Tutor/Mentor Connection

New article on social capital

I’ve been building a library of articles related to social capital since the early 2000s. Around 2010 I started putting some of t hese into a blog article on my Tutor/Mentor Connection.ning.com site, then in 2016 I created a WordPress article with these same links. I’ve continued to add since then.

  I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 to 2011 and over that time I…

Planing a Different Future

I’m part of two on-line communities. One is the Connected Learning #clmooc group, which is active on Twitter. The second is the Giraffe Heroes group, which just formed on Facebook.  Below is a response to a post I made this weekend in the Giraffe group.

I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in Chicago in 1993 (and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLCin 2011) to support the growth of…

Apply To Any Problem Solving Effort

Below is a graphic that I’ve been sharing for many years on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site and my blogs.  While I focus this process on making mentor-rich, non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs available in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities, I feel the process applies to other issues.

I’ve numbered different sections of the graphic.

If we want to solve problems…

US Cities Rate Poorly on Meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals

This map shows the 100 largest US cities and how well they are performing on meeting the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.  Chicago ranks 71st on the list.

This is one of several maps and charts included in a report titled Leaving No US City Behind: The U.S. Cities Sustainable Development Goals Index. Find link to the pdf here.

Last Saturday protesters in Chicago shut down…

Rich & Affluent People Have Problems, too.

I created this concept map to show the many different problems that face all people, both rich and poor.

My goal was to emphasize that while wealthy people do face many of the same problems as do poor people, they have more resources to help them deal with these problems. In addition, people living in high poverty areas face many problems that people living in affluent areas do not face.

I…

Building Web Library. Attracting Users.

The cMap below shows how information aggregated in a web library can be used by learners from many places to solve complex, on-going problems.

The problem I focus is captured in this question: “What are all the things we need to know and do to assure that every youth born in a high poverty area today is beginning a job/career by his/her mid 20s?”

I’ve been collecting articles and links since mid…

One Lesson in Creating Change that I Should Have Learned a Long Time Ago

This is a graphic that I created several years ago to visualize my 20+ year effort to change the world for kids living in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

I’m now 71 and looking for younger leaders to take on this work, and wrote a couple of “do over” articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog, sharing this goal.

I’ve not had nearly the impact that I  had hoped to have, for many reasons,…

Where You Live Determines How You Live

I’ve used maps for nearly 20 years to show where poor schools are located and where acts of violence take place…. in an on-going effort to mobilize more people to support mentor-rich non-school tutor/mentor programs in these places.

I’ve also been building a resource library starting in the 1970s when I first became a leader of a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago (since 1998 a web…

I created the concept map shown at the top of this page to show the many different challenges we all face in different ways as we go through life, and to show that people in higher poverty have fewer resources to help them overcome these challenges.

Today I started reading the World Economic Forums Global Risk Report for 2018 and found this graphic in the introduction.

The only way anyone can…

Most people would have said “Same Problems. New Solutions.”  But to me, that’s part of the problem.  I created the graphic above in the 1990s and I’ve used it every year since then. Here’s what the graphic is visualizing.

Far right: A map of Chicago with overlays showing where poverty is most concentrated. These are the neighborhoods where volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and other forms of…

Expanding the Choir – Getting Others Involved

I started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975 while in my 2nd year of a retail advertising career with the Montgomery Ward corporation in Chicago.  I quickly learned that what we did to draw customers to our retail stories was exactly what I needed to be doing to draw volunteers and youth to the tutor/mentor program.

I practiced both crafts for 15 years before leaving Wards and…

I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in Chicago in 1993 (and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011) to support the growth of on-going, non-school, volunteer based tutor, mentor and learning programs in every high poverty neighborhood of the Chicago region.

I’ve been following a four parts of the T/MC strategy since 1993. In the 1990s I posted the steps to this strategy on a wall of my…

We all want same outcomes for youth but do we do all the work that we need to do?

I wrote an article on the Tutor/Mentor blog today where I took a deeper look into the steps on this pyramid.  I hope you’ll take a look.

In the middle of the pyramid, is a segment saying “actions that increase the flow of resources to each neighborhood“.   I want to focus on that in this article.

  This graphic includes a map of Chicago, with high poverty areas highlighted. Youth tutoring,…