Letter from the Conference Chairperson

 

Daniel F. Bassill (in center)

President, CEO of Cabrini Conections
and the Tutor/Mentor Connection

 

 

Mr. Bassill has been involved as a volunteer and leader of tutor/mentor programs for over 35 years. Read the Tutor/Mentor Blog

Meet Dan on Facebook or Linked In and Twitter

For those who have been to past Tutor/Mentor Conferences, I'm disappointed to tell you that this web site is being hacked by spammers, so we have taken down the interactive lists and forms until we can fix the problem. We will provide updates for the next conference and do hope you will participate.

I believe that comprehensive, volunteer-based non-school tutor/mentor programs are just as important for helping youth succeed in school as are well trained principals, smaller class sizes and new curriculums. Such programs should be available in every neighborhood with high poverty and poorly performing schools. Thus most people who have met me have seen me point to maps of Chicago, showing all of the places where volunteers and dollars are needed for good programs to operate, not just the place where I need these resources to operate my own program.

I express my beliefs on my blog, and share my strategies in the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site. Through the conference I encourage the leaders represented by the 1500 organizations in the Links Library on the T/MC web site to connect with me and each other to build strategies that make constantly improving tutor/mentor programs available in a growing number of locations.

I am just one person. Until many of us connect and innovate ways to get the business community and other institutions involved in strategies that draw volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in neighborhoods where they do business, or where their employees live, we will not have enough resources to do this work in all of the places where they are needed.

Thus, I hope you’ll join me at the next Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference, or in an one-line forum where we can get to know each other and exchange ideas that lead to a greater involvement of people beyond those who lead non profits or teach in inner city school, so we have a more consistent flow of resources to every tutor/mentor program, and more tutor/mentor programs in places where they are needed. If you’d like to talk, call me at 312-492-9614, or email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net.


Dr. Daniel Bassill
President & CEO
Cabrini Connections
Tutor/Mentor Connection
800 W. Huron
Chicago, Il. 60642