Blogs

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.

On Monday I hosted another Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago. This was the 40th in the past 20 years. I'm still going through attendance information, evaluations, etc. but it looks like about 105 attended.
One participant, Changyue An,  is a graduate student from IIT in Chicago. Here's some information he shared from a workshop titled "Mentoring Urban Youth"

1.  Two important principles we must remember

• Young people do not see what you see.
• If they are gangs, you must see them as individuals.

 2.  The Approach to be a good tutor/mentor

• What you see might not be what others see.
• What you experience plays an important factor on how you react and handle situations.
• Gained knowledge allows you to make certain judgments about situations and/or people.
  
  

 3.  Build Methodology-Relationship Building

• Diversity
• Respect
• Open & Honest Communication
• Trust
• Teamwork

 4.  M&M’s-another way to be a good tutor/mentor

• Meet youth where they are at
• Make a connection
• Master their needs and interests
• Maintain positive relationship
• Manage their trust
• Motivate them to positive programs

If any of you attended the same workshop, please add your own thoughts. If you would like to post a review of other workshops you attended, or of the overall conference, I encourage you to do that, too.

In the Groups section of the forum one sub group shows interns from universities working with me every six months to create strategy visualizations.  In this album, and this album, you can see photos from previous conferences, which were taken by interns who attended those. 

These illustrate roles  young people can take as intermediaries, and communicators, using their own skills to draw attention to events, activities and ideas.  Youth from many schools could be doing this and the result would be greater attention for social issues like tutoring/mentoring of youth, and a greater flow of resources from those who could help tutor/mentor programs operate in different cities.

In other articles I've pointed attention to the year-round strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and Tutor/Mentor Connection and shown how the May and November conferences have helped to get stories in Chicago media.  I've now created a page on the web site where you can view and read many of these past view articles.

Imagine how many more articles might be written about tutoring/mentoring programs if the many members of this forum began to take an active part in the May and November conferences or the August/September Back-to-School volunteer recruitment campaign, encouraging media to tell the story from their perspective, and focusing on their program and city. 

The next conference is November 7, 2014 in Chicago and I don't encourage anyone from beyond the Midwest to try to attend.  If you're close and can do a workshop or be a participant, visit the web site and then register or submit a workshop proposal. If you are already planning to attend and/or host a workshop, then why not send a press release to your local media and see if you can generate a story showing why you do what you do and why networking and learning from peers is important.

If you'd like a copy of a handout we've created, just post a note and I'll send it to you.  If we can generate more news coverage on a regular basis we can also attract more volunteers and donors to support what we're all trying to do.

Out of more than 200 members in this Ning group, a small percent are staff, volunteers and interns working directly with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection. Our purpose, as shown by this strategy map, is to help comprehensive, volunteer based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty areas of the Chicago region.

This is not something that will happen in one year, or even a decade. Furthermore, building a great program is just the first step toward recruiting a youth, and keeping him/her and volunteers engaged and connected for five to 20 years, so the long term outcome is that the youth has a network of adults and a range of experiences that are helping him with jobs and career growth as he becomes an adult.

The chart above illustrates the way we use events at different parts of each year, to draw people together, to draw attention to tutoring/mentoring and to draw resources to the various tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Since many people may not understand the ideas behind this chart, I'm constantly looking for different ways to communicate these ideas. Thus, many of the interns who are on this ning site are either converting ideas like this into interactive and animated formats, or writing blogs to help other people understand and adopt these ideas.

This graphic is the first slide of an animated project, just completed by Eunsoo Lee, and Intern from IIT, who is from Korea. If you browse the groups section you can follow work that was done in the past, or is being done right now.

This presentation, and a second one done by Jawon Koo, are important, because they illustrate how people and organizations can act today, and at the same time be thinking of the impact they might have three, six, nine and 12 months into the future.

You can review more of the essays that were used to create these animations, in the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site and you can see how I write about these ideas in the Tutor/Mentor Blog. If you're a student or volunteer who would like to volunteer time creating visualizations of these ideas, just join in. There is no limit to how many people can be involved, or to how many ways these ideas can be communicated.

Those of you who are in Chicago or the Illinois, are encouraged to share these ideas with people you know, and use them in building support for your own tutor/mentor program. There are many colleges, and many interns. Any non profit can reach out and recruit interns, and business partners, to help in the same way we are doing.

If you're in another city, you can follow this process, and duplicate it. The maps and charts that we share are just as useful in other places. Use the ideas to build greater and on-going business, donor and volunteer involvement in the different programs in your own region, so you create a movement of people toward a long-term goal.

I encourage you to form your own groups within this forum. For instance, there is a Los Angeles Group, a South Suburbs Group, and an Acacia Fraternity group. If these attract people from those places, who focus on the strategies that we are outlining with these presentations, the network of people how are connecting, and sharing ideas, and working together to gain greater public attention, will grow.

With the Social Network Analysis tools that we're discussing in this group, we hope to be able to map the growth of these networks, and help each one grow stronger through the process.