside sitting at a computer rather than out on the street where something terrible happened. 

In my ZOOM call today I encouraged people to enlist students as story tellers, and as network builders.  This article shows how students could follow negative news with "The Rest of the Story", generating more consistent attention and public awareness and drawing volunteers and donors into neighborhoods where these stories were taking place.  This blog includes stories showing work interns did with Tutor/Mentor Connection for many years.   Websites throughout the world could be hosting work like this, done by local youth, pointing to their own communities.

When I sat with my friends at O-net and talked about ideas, it was with an urgency of putting these ideas to work to help more kids in cities like Chicago have safe places where they can gather to learn, be mentored, have access to computers and the world around them. The reality is that while we talk of great ideas, we are losing kids to the streets and to poverty. 

Maybe I cannot convince the media to consistently tell the rest of the story when they write their stories about individual tragedies or triumphs, but maybe I can enlist a few technologist at O-Net to help me create a map gallery that would show where negative news happens and where volunteers and donors are needed. If hundreds of friends at communities like o-net were to take on the same goal, we might create a much larger public involvement and flow of resources to every place in the world where good people are trying to do good work to help people who need extra help. 

Actually, this  has happened. Just not often enough, or with multiple year sustained commitments.  At the right is a map gallery built by Jim Corey, a volunteer from Wisconsin, who I met in one of these on-line forums in the early 2000s.  This link points to a newer map gallery, built in 2009 by Mike Trakin, who I was able to hire at a part-time map maker from 2008-2010, with donations from HSBC North America and an anonymous 2007 donor who gave the T/MC $50,000 to rebuild our mapping capacity. 

Neither of these is now active, due to losing funding support in 2009 due to the financial melt-down, then the separation of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2011 from the non-profit where it was given birth in 1993. 

This concept map shows four actions that I've been taking daily for the past 28 years.  It involves 1) collecting information; 2) creating public awareness to attract more people to the information; 3) helping people understand the information; then 4) motivating them to use the information in one or more specific places to help solve a complex problem, such as helping kids in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers.  

It also shows help I've needed every year since creating the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011.  

I think this 4-part strategy should be duplicated in every city, state and country, to support local problem solving focused on any issue. 

Interested in knowing more?  Can you help?  Let's connect.  I'm on social media at these sites. 

A tutor/mentor program is a place where idealism meets reality. Day 2 at o-net.

I was only able to attend the O-net conference for half a day Saturday. However, I read through all of the summary reports and blogs this morning. I hosted a conversation on Saturday, focused on creating a group of active o-net members who work to draw people from universities into o-net conversations, with the goal of recruiting resources to support o-net projects.

As I said after Friday's day-long session, I'm really impressed with the talent of the people who are participating in the conference, and who have posted introductions at www.omidyar.net. One person I talked to yesterday was a PhD student at Purdue, who is organizing information intended to be used to help connect people doing good work with resource providers. Another person was a technologist who had great ideas of creating alternative currencies that would encourage people to share talent with each other. A third was a women with an idea of creating visual databases to map assets.

I was really inspired by the Peace Tiles project. I hope we can duplicate this in Chicago tutor/mentor programs and connect our kids with kids in African and on other continents.

When I read one of the blogs, one person was questioning whether or not O-net was just a lot of talk, or if it was stimulating action (providing resources for O-net members to do their various projects). I'm hoping that my participation accelerates the rate at which people help each other, or draw new resources into o-net that end up helping members of the community do their work.

However, until this happens it is idealism within a world where the daily papers remind us of reality. A few weeks ago I did a Mind Map of the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Today I did another. I found a really great story written by Mary Schmich, one of my favorite writers, telling how people had responded to an earlier story about a computer center in Cabrini-Green being flooded, with all computers destroyed. Because of her first story, people provided new computers, and everything else needed to get this site up and running again. That demonstrates the power of the media.

However, in the same section of the Tribune Metro section was a story about a boy being fatally shot at a playground on the far South side of Chicago. There was another story on the same page about a Muslim teen center re opening, after being closed since 2003. These neighborhoods don't have a feature writer of the Chicago Tribune, or SunTimes, writing regular stories about life in these neighborhoods. Most of the times they get in the news is when something bad happens.

My mind map linked these stories. Every time I read a story about Cabrini-Green, written by Mary Schmich, I just wish she'd end with "and this is just one neighborhood of Chicago where kids live in poverty and need extra help with volunteers, donors, technologist, etc." (and provide a link to web sites that people could use to learn about other places where volunteers, donors and technology are needed).

If she and other reporters were doing this regularly, maybe people would have been helping the Muslim teen center get computers, and maybe the boy shot on a playground (or the shooter) would have been inside sitting at a computer rather than out on the street where something terrible happened.

When I sit with my friends at O-net and talk about ideas, it is with an urgency of putting these ideas to work to help more kids in cities like Chicago have safe places where they can gather to learn, be mentored, have access to computers and the world around them. The reality is that while we talk of great ideas, we are losing kids to the streets and to poverty.

Maybe I cannot convince the media to consistently tell the rest of the story when they write their stories about individual tragedies or triumphs, but maybe I can enlist a few technologist at O-Net to help me create a map gallery that would show where negative news happens and where volunteers and donors are needed. If hundreds of friends at communities like o-net were to take on the same goal, we might create a much larger public involvement and flow of resources to every place in the world where good people are trying to do good work to help people who need extra help.

What about you? Can you help?

CPS Anti Violence Program Not Enough

The front page of today's Chicago Tribune featured a photo and story under the headline: Anti-violence program fails to save young Markham man. The story talked about the highly visible and very expensive Chicago Public Schools anti-violence mentoring program designed to target a small group of youth with high potential for being involved in gang violence.

For one youth, that was not enough to keep him from being gunned down in Chicago this week. The final line in the story is "He died with bullets in his head, chest and arm, and a mentor who keeps wondering what else he could have done."

In another section of today's Tribune, columnist Mary Schmich writes about Life in 2 Chicagos showing how most of Chicago area residents are safe from the violence that is a daily part of the lives of others in Chicago.

I've written about violence in Chicago in many past blog articles. I've included maps in my stories to try to focus attention on the need for a wide range of youth supports in these neighborhoods. I've created an interactive map/program locator that anyone can use to see the connection between poverty and poorly performing schools and to learn about volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs operating in different parts of the city.

This is not a new problem. However, we have never found a way to

a) bring enough people from all sectors into a learning and service process where we build empathy through our direct involvement and we build growing understanding through the on-going reading we do from libraries of research like the one I've been hosting for the last 15 years.

b)we've never found a way to keep this story in the media and in business publications on a daily basis the way fast food stores, banks and other retailers keep their products and services in front of potential customers. Without consistent advertising we can never get enough people and resources involved in all the places where concentrated, segregated poverty is the root-cause of the violence.



c) we've not found a way to make this issue important enough to business so that they would have teams of people working regularly to find ways to reach kids with volunteers, ideas, technology and jobs training programs that expand the social capital connecting youth in islands of poverty with the rest of Chicago and the opportunities these young people have in the future.

I said this is not a new problem.

This 1994 report titled Children, Families and Communities: A New Approach to Social Services, called for the creation of a system of primary supports that would reach kids before problems occur. It also called for a system of intermediaries to support the knowledge sharing and network building required.

I wrote about the CPS anti violence program in this 2009 article.

I wonder how many people who have been mentors with Big Brothers or any other tutor/mentor program in Chicago over the last 18 years have been encouraged to read this or to think of ways they could do more to help the kids they mentor than just raise money for their own non profit, or than just spend time with a kids for a few hours a week and a couple of years?

However, there's a second problem.

In his book Uncharitable, Dan Pallota talks about philanthropy as an unworkable system.

He's not the only one.

Michael Porter, a Professor at Harvard University understands that the philanthropy model does not have enough money to fund all social problem solving. Instead, he feels that "Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together." He describes the "principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges."

How many volunteers who come from the business community are reading articles like this or visiting forums like this and starting conversations in their companies aimed at creating new business models that "re-imagine and re-engineer" the support systems that reach kids in high poverty with programs, services and mentoring that helps young people learn to become CEOs of their own futures even before they enter middle school?

When the Chicago Tribune puts a story on the front page and devotes another full page to the story it is investing nearly a half million dollars in printed space and message distribution. It is potentially reaching more than a half million volunteers, innovators, investors, etc.

Few non profits have millions of dollars for advertising and few public service campaigns have this type of daily impact. We need to innovate new ways to bring people together and create the advertising, team building and communications systems that support this.

If we want to solve the problems we face we need to invest in long-term learning, innovation, complex thinking and problem solving. We need to create platforms that bring thousands of people together on a regular basis and that distribute the time, talent and resources of these people to many places where help is needed.

I'm hosting a conference tomorrow at First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park and welcome your attendance. I doubt that many who attend are thinking of Shared Value or have read the 1994 report, but through this my on-going efforts I keep trying to bring more people to this information.

Few of us can meet face to face. Many of us can meet on-line. Let's connect.

Read more of my articles in the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site and in this library of articles.

Mentoring and the News

Hopefully by now you've seen an ad in a newspaper, magazine or on TV featuring celebrities like Clint Eastwood. These are part of the National Mentoring Month campaign, are intended to encourage more people to volunteer to be mentors.

One of the strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been to follow news stories with web stories that tell "THE REST OF THE STORY". A couple of stories I followed recently were

a) MURDER On the Move, a 1/3/07 Chicago Sun Times story about increased number of homicides in the Southeast Side of Chicago caused by people being displaced by Chicago Housing Authority teardowns

b) Another was Pupils Still Far Behind, a front page story on the Sunday, 1/7/07 Chicago Tribune. This story said that after five years, not much has been accomplished by the Federal Leave No Child Behind act.

c) Another was Minister Offers Ex-Convicts lift on road to redemption. This was also on the front page of the 1/7/07 Chicag0 Tribune. One quote in the story was "Police attribute uptick in murders to parolees who returned to communities."

d) Then there was the column written by Mary Mitchell of the SunTimes, on 1/7/07, titled "Every Door has been shut in my face". This was about a parent/guardian who had been looking for services that could help with an out of control teen, but who was not finding information about existing services.

The only thing that connects these stories is that they were in one of Chicago's papers, and they are stories that are the result of poverty, and too few public services in the neighborhoods with high poverty.

As the Mentoring Month Ads take place, Chicago Access TV will be running a mentor recruitment slide show on Channel 21, that invites volunteers to be tutors/mentors in Chicago area tutor/mentor programs.
These point to a Program Locator that we host at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org.

Visitors can search by zip code to see if there are any tutor/mentor programs in different parts of the city. You'll find contact information, and even web site links, if the program has a web site. Using this, parents, volunteers and donors can find existing programs in Chicago and offer them their support.

However, if you search the Southeast Side, which the Tribune focused on in its 1/3/07 story, you won't find many programs. If you search the high poverty neighborhood, or areas where ex-convicts are returning in large numbers, you'll find few comprehensive tutor/mentor programs.

Thus, parents who are looking for help, can't find help.

Another story I've been following is the one about Oprah Winfrey spending $40 million to build a school in Africa. It's her money. The kids in Africa need it. Hopefully she'll stay interested, and involved, and in 8 to 12 years some of these kids will be working in her company, or using her inspiration to help other kids in the world have great schools and great mentors.

This is what donors and policy makers seem to not realize. It takes 12 years for a youth to go from first grade through high school, and another 4-8 years before that youth is starting the climb the ladder of a career. That doesn't happen for too many kids born in poverty because the type of support they need does not exist, and there aren't many people like Oprah, or the volunteers at Cabrini Connections, who are trying to help them.

I just hope that Oprah's example inspires some other zillionaires to spend $40 million to help us build and sustain comprehensive, volunteer based tutor/mentor programs in the neighborhoods of Chicago that get attention because of negative news, and high rates of poverty.

I'd like to be writing about such donations in future blogs.

Mentoring in the News. The Rest of the Story

On Thursday and Friday of this week the Chicago Sun Times ran stories of mentoring efforts supported by the CEO of ComEd and the CEO of Soft Sheen. These programs are part of a mentoring initiative started by the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago in response to studies showing incarceration rates of young black men at historically high rates.

I wrote the SunTimes, and said "thank you" and I called the United Way and said "let's meet". The REST OF THE STORY is that this has been a problem for more than a few years and that there are many organizations in Chicago who already offer volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and who would love to have help from ComEd, Soft Sheen and every other business in the city.

My hope is that the media will link stories they write about one initiative, to existing work already being done in the city, in these, or other neighborhoods, so that the visibility the story draws to mentoring, will draw volunteers, donors, and business partners to tutor/mentor programs throughout the city and suburbs.

In the same edition of the SunTimes that talked about how a mentor program keeps young blacks focused was another story with the headline "20-year old slain on Southwest Side". Nothing in the reporting of this story suggested that mentoring or other forms of youth development or career development, could be a way to keep this type of problem from happening, yet the neighborhood where the youth was shot is the same area where mentoring is being offered.

If you want to help make mentoring more available in high risk Chicago areas, visit the Program Locator at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org and search by zip code to locate programs in specific areas. You'll find that some areas don't have many programs, thus, we'll need companies like ComEd and Soft Sheen to help start new programs, while we also need their help to keep existing programs in operation.

I hope that the new African American Initiatives at the United Way and at the Chicago Community Trust draw needed reinforcements to existing programs throughout the city. This is the only way we can assure that youth get the adult support needed to stay in school and move to careers.

DePaul Student Killed. Lost Opportunity.

The Chicago Tribune has an article today, titled "DePaul mourns a slain student". Every shooting is a tragedy. This one is even greater because the student killed was one who showed so much promise and leadership. Read the story. Morn with me. Then read The Rest of this Story.

This map shows where the shooting took place. It was created using the Tutor/Mentor Interactive Program Locator.



We post these stories following negative news, because we want readers to go beyond the angst cause by how media report, to become researchers and social activists, who take actions that reduce this type of tragedy in the future.

We've tried to encourage the formation of "learning circles" at colleges, hospitals, faith groups, high schools, etc. and it's been a slow process. Thus, I was excited this fall when a professor at DePaul asked how she and her first year students could work with the T/MC. I encouraged them to divide into teams and learn about the different neighborhoods of Chicago, and about how different levels of poverty and non-school tutor/mentor programs, give some youth more hope and opportunities than others.

They have been doing that. You can find the class blog here.

Some of these students grew up in inner city neighborhoods, so they understand what's going on in the city. Most did not, so they only understand the impact of poverty through what they see in the papers. This story hits home for this group. Now as they write about poverty, and look at our maps and tutor/mentor program info, it becomes more real.

What if this neighborhood had a wide range of mentor-rich programs, with arts, technology, career development and leadership opportunities, with people from many business background personally involved in helping youth make positive choices that might lead them to futures out of poverty? What does it make for such programs to be available in this neighborhood, or other neighborhoods?

As teams learn the answers to these questions, and propose their own solutions, and share what they are thinking and learning on their blogs, they become part of the solution. They can tell The Rest of The Story and try to get adults, businesses and elected leaders more consistently involved.

If they continue doing this learning and network building for the next four years, many will leave DePaul prepared to be leaders of tutor/mentor programs, or of business and philanthropy strategies that make consistent resources more available to operate these programs. They can change the future.

If you would like to duplicate this project, at your school, faith group, or company, here's the outline of goals set for the class. You can also meet some of the students at the Tutor/Mentor Conference on Nov. 19 and 20.

Young homicide victim not forgotten, and shouldn't be.

On Thursday, March 6, 2014 I read a column written by the Chicago Tribune's John Kass, telling the story of a 12 year old boy shot to death in Chicago in 2012, and of a CPS Social Worker who is trying to keep his memory alive.

This article resonated with me because I've been collecting media stories about violence, poorly performing schools, poverty, gangs, etc. for the past 20 years. While most shootings get very little attention in the media, and good news stories get even less attention, some stories get full page attention and are the focus of some of the most talented writers at Chicago's local media outlets. The three stories in this image are examples of a "don't forget, demand actions, it's up to all of us" type of headline and editorial.

When we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 the goal was to build a master database of known tutor/mentor programs, along with a library of research showing where they were most needed, and why. We started using maps to show where these programs were located, and where more were needed. We organized events, like the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences to draw people together to learn from each other, and to motivate media to write more stories that could serve as advertising to draw public interest and greater volunteer and donor support of programs in every neighborhood.

Since we had no dollars for advertising, and could not get consistent support from Mayor Daley or other city leaders, I began to develop map-stories, following media stories, so that when the media story build public interest in the problem our map stories could focus that interest on neighborhoods where the event motivating the negative news story took place. I called this "The Rest of the Story".

I did not have many ways to share these maps during the 1990s or 2000s, but I've kept them and always created a map display at every Tutor/Mentor Conference. Recently I've begun to create a web archive of map-stories. This slide show is from that archive.


Find more photos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection


These stories are reminders that we need to do more if we're to create more opportunities for kids in these neighborhoods to connect with mentors and tutors and learning opportunities that steer them away from gangs and help them move toward jobs and careers.

As I went through my library of map stories, I also skimmed through some of the media stories I've collected. This is one from 1995, talking about how poverty impacts kids. I have many stories like this. Too many.

We're still talking about the same problems in 2014 as we were talking about in 1995. We've spent billions of dollars, yet the same problems continue to plague us.

One challenge from the past was the inability for people to connect frequently in place-based meetings where they could dig deeper into this information and build a shared commitment to actions that might have greater long-term impact. We now have the internet and social media, so more of us who care about this problem have the potential to connect and innovate new ways to build and sustain the flow of resources into every high poverty neighborhood that is needed to create more opportunities for kids in these neighborhoods.

More than a decade ago I created this strategy map to visualize leadership commitments that need to be made by hundreds of people in Chicago and other cities.

One of the links on the strategy map points to this "village map".

My goal is to put links in every node on this map, pointing to leaders in every business, faith, entertainment, media and civic sector, who have a version of the strategy map on their own web site, indicating their support of the strategy. As that list grows, so will our ability to keep memories of slain youth alive by the work we do to build systems of support in every neighborhood that are designed to prevent a repeat of such tragedies some day in the future.

I'm just one person. I have a small voice. It's a big city and a big world. I encourage more youth and adults learn to create map-stories and blog articles like this, and share them on their own media as frequently as I do. Build your own links library and include a link to my sites. Build your own Twitter and Facebook pages and let's connect.

As more people do this my voice, and yours, will become a roar.