Blogs

I've been reading Curt Bonk's book titled the World is Open and have put in dozens of sticky notes on pages with links to on-line learning resources that he mentions.  I intended to go back and find these, one at a time, and add them to my own library on the Tutor/Mentor Connection site.

However, Curt's already done much of the work of building a list of resources. Visit this page and this page and you'll find resources that anyone can  use in their own teaching, mentoring, parenting and learning.

If you visit this page and begin to use some of the resources please post a comment to this blog sharing what you looked at and how you used it. Bonk's book focuses on "sharing" via the Internet. We can put the spirit of the book to work in our own efforts if many of those on the Tutor/Mentor Connection will share ways they are using the information he is sharing.

I'm hosting a webinar focused on volunteer recruitment for tutor/mkentor programs at 2pm EST on April 21.  You can sign up here. 

I've been sharing strategy ideas via pdf visualizations and blog articles for many years and have done a few on-line presentations.  I'm using WizIQ for this one and if it works out well I'll do more.

I feel the on-line events are a way to reach more people, and encourage collaboration among larger groups of people. It's not just what you learn, but who you meet, and how that leads to further connections, interactions and shared efforts to help solve community problems that are common in many places.

If you attend the webinar, come back here and offer your comments for future presentations.

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 created this graphic last week to illustrate the progression of thinking that I've followed for the past 20 years.

I know from my own experiences and those of others, and from much reading, that connecting youth with caring adults can have a positive impact.

I also know that building and sustaining these adult-youth connections in high poverty neighborhoods is very difficult without some organizational structure to enable youth and adults to meet in safe places and without supportive mentor-leaders in place to support weekly interactions. Thus, finding the existing volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in any city, and finding ways to help them get the ideas, talent, resources, volunteers needed to operate and constantly improve would seem to be a good idea.

Once we agree that organized programs are a good idea, then if we plot locations of existing programs on a map showing poverty and other indicators of youth needing extra adult support, we can quickly identify neighborhoods with few or no programs.  It would seem that leaders in business, media, politics, philanthropy and other sectors would want to work together to help existing programs grow and to help new programs grow in areas that are without programs.

Through the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) which I started in 1993, and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, which I formed in 2011, I'm trying to support all three levels of this thinking.   Browse the articles I've posted here, here, and here and in my blog to learn more about this thinking and to find ideas that you can apply to support these ideas in your own community.

These maps show where they are needed and the blueprints provide a vision that many programs could aspire to. If the program can show on its web site that it is providing the services that are needed each year, then donors and volunteers could look at the type of infrastructure that is needed, and provide the dollars, time or talent to programs in these neighborhoods to help them stay connected to kids and volunteers through all of the years it takes for kids to go from first grade through 12th grade, and even beyond that to when they are looking for jobs and volunteers could be helping open doors.

If the theoretical model is created by a collaboration of programs offering tutoring/mentoring and the people who want such programs to exist and succeed, then donors who believe in the theoretical model should be able to look at a programs web site and decide if they are in an area where the program is needed, doing the type of work that would lead to the outcome they want the program to impact, and then provide the resources needed based on what they have to offer. Visit the Tutor/Mentor Institute for more articles related to this idea.

This chart illustrates the role that intermediaries could take in buiding a theoretical model, or blueprint, that could be a common vision used by those who can help and those who need help. If such a model were created it would relieve all non profits who share the vision with the burden of providing their own theoretical model and would provide a common tool that resource providers and service providers could use to lobby for expanded resources to flow on an on-going and long-term basis.

Does this exist anywhere for the tutor/mentor field?.