Edition: March, 2012
Issue No. 108		  
   
 
   
Instructions for removing yourself from this list are included at the bottom of this email.  
NOTE: throughout this newsletter we use a Tiny URL to shorten long web site addresses so the links do not break. We hope you find this helpful.
 		  
 
   
* Child Poverty Costs - Community Organization
* Mentoring Panel - Sharing Ideas
* Involvement of interns
* Library now updated - over 2000 links
* Using Maps and Visualizations
* President's Message - Building Visibility for Kids' Issues		  
   
issue 01
Child Poverty Costs US Economy over $5 billion a year!


"Child Poverty Costs the US Economy the equivalent of over $5 billion a year"  was one of the statements made by speakers at the March 2, 2012 Voices for Illinois Children's event in Chicago.  Patrick McCarthey, President of the Anne E. Case Foundation, said "In a nation obsessed with statistics, I would love to see a fraction of that energy focused on the well-being of children and families." 

-------------------------------------------------------

The information shared in this newsletter is intended to help leaders at every level of society find new ways to build and sustain efforts that expand the adult and community supports available to help youth in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Last October I attended a National Drop Out Prevention Conference. The map below shows different organizations I met through the workshops and networking at the event. It also points to organizations and information I've learned from in previous events focused on lowering the high school drop out rate.  This map can be viewed live at http://tinyurl.com/2011DropoutConf-Network


Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Since January I've attended a few other conferences and seminars of interest. The links below point to blog articles I wrote with information and links related to each of these events.  If you follow the links from these articles the people and resources I connected with will become resources for you and your own network.

March 5-6 - Getting It Done ll Conference connected community development organizations from around the country.  See map and article at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/03/power-of-connected-networks.html . This conference was hosted by The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development - This blog article written by John McCarron summarizes day two of the event. http://www.instituteccd.org/news/3640

March 3 - Voices for Illinois Children Seminar - Release of Kids Count 2012 - Each year the Anne E. Casey Foundation compiles data about the well-being of children and families across the county. In each state this data is used to support local initiatives. Read this blog and follow the links to the Voices for Illinois Children web site, http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/03/investing-in-children-creating-public.html

One of the resources made available by the Anne E Casey Foundation is a Kids Count Data Center, where you can create your own maps and reports to show well-being of youth in your city or state. Participate in this "Navigating the Kids Count Data Center" webinar on March 21 - http://voices4kids.org/getinvolved/attendanevent.html

February 28 - Changing Worlds reception described results of "longitudinal study to measure the difference the arts and culturally responsive teaching practices have on a child's academic and social development." Read more about this at http://www.changingworlds.org/unlocking-pathways-to-learning-162.html

February 10 - visited Global Citizenship Experience Charter School in Chicago - Read about student learning in this blog - http://gcevoices.com/   

Jan. 24 & 25 - National Mentoring Summit - the materials, videos and presentations are now available on line at http://www.mentoring.org/summit2012

More than 2000 links in Tutor/Mentor Connection on-line library.  All were reviewed and updated during February 2012.  These are intended to support leaders, volunteers, philanthropists, business leaders, students, etc. in collective efforts aimed at helping young people move from birth to work. See http://tinyurl.com/T-MC-Library 

Many of these links focus on Chicago. If you're collecting similar information, focused on a different city, please share the link to your library and I'll add it.  If you'd like to submit a link to the library just register, log in, and use the "Add a New Link" feature to suggest a link. These are moderated and if approved, your link will be added to the site.


   
Chicago Mentoring Leaders Share Ideas  


During a panel discussion at the March Getting IT Done ll conference, speakers were asked "What would success look like in 5-10 years?"  One speaker encouraged others to "Be a thought leader around these issues." Others said "comprehensive would be more obvious; we'd be in more places; organizing would be even more important; we'd have new creative ways to bring people to the table."

Below are some of the ways Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC has been acting as a "thought leader" and "bringing people to the table".


Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Videos of Mentoring Leaders Discussion now available.
On Monday, January 30 leaders of different Chicago area mentoring programs participated in a panel discussion hosted by Becoming We the People and the First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park. See links to video at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/02/chicago-mentoring-leaders-share-ideas.html

Following an on-line Webheads on-line discussion on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012, Vance Stevens wrote, "Thanks to Dan Bassill for his remarkable presentation yesterday. I found Dan's work to be very similar to that of Webheads except that his is much more focused on a tangible social goal. But both are exemplary attempts at bringing social media to bear on scaling our efforts beyond our immediate circles of those we can reach directly.  Read more about this at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/02/network-building-process.html

Mentoring as part of a larger strategy builds upon a 2007 Public/Private Ventures report written by Gary Walker, P/PV president - http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-this-utopian-vision.html

See how others write about Tutor/Mentor Connection. Blog Exchange with Fermi Memorial Outreach - http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/02/blog-exchange-with-fermi-memorial.html

Streetwise features Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in January 2012 article- http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/02/streetwise-features-tutormentor.html

 

  
   
issue 02  
Interns Create New Visualizations  



Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC
 

Since 2006 Interns have worked with Tutor/Mentor Connection to build their own understanding of T/MC strategies and ideas and to create new visualizations that share these ideas. This work continued in January/February 2012 under the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC umbrella. Work done by interns is described in this article. http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/02/interns-help-visualize-hope-and.html

 

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC has aggregated videos created over past few years on this YouTube Channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/TutorMentorInstitute?feature=watch

 

In order to increase the number of people gathering in large and small discussions focused on the well-being of youth and families, as well as the future of our economy and democracy, more people must be involved in this mobilization.  Students in middle schools, high school and colleges in all parts of the country could learn to take a meaningful a role in collecting and sharing information that helps increase the number of people who are involved as volunteers, leaders, donors, etc. supporting the growth of a wide variety of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and learning programs in more places. This article illustrates one role students could take:  http://tinyurl.com/InfoCollectionEffort

 

  
 
 
 
issue 03  
Using Map and Visualization to share ideas and support growth of programs  



Image created by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC

Using Maps Strategically
Maps can be used to draw attention and resources to all areas where youth live in high poverty and would benefit from mentor-rich non-school tutoring/mentoring and learning opportunities. Maps can also be used to help build the public will needed to support the growth and operations of a state-wide network of youth serving organizations. 

See articles on  using maps at:

Building public will - http://tinyurl.com/BuildingPublicWill

Make Your own Maps - http://tinyurl.com/MakeOwnMaps

More examples of how maps can be used - http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/
 

  



The purpose of all of this information is to dramatically increase the flow of volunteers, dollars, ideas and other needed resources to all of the organizations in Chicago and other cities working to help youth move from birth to work and adult roles. Below are resource libraries that can be used to locate individual programs, and where non profits can post "help wanted" information. These links can be used to find volunteer opportunities in tutor/mentor programs in Illinois and in other states.
 

* MENTOR resources and referral service - http://www.mentoring.org/program_resources  
* ServeIllinois -    http://www.serve.illinois.gov/
* VolunteerMatch - http://www.volunteermatch.org
* ChicagoVolunteer.net - http://www.chicagovolunteer.net
* Idealist - http://www.idealist.org
* Chicago Program Links - http://tinyurl.com/ChiTM-Program-Links
* Additional on-line volunteer search web sites http://tinyurl.com/TMI-Volunteer-Recruitment
 
 
 
president's message
 		  
 
Kids don't Vote. They don't donate millions to Politians. They are invisible.
Can we change this?

by Daniel F. Bassill

At the closing of the March Voices for Illinois Children event, Kathy Ryg, President of Voices, said, "in this pivotal election year, children need adult voices to speak on their behalf over the din of political rhetoric."

In his summary of the Getting IT Done ll Conference, John McCarron wrote, "The ultimate take-away: Go home and call your representatives in Congress." He quoted Barbara Burnham, the vice-president for federal policy at LISC, which co-sponsored the event, who said,  “It’s all about the noise. The louder the noise, the more it will be heard in Washington.”

So how do we build this public will? How do we go beyond those already involved and get more people involved who will stay involved with time, talent and dollars for many years? How do we connect the "silos" of different organizations working separately for similar goals into a movement of many networks aimed at getting more people and resources strategically involved?

I share my own ideas, based on 35 years of connecting volunteers and youth in a tutor/mentor program in articles at  http://www.scribd.com/daniel-f-bassill-7291

I believe in volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring because of the potential well-organized, long-term programs have to expand the number of adults who don't live in poverty who get involved because of the bonds they build with kids and programs in poverty neighborhoods. Thus my efforts aim to help volunteer-based programs grow throughout the Chicago region --- as a strategy to expand the number of volunteers supporting more holistic efforts to improve the well-being of youth.  This animation and video illustrates this idea. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/chicagoland-volunteer-recruitment/177-volunteersleaders

I'll be talking about the 4-part strategy I've developed over the past 20 years in an April 15th on-line event hosted at http://tinyurl.com/y3eh (this is a free site but you do need to set up an account). In this event I'll be talking about aggregating knowledge.

Read more about this at:

Civic Engagement - Focus on learning. In a white paper titled Civic Engagement and Community Information, Peter Levine shared "five strategies to revive civic communication". One of these was "Generate public "relational knowledge". He said "take advantage of new tools for mapping networks and relationships to make transparent structures of our communities and to allow everyone to have the kind of relational knowledge traditionally monopolized by professional organizers"
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2011/08/civic-engagement-focus-on-learning.html

Combine the attention getting power of social media and place based conference, with in-depth and on-going learning that can take place in classrooms, book clubs, faith groups and on-line learning communities.
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2011/07/networked-learning-via-mooc.html

In a paper titled titled "Knowledge and Praxis of Networks As a Political Process" written by Yannick Rumpala from the University of Nice, in Nice, France,  Dr. Rumpala provided numerous reasons for mapping and understanding networks, as part of an effort to achieve critical mass and POLITICAL influence. In one statement he wrote "A reticular vision can be a way to rethink the idea of citizenship."
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2012/03/power-of-connected-networks.html

-----------------------------------------------------------

I'm still trying to innovate new ways to generate revenue to support the information collection and sharing that this newsletter represents.

* Support the Tutor/Mentor Institute - This describes the information platform we're trying to build and ways you can be a sponsor, partner and/or benefactor -   http://www.tutormentorconference.org/platform_tmi.htm

* Advertising Plan - you can post information about your company, or why you support Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, and help provide revenue to support our work - http://www.tutormentorconference.org/advertisingplan.htm
* Health & Wellness Partnership -  If you're a non profit learn about how your organization can improve its financial health and help volunteers, youth and families and supporters improve their physical health.  http://www.tutormentorconference.org/health&wellness1.htm 

Thank you for reading. 
 
 
   

The Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-2011)  is now operated by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net

Thank you for reading this newsletter and sharing it with others.  You can add new people to our newsletter list using this link. http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=nlofiegab&p=oi&m=1106096863597

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

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

Connect with us:
* 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

Read past newsletters
 newsletter/earchive