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Today, in America, there are more than 14 million youth under 18 who are defined as "at risk" (of not reaching a productive adulthood). They face a relentless assault of negative influences which often result in drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, poor academic performance, violence, even death.
Every child should have the opportunity, confidence, character and support needed to lead a safe, healthy and productive life. They have a right to expect a fair chance to develop their talents and apply their energies in order to successfully contribute to society. However, their communities are bereft of role models, and teachers have too much on their plates.

Studies consistently show that the best hope for young people comes from mentoring. Programs like Cabrini Connections provide students with the opportunity to develop their confidence, character, and grow into the person they were destined to become. There might not be role models in the community but Cabrini Connections provides role models for these students, this not only gives these students a save haven for after school but a chance to develop their talents and teach them to use their energy for the good.

Help us help the children. To find out more ways on how to be apart of the solution go to www.cabriniconnections.net

The next project I'd like one of my visualization interns to work on would be this concept map, which shows the different range of supports kids need at elementary school, middle school and high school. In my map, this is shown in one dimension, with the journey starting at pre school on the left side of the graphic, and ending at work, on the right side. I'd like someone to make this a 3-dimensional animation, with the information at each grade level showing as a sphere, or pie chart, around a core which has work as the penthouse, and birth and pre-school as the first floor or foundation.

We won't have our next interns from IIT until May 2010. However, students working with graphic design and visualization at any high school or college in the world can create their own interpretations of these ideas and share their work on this site. If you'd like to do that, let me know.

Mentoring a youth can be very rewarding. Mentoring is a way to provide youth with tactics and wisdom so that they are able to succeed and achieve their goals. Below are several examples/statistics of how mentoring can benefit youth and some questions to think about as you are reading through this article.

Mentors help youth start focusing on their future:

*Mentors help young people set career goals and start taking steps to realize them.
*Mentors can use their personal contacts to help young people meet industry professionals, find internships and locate job possibilities.
*Mentors introduce young people to professional resources and organizations they may not know about.
*Mentors can help their mentees learn how to seek and keep jobs.

Remember what it was like looking for your first part-time job? How’d you go about creating your career goals? What helped you when being interviewed for a job? Who do you know that could be a resource for a youth looking at different career fields?

Mentors help youth focus on improving there self:

*Mentors help improve a young person’s self-esteem.
*Mentors provide support for students trying new behaviors.
*Youth who meet regularly with their mentors are 46% less likely than their peers to start using illegal drugs and 27% less likely to start drinking (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters).
*About 40% of teenager’s waking hours are spent without companionship or supervision. Mentors provide teens with a valuable place to spend free time.
*Mentors teach young people how to relate well to all kinds of people and help young people strengthen their communication skills.

What were challenges you faced when you were a kid? What temptations did you face? How did you overcome them? What activities are you already doing that you can include a kid in?
You bring more than you realize into a mentoring relationship.

Mentors help youth focus on their education:

*Mentors help keep students in school.
*Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters).
*Mentors help with homework and can improve academic skills.

How did you prepare for tests? What worked well you for studying? What kind of plans did you make for college? How did you prepare?
Are those things that you could share while mentoring?

Take some time to listen to what Colin Powell has to say about the benefits of mentoring.

If you have any questions or want to make a difference in a youths life please contact www.cabriniconnections.net

Six-weeks ago I started my internship at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connections. Cabrini Connections is a non-profit organization designed to enrich and further develop the lives of students who live in low-income neighborhoods such as Cabrini Green. They do this by providing tutor/mentor programs for these students after hours, which not only provides alternate learning opportunities but keeps these students out of trouble. At my internship my job is to promote the organization further through social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, volunteer forums, etc. Through this I will help expand others' knowledge of Cabrini Connections, get people to either donate or volunteer at Cabrini, as well as increase my own knowledge of certain social media outlets.

So far in my internship I have done a lot to promote the organization. As being a Public Relations/Advertising major my main focus is to bring in funds and support to Cabrini Connections. My goal is that with my degree I will become an event planner. I believe that I have the talent, drive, and skill to become an event planner even though I have no real experience in the matter.

I would love to be able to create an event for Cabrini Connections but with the time I have left in my internship I do not believe that I will have reasonable amount of time to create a well established event. I am however working with my sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, in hopes that the proceeds to our next fundraising event can go to Cabrini Connections. Nothing is set in stone yet though.

These two-weeks I have figured out many important and beneficial tactics. I now know how to correlate day to day news with Cabrini Connections and how to promote upcoming events we are having in an effective manner. I have found an abundance of ways to promote Cabrini Connections and I now know which methods are more effective in getting people's attention. For instance, it has come to my attention that Facebook has been an effective way of getting people to acknowledge Cabrini Connections' efforts in developing the lives of students living in low-income housing. All of these are extremely important to my learning because it will not only help spread the word of Cabrini Connections but it will also help my knowledge of social media and learning how to connection organizations with the people.

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.