Edition: June 2013
Issue No. 121

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Issues of the month

* Mobilizing Support for 2013-14 School Year Volunteer Recruitment
* Connecting people, ideas, information and youth
* Use data and maps
* President's Message - Enough is Enough - Build Learning Communities to Support Program Growth

issue 01
 Mobilizing Support for 2013-14 School Year Volunteer Recruitment

As we finish one school year, we need to be planning volunteer and youth-recruitment strategies for the coming school year.  Have you considered ways your volunteers and students could be creating content to help you draw attention and resources to your organization?


This is a video created by an intern from South Korea who has been working with Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC this spring. It is one of several new presentations you can video on this page.

Presentations like this intend to show strategies that mobilize volunteers and donors to support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in all parts of Chicago. Youth from high schools, colleges, youth programs, etc. could be creating similar presentations aimed at drawing attention and resources to specific programs, or to multiple locations.

If more young people and volunteers work together creating these more support will be mobilized to help tutor/mentor programs build and sustain connections with youth in the coming school year and in future school years.

Image created by Tutor/Mentor Connection


Plan Ahead.  At key times each year most tutor/mentor programs in a city are involved in similar activities. In August they are looking for volunteers. In November they are planning holiday fund raising campaigns. In January they celebrate National Mentoring Month. In February they are looking for replacements for volunteers to replace those who started in September but dropped out at the beginning of the new year. In May they are doing year end celebration, evaluation, and next-year planning.


 Image created by Tutor/Mentor Connection

At these times each year, non profits, intermediaries, business and media could be focusing their messages on why and where tutor/mentor programs are needed.  If links in these messages point to these search tools, everyone will have more resources to help them locate volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Chicago and other communities. 

* MENTOR resources and referral service - http://www.mentoring.org/program_resources  
* ServeIllinois -    http://www.serve.illinois.gov/
* VolunteerMatch - http://www.volunteermatch.org
* Additional on-line volunteer search web sites http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Volunteer-Recruitment

 

In the Chicago region, use the Map-Based Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and Links library to help locate programs in specific zip codes. Our aim is to help programs grow and thrive in all parts of the region where they are needed.

* Chicago Program Links - http://tinyurl.com/ChiTM-Program-Links
* Chicago Map-Based Tutor/Mentor Program Locator - http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net

Help collect and maintain Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator information  Teams of volunteers of any age can take a role in helping build and maintain the database of tutor/mentor programs in a city. Read more:  http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Information-Collection

                                                                                                                                                                                    Image created by Tutor/Mentor Connection

Connecting people, ideas, information and youth - our goal since 1993

 

“Collective impact requires that funders support a long-term process of social change without identifying any particular solution in advance.”
This quote is from one of the articles about Collective Impact on the Stanford Social Innovation Review web site. . Click here to read the full article and others like it.
 

Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) was created in 1993 to collect and share information that anyone might use to support the growth of mentor-rich programs in high poverty neighborhoods that were working to help keep kids in school, keep them safe in non-school hours, and build networks of adult support that would help more move through school and into jobs and careers. The Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC was created in July 2011 to support this strategy in Chicago and help it grow in other cities.

The database of programs and library of information now includes more than 2000 links. Every time the T/MC sends our a newsletter it is sharing this information with everyone who reads the newsletter and is inviting people to come together in the spring and fall conferences, on social media, and in other places where strategies can be developed that push more consistent resources to all of the neighborhoods where kids need extra help.

Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

 

The first conference was hosted in May 1994. Following conferences have been held every six months since then. This has been a grassroots affair made possible by all speakers volunteering time to share ideas.  
 

The  most recent conference was held on June 7, 2013. More than 100 people attended, including Maxine Williams and Samuel Carter from the Fun Day School which operated in Chicago in the mid 2000s. This photo shows Samuel, flanked by his mentor, his father and Maxine, who was the program coordinator.

 

Samuel told how important the program and Maxine were to helping him move through school and into college. He and Maxine emphasized that if there are not people available to help youth make positive choices, there are others in the neighborhood willing to help them make negative choices. Read the text of Maxine's comments here
 

See photos from past conferences.  See attendee list and attendee map from June 7 conference.

 

20 YEARS/40 CONFERENCES: The next conference on November 4th will be the 40th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. If you've been part of these, or have been part of a tutor/mentor program that has participated, show your support with a sponsor contribution of $20, $40, $400 or $4000. Click here.
 

issue 02
 Data and Maps can support planning and resource development

Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

 

The maps above show the areas targeted for funding by Chicago's new $50 million business commitment to anti violence programs along with a map from the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator showing locations of poverty, poorly performing public schools (2008) and locations of non-school tutor/mentor programs within the Tutor/Mentor Connection database. See these maps and blog article, here.

Using data provided by the Social IMPACT Research Center at the Heartland Alliance, and the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator's Interactive map, a set of maps have been created showing Chicago community areas and the number of high poverty youth, age 6-17 who live in each community area.  See this set of maps here.

 

If a neighborhood like Austin, has 6356 youth in poverty, which is 34.8% of the total youth age 6-17 in the neighborhood, can a case be made to donors that any well-organized tutor/mentor program in the area should be funded consistently from year-to-year?  Can a case be made that even more programs are needed in this area than what are now available?


Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

 

Maps like these can be used by community organizations, business and political leaders, youth activist and anyone else who wants to see youth in every high poverty neighborhood have the networks of support the deserve to help them move through school and into jobs and careers. Read more about uses of maps.
 

issue 03
 

president's message

Enough is Enough - Build learning communities to support growing involvement
by Daniel F. Bassill

"The direct route to the end of oppression is for the oppressors themselves to work with the oppressed to end it." Read article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/31/the-way-out-of-the-black-poverty-cycle/

This is what I've been proposing for many years.  If we want to change the conditions that lead to street violence, high costs of poverty at hospital emergency rooms, high drop out rates in inner city schools, etc. we need to find ways to get more people who don't live in poverty personally involved. 

This animation was created by an intern to show the steps in this involvement strategy from this blog article.



Images created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC   

Engage youth, volunteers and interns in the learning and leadership process.  
This is another one of many visualizations done by interns working with Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in Chicago. These focus on strategies intended to draw more people together in networks focused on helping youth in high poverty neighborhoods. Visit these links to see this and more. 2013 Intern projects. Intern Videos. Intern Visualizations.

Every time I host a Tutor/Mentor Conference I invite representatives of these organizations to participate and use the conference space to further their own agendas. The next conference is November 4, 2013. If you're reading this I hope you'll help extend this invitation so more will participate.  If you've been part of one of these conferences in the past, or have benefited from a program that has participated, consider becoming a 40th Conference Sponsor.

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Thank you! You read to the bottom of the page.  If you do this every month you are truly dedicated.  I'd like to hear from you. Email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net or join one of the forums I've pointed to. 

Good luck to everyone as they launch a new school year of tutoring and mentoring. 


Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L
President
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC
and Tutor/Mentor Connection

Read the blogs at :
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com

Connect in these locations:
* on Twitter - http://twitter.com/tutormentorteam
* Linked in group on volunteering - http://tinyurl.com/TMC-LinkedIn-Volunteering
* Tutor/Mentor Institute on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/TutorMentorInstitute
* Tutor/Mentor Connection forum at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com
* On Slide Share - http://www.slideshare.net/tutormentor
* On Scribd.com - http://www.scribd.com/daniel-f-bassill-7291
* On Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/tutormentor/

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