Blogs

I started this forum in 2007 when platforms like Ning were a new way to meet, connect and share ideas.  While a few people still join every year the forum has not been very active for a few years.

However, I still use it to archive work done in the past and to maintain connections for those who did join.

I created this graphic recently to show how an idea I or others launch with a post, like this one, explodes into a network of people who we know, or who are also part of the forum.

What you do to share this post in your own networks is similar to how new explosions of fire works emerge from the initial bomb bust, one after another.  In network building these represent an idea being blasted into larger and larger networks of people.  

I used this graphic in this article. Take a look and share it with others.

 I post messages daily intended to draw visitors to my blogs and use hashtags like #tutor #mentor #learning to narrow the focus.

This week I learned about Wakelet which is a platform to archive and share collections of Tweets, based on specific #hashtags.

This graphic shows five collections on my page that I created in just a few minutes. 

See this in this blog article.

Since the mid 1990s I've tried to visualize my ideas and strategies using PowerPoint and other drawing tools. I've been uploading these to slide share and other platforms for past few years. Here's one example.

Problem-Solving Strategy-Explanation and Overview by Daniel F. Bassill

Reposted from  email I receive:

Mentor Michigan Census Reports Available

April 12, 2011: Mentor Michigan, a MENTOR affiliate, has now made the latest Mentor Michigan Census (MMC) available online.

This is Wave VIII of the census, which is a survey of organizations operating mentoring programs in the state of Michigan. It was conducted in the fall of 2010, and 137 organizations responded for a 58 percent response rate.

Among the findings of this survey:
*  Various academic outcomes are an area of focus for more than 80 percent of responding programs, including school-based programs. Within academics, improved attendance and grades/GPA are the highest priorities. Additional focus areas reported included pro-social skills and health and wellness.

* The biggest changes in demographics since the last survey were a 4 percent increase in mentees between 12 and 14, as well as a 4 percent decline in African-American youth served.

* The biggest improvements in registry-based screening procedures were for use of SafetyNET, which increased by 8 percent since the last survey. (SafetyNET was the highly-successful pilot program that allowed youth-serving organizations access to the nationwide FBI fingerprint database in screening potential volunteers and employees. SafetyNET ended March 31, and a bill to create a permanent successor to it has been introduced in both houses of Congress.)

* Wave VIII showed a small increase in mentor retention; however, the percentage of male mentors — new and returning — has decreased.

According to Mentor Michigan Director Amber Troupe, "The primary purpose of the MMC is to understand the scope and nature of mentoring and mentoring organizations in our state. Specifically, we aim to identify, count, describe and track mentoring organizations, programs, mentors and mentees; understand program components, processes, resources and needs; and encourage and support program evaluation."

"The more information we know about the mentoring programs we serve, the more help we can offer them toward becoming even more effective," noted MENTOR President and CEO Dr. Larry Wright.

To hear more about Mentor Michigan's MMC, Wave VIII, register for the free, online webinar being hosted by evaluator Bob Kahle this Thursday, April 14, at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/564339762. To access all current and past MMC reports, go to www.michigan.gov/mentormichigan/0,1607,7-193--110977--,00.html. For more information about youth mentoring in general, visit www.mentoring.org.

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Tutor/Mentor Connection comment: We would be doing this type of census for Chicagoland if the money were available. We'd use the information to support marketing that builds on strong programs and helps improve weak programs, while helping new programs grow where too few now exist.

This is a graphic that I include in many articles I write, illustrating the role individuals can take in reaching out to people they know to draw them to information we share on our web sites and to tutor/mentor program locations where they can be volunteers,  leaders, donors, etc.  I am speaking to a group of students from Governors State University tonight (4/5/2011) and at Loyola University  on Thursday (4/8/2011) and created this pdf essayto try to illustrate the ways they and others can help tutor/mentor programs grow.

While my mission and focus is on tutor/mentor program growth, these ideas can be applied to build more consistent and long-term support of organizations involved in any form of social problem solving where resources need to be consistently available in order for organizations to build the strength and knowledge to begin to have an impact on those issues.

I encourage anyone who reads this to share it. I also encourage you to create your own leadership essays so you can share your own thinking on these topics.  If you want to volunteer time and talent to help convert this idea to a video or a graphic animation we welcome your involvement.

I'm trying to create a visualization that any youth serving organization might be willing to use to visually communicate what time of day they reach youth, what age range they serve and what types of learning and mentoring activities are offered.

This is what I've done so far.  This could be downloaded and colored in by hand, then scanned and uploaded as a jpg. Perhaps it could be imported into photo shop or a paint program and colored in.  Or perhaps someone could create a graphics program that enables people to fill in this information via their computer, then produce a jpg that could be posted on their web site.

If we found a way to make this easy to create, and to motivate a larger number of organizations to put this on their web sites it might have two benefits. Programs might see activities that are included in work of other programs and try to duplicate that in their own programs. Donors might begin to differentiate between school based, non school, volunteer based, etc. and use this information to support fund raising or volunteer involvement decisions.

The collection of information about programs, based on what they do, needs to also be part of a matrix showing who they serve, and where they are located.  Programs operating in big cities have a different costs of operating framework than programs in smaller communities.

I don't know of anyone collecting and analyzing this information.

In the next class of interns I'll offer this as a project.  If anyone viewing this would want to create their own version and share it, please do.

I hope all who visit this forum or who have joined it since 2007 will enjoy this holiday season and have peace, happiness, health and prosperity in 2015.

While there's not a lot of activity on this site, I keep adding new blog articles to the tutor/mentor blog and mapping for justice blog. The other blogs I point to on the home page are also updated often, so consider this site an entry point into a wider network of ideas.  

The goal of this forum remains the same as when it was launched. To collect and share ideas and information that anyone can use to build volunteer based tutoring, mentoring, arts, technology and learning programs that help youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods move through school and into adult jobs and careers.

I find few support systems that are collecting the type of information I collect, and who also take action daily to draw people to the information, and to draw people directly to youth organizations in the Chicago region who require a consistent flow of dollars, volunteers, talent, technology and ideas to build and sustain life-changing relationships with youth and volunteers. 

To my friends in Africa, Asia, South America and Europe. I encourage you to draw from this site, and to duplicate what I'm doing.  The causes of poverty, the challenges NGOs face, and the solutions that are working in your country are different than what's happening in Chicago.  The map of  your city/country is different. The organizations already working with youth is different. Thus, you need to build your own web library.  

However, the challenges of getting large numbers of people to look at this information, understand it, then act consistently to support youth serving organizations throughout a geographic area are similar. Thus the ideas I share can be used to support this network-building effort, as can the ideas you share.

Hopefully 2015 will bring us a beneficiary who will provide needed financial support to this effort in addition to helping me find and train younger leaders to carry the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC forward in future years.

With your, help, God's help, and good luck, this can happen.

Thank you for visiting.

Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L.
Tutor/Mentor Connection - http://www.tutormentorconnection.org
Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC - http://www.tutormentorexchange.net

This graphic is what you see when you visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library, which I've been building for more than 20 years (and on the Internet since 1998).  

The library is organized into categories, just like any other library. You can find research showing where and why volunteer based tutor/mentor programs are needed. You can find information to support organization and fund development. You can find training for volunteers as well as strategies for volunteer recruitment.  You can find dozens of blogs focusing on learning, collaboration, network building, etc. 

When you visit the site, click on any of the 8 boxes and the library will feature links for that category. It will also show sub categories within each major section.

There are 26 categories in the library, so the graphics only point to 8 of them. You'll need to browse the listings below to know what other categories are available.

While some of this information focuses on Chicago, most of it can be used by anyone in the US to help build mentor-rich learning supports for youth in different places.   The ideas on process improvement, collaboration, innovation and learning can be used in any part of the world, not just the US.

Thus, if you're building your own web library, with information specific to your community, a link to the Tutor/Mentor Connection library gives your site visitors access to all of the links I've aggregated, without you needing to do that work.

What's really needed, are people who spend time building their own  understanding of information in this web library, and on forums like this,  then reach out to people they know to help them find and use the information in their own actions that support youth in one, or many, places.

As you browse the web library and find links of interest, I encourage you to write about what you find.  Here's a blogarticle written by Mark Carter, a consultant in Chicago, telling his readers about an article found in another section of the web libraries I host.   

You can use your own blog on this forum to write similar articles, or any other blog you may host, to write similar articles. If more people take this role, they help others find and use the information, and this helps bring more support to tutor/mentor programs in  youth in Chicago and throughout the world.

In the groups and blogs on this forum you can see how interns working with me in Chicago are creating visualizations that communicate our ideas in new ways.

In this blog titled Design for Social Change the writer provides tips and reasons to use design to communicate ideas.

I hope members of the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum, not just my interns, will take a look and begin to find ways to communicate their vision, strategies, needs and ideas visually.

This is a graphic that I  posted on my blog last Friday. It's intended to illustrate how we want leaders and volunteers to develop strategies that not only say "we have a problem" but also say "go here" to learn more about the problem, and go here, and here" to choose organizations that you can support with time, talent and/or dollars.

Since most of the 300-plus members of this forum work with non profits and NGOs that need money to operate, the more people who visit this forum to learn what we each do, and to help us with resources, the greater will be our  ability to succeed in our work.

Thus, if every three months you send out an email or some other correspondence pointing to something that is going on in this forum, in Chicago, or in your own city/country, you can increase the number of people who hear this message and respond to it.

If we can teach our friends, volunteers, family, youth and others to also send such messages, we can dramatically increase the number of people who are learning ways to help us.

If we can teach media, celebrities, CEOs, ministers, elected officials, etc. to do this, they can draw more resources into high poverty neighborhoods on a consistent basis, and do more to help effective non profits and social services do good work in many places.

Anyone can take the role of teacher, or evangelist, to spread this message and help others accept it and adopt it. Give it a try.

This photo shows Mike Trakan with one of the maps he has created for Tutor/Mentor Connection since he joined us in Jan 2008. View the maps and read the articles he writes on the mappingforjustice blog

The T/MC received a $50,000 donation from an anonymous donor in Nov. 2007 which enabled us to hire Mike and rebuild our mapping capacity. We used this money to also create aninteractive program locator where you can create your own map.

We depleted all of the funds from this grant in early 2009 and have been organizing events like theTutor/Mentor Jamconcert to raise money and encourage more people to use the maps. 

We need help finding another angel investor who will help us continue this mapping. Please forward this story to people in your network who might help us find such a donor.

This is the first page of this PDF volunteer recruitment presentation. If you're trying to draw volunteers and donors to your non-profit, it will help if people in business, media, religious groups, etc. are using their own media to encourage volunteers and donors to find you.

You can save this image to your computer, and then put it in your own blog, with your own message. If enough people do this in August we can increase the number of volunteers and donors who are supporting us in September and beyond.

I created a set of "blog exchange" links on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. If you use this image in a blog story, why not add a link to the story in the T/MC site. As we aggregate these we can learn from each other, and build more attention for each other's work.

As a result of this network building we want to increase the number of people who don't live in poverty who are investing their own time, talent and money on a regular basis to help tutor/mentor programs in one or more communities, do more to help youth grow up to fulfill more of their adult potential.

Invite others to join this Ning group, or join the discussions on Social Edge, or post notices of other places where this type of network building is taking place. As Charles says, we can meet in many spaces, not just in our own hosted space.

This graphic is one of many that I've created to try to illustrate ideas. In this case, I represent the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) which is the host of this forum. We're a small, thinly funded non profit in Chicago, so we do a lot of what we do with the help of volunteers and interns. Throughout this Ning site you'll see examples of how interns have converted graphics like this into animations, or how they are doing Social Network Analysis, or writing about what we do to help people in their own networks understand, and join us.

There are many people who could help us, ranging from faith groups, to alumni and business groups, as well as foundations, policy makers, etc. If you map your network as Willow and Jenny have done, you'll see that many people in your network have these skills, talents and assets. Many of them could help the Tutor/Mentor Connection, or Cabrini Connections, or any other non profit tutoring/mentoring program, in Chicago, or in any other city.

There are now more than 200 people in this Ning group, and we each are connected to hundreds, or thousands of other people via our networks and social media.

Every few months, there is an opportunity, and a reason, for each member of this group to share a message with the people in their network. This flash animation illustrates how the events on this graphic each have multiple goals. If you do this, with enthusiasm, creativity, and purpose, you can help the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and we can do more to help each of the organizations who are looking for the same resources that we are looking for.