All Posts - Blogs - Tutor/Mentor Connection

Review of Links on T/MC web site

Posted by Daniel Bassill on February 4, 2009 at 7:08am

In May 2008 I invited interns from Korea who were spending a month in Chicago as interns with the Tutor/Mentor Connection to look at the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs listed on the T/MC web site, as a first-time visitor. Here are questions we've asked them to consider: * Home page features "mentoring or tutoring" with headline words and/or pictures * Home page has easy-to-find subfeature of "mentoring or tutoring" with words and/or pictures * Volunteer involvement opportunity is clear * Contact information is clear so volunteer or donor can contact program * Case made for why tutoring/mentoring is important * Site shows role of tutoring/mentoring in workforce development * Site shows benefit of volunteer involvement in tutoring/mentoring on the volunteer * Site provides links to research related to tutoring, mentoring, poverty, education, etc. * Site links to other tutor/mentor programs in the same city * Site links to one or more Tutor/Mentor Connection web sites and/or Program Locator If you register and log in on the T/MC site you can rate any of the web links and offer comments. We encourage anyone to do that. The collective wisdom of many people will offer a much better review than just the opinion of one or two people. Our aim is not to criticize, but to help programs learn to use their web sites to attract volunteers, donors, and other needed resources so they can do more to help the kids and volunteers in their programs. As you read these reviews I hope it helps you begin to build an understanding of the different tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. As leaders of these programs read the reviews, we hope it helps them see ways to constantly improve their own web sites, by borrowing ideas from other web sites or from these reviews.

New member

Posted by Anne Gallo on February 2, 2009 at 11:17am

Hello everyone,My name is Anne Gallo and I am the director of the school based mentoring program for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee. Unfortunately are working in a failing school system that has been taken over by the state which has made my job very interesting and never dull! I am excited to be a member of the blog and hope that I am able to bring some value to the conversations.

New format for Tutor/Mentor Institute

Posted by Daniel Bassill on January 13, 2009 at 12:38pm

In 1998 we began putting information on the Tutor/Mentor Exchange web site, expressing our vision and ideas. While we've had people contact us and ask for permission to use the articles, we know that the layout has been pretty ghastly, and discourages people from browsing. That has changed. On January 12 we launched a new Tutor/Mentor Institute on the http://www.tutormentorexchange.net site. I hope you'll take a look, browse the articles, share them with friends, co-workers, community leaders, etc. and put the ideas to work in your own community, or in Chicago in collaboration with us. If you'd like to give us some feedback, please post your comments.

January is National Mentoring Month - Encourage New Years Resoulutions that Draw Volunteers and Donors to Tutor/Mentor Programs.

Posted by Daniel Bassill on December 31, 2008 at 5:30am

As you make your New Year's Resolutions, please consider the following suggestions: 1) Become a Mentor (there are thousands of children in big cities where volunteers are needed) 2) Volunteer your TALENT to help a tutor/mentor program grow; you can help with technology, marketing, communications, auditing, and many other ways 3) Invite friends to this Ning group 4) Make a donation to Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, or to one of the programs in the Chicago Links Library; or visit www.mentoring.org to learn more about mentoring programs and networks throughout the country. Below is the official press release for January's National Mentoring Month campaign... We are delighted to announce that a new, one-stop shop for all things related to January’s National Mentoring Month (NMM) launched today. The site is designed to give anyone interested in expanding the power of mentoring an easy way to learn more about and join in NMM activities. Nationalmentoringmonth.org is co-sponsored by NMM’s three national partners—the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Harvard School of Public Health and MENTOR. MENTOR is also managing the Web site, while Minnesota’s Carlson Family Foundation is a corporate sponsor for the NMM effort. The site offers two television PSAs created for NMM 2009, one featuring General Colin Powell, as well as a new radio PSA. Users can view and order the printed NMM materials, including posters, thank-you notes and bookmarks, which display the NMM 2009 graphics and theme: “Expand Your Universe. Mentor a Child.” In addition, the site lists all local partners, including Mentoring Partnerships, which signed on to be the lead NMM promoters in their states. Mentoring program leaders and youth services advocates in those states can contact their lead partner(s) for materials and to coordinate media coverage. Finally, Nationalmentoringmonth.org offers 10 ideas for getting involved with mentoring this January, how to take action, a search option to find mentoring programs by zip code, a brief history of NMM and news and events about NMM activities nationwide. While National Mentoring Month is in January, this web site and the Tutor/Mentor Connection's goal is to keep attention focused on volunteer-based mentoring and tutoring 365 days a year, just as corporate advertisers keep daily attention on their products and services. Volunteers, partners and sponsors are needed who will take a role in achieving this goal.

To: Friends of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection The Annual Holiday Fund is the major fund raising campaign of the year. It provides the dollars needed to keep youth and volunteers conn

Posted by Daniel Bassill on December 15, 2008 at 5:14am

To: Friends of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection

The Annual Holiday Fund is the major fund raising campaign of the year. It provides the dollars needed to keep youth and volunteers connected in one on one and group mentoring and Learning. Please make a holiday donation using this form: http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate/donate_online.asp View Cabrini Connections on-line videos here and here Meet Cabrini Connections students and volunteers Please encourage your co-workers, friends and family to be a volunteer, or make a year-end donation to support our 2008-09 efforts to help inner city kids connect with workplace tutors, mentors and extended learning opportunities. Thank you from all of our students and volunteers and from Dan Bassill, El Da'Sheon Nix and the Cabrini Connections Board of Directors

Conference Welcome Address by Dr. Clinton Nichols

Posted by Daniel Bassill on December 9, 2008 at 9:33am

We held the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago on Nov. 21. It was hosted by the Chicago Field Museum. Welcoming remarks were made by Dr. Clinton Nichols who has worked at the Field Museum since 2006 as an Urban Anthropologist in the Division of Environment, Culture and Conservation. Dr. Nichols hosted a panel at the conference as one of many new friends that we made during the day. Below are his welcoming remarks: Good morning. Thank you Dan and the Tutor/Mentor Connection for the generous and kind introduction. I want to welcome all of you to the Field Museum of Natural History on behalf of a few individuals: first my immediate supervisor, Dr. Alaka Wali; Senior Vice President of Environment, Culture and Conservation Dr. Debby Moskovits; and the Museum’s President and Chief Executive Officer John McCarter. Some of you may wonder why a natural history would host a conference about tutoring and mentoring programs. This is no surprise to me. For a long time the Field Museum has pushed the boundaries about how a museum uses its collections and research to be part of the metropolitan community. Both the Field Museum and Tutor/Mentor Connection have a deep commitment to creating interesting learning opportunities for young people. At the Museum, these take the form of our exhibits, educational programs to visiting school groups, innovative outreach efforts such as the Harris Loan program. Our Anthropology collections represent the material culture of peoples around the world. But it is worth noting these items manifest tutoring and mentoring. We should enter today’s events mindful that for most of human history knowledge of the world, our place in it, and our relationship to other people was passed down not through schools and universities but in tutoring someone how to fish or farm, how to weave a basket or make a house, and in mentoring someone in how to harness their gifts to mediate conflict, to heal or to matchmake for the benefit of their society. Indeed schools and universities, not to mention museums, are relatively recent inventions in educating. But tutoring and mentoring are markedly different because these actions do not require advanced degrees or qualifications that set a person apart from others. To tutor and mentor a younger person reminds us that everyone possesses knowledge she can share. In this sense the Field Museum is a perfect host for today’s conference. Environment, Culture and Conservation, a scientific division affectionately known here as ECCo, uses an approach that identifies and harnesses the knowledge and organizational assets of local communities in order to improve the quality of life. In the foothills of the Amazon our engagement with indigenous communities has resulted in the dedication of thousands of square kilometers as national parks, protecting these communities’ way of life and diverse plant and animal species. Here in Chicago we have worked to promote cultural understanding through Cultural Connections, a program that brings together educators and the city’s cultural centers and ethnic museums. An initiative at a mixed income housing development has promoted residents’ talents as a way to foster community and to strengthen organizations in the north Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood. Today’s conference is an opportunity for all of us to share best practices in tutor/mentor programs. We will also have the chance to learn about innovative mapping tools that can assist in developing programs in parts of our city where these are lacking. We will also share strategies about how to more effectively inform the public and donors about the importance of our programs. At a moment when we have an unacceptably high drop out rate and an unacceptably high number of students who graduate without the necessary skills to succeed, tutoring and mentoring programs must be part of the solutions to keep our youth engaged in their own education and career development. On behalf of the staff at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection and my Museum colleagues I encourage you to participate in as many workshops as you can. Network with as many people here as you can. I hope you leave today with your head full of ideas, your heart full of enthusiasm, and your pocket full of colleagues’ business cards. And of course take time to enjoy the wonderful exhibits that are second to none in the world. These too can spark new ways tutoring and mentoring our youth.

Thanks for coming to the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference

Posted by Nicole White on November 26, 2008 at 7:03am

Hello everybody, I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who helped out and attended our 2008 November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. It was great putting faces with all the names of people who I had been in contact with over the phone and internet.Anyway, I JUST posted a blog post on the conference at my blog http://nicolecabrini.blogspot.comIf you wrote about the conference in your blog, let me know!

Holiday communications panel follow up

Posted by Gordon Mayer on November 21, 2008 at 7:57am

Thanks for having me out! I got a ride back to the office with Shane from AUSL--turned out we had a geogrphy connection, she lived for 5 years near where I grew up.... and I learned that she and her husband are jazz fans! So consider us connected, thanks to Dan, Cassina, Nicole et al.One thing that stuck with me after the panel based on what folks said and our own experience: Use Facebook to recuirt people to go drinking for a good cause. That's a winner, for sure (thank you, Jane from East Village Youth Programs and Cassina from Tutor Mentor). .Plus I'll be looking at Cassina's blog!

Tutor/Mentor Connection information presentation

Posted by Daniel Bassill on November 14, 2008 at 10:00am

With the help of Andrew Pincon of the Digital Workforce Education Society I did a web presentation this week to show some folks in Indiana the resources on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site. Here's the presentation if you'd like to listen to it: http://www.digibridge.net//tmc/cent_ind_tmc111208/

Links to Check Out

Posted by Meghan Hamilton on October 17, 2008 at 10:42am

http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com/http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/collaboration/Collaboration%20Goals.pdf

What are you doing to stay afloat in this economic storm?

Posted by Daniel Bassill on October 1, 2008 at 2:30am

The financial world seems to be crashing all around us, yet the kids we serve in our tutor/mentor program are still only 11 to 17 (7th grade to 12th grade) and all need our continued support for one to six years just to finish high school. How to find the money to pay the rent, salaries, insurance and other expenses in an environment where donor dollars are disappearing. Are you faced with this challenge? What are you doing? To me, one solution is that more of us who do similar work need to innovate more ways to get our message of why and where we are needed, and what we are doing. We need to advertise to a broader audience, with greater frequency. We don't have the dollars to do this, but if you're reading this message, we have the technology to do this. Write blog articles like we do at http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com to tell about what you do in your organizations. Use forums like this to share your blog address with others, to create a greater reach. If hundreds of us do this we can build a greater visibility that competes for shrinking resources.

Introductions: History of Tutor/Mentor Connection

Posted by Daniel Bassill on September 1, 2008 at 3:28am

This weekend I was invited to join a mentoring list serve hosted by Dr. David DuBois, at University of Illinois, Chicago. I started typing an introduction, and found that it is longer than most people might read. Thus, I'm posting the introduction here and anyone who wants to take the time, can read it . I'm Dan Bassill, President of a Chicago non profit called Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection The Cabrini Connections part is a site based, non-school, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring program that was formed by myself and six other volunteers in late 1992. We had all been part of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program prior to that, which was formed by employee volunteers in 1965. I became a volunteer with the Ward program in 1973 and its volunteer leader in 1975. Between then and 1990, while I held various advertising management jobs with Montgomery Ward, the tutoring program grew from 100 pairs of kids/volunteers to over 300 pairs who met once weekly at the Wards Headquarters in Chicago by 1990. Up till 1990 this was not a non profit, thus we operated with less than $30,000 in funding, but with more than 50 volunteers from various companies, including myself, in leadership roles. You can read this history, and see a time line of growth from 1965 to 2008 if you visit http://www.cabriniconnections.net/about/history.asp When we formed Cabrini Connections in 1992, we also created the Tutor/Mentor Connection. In my previous years leading the Montgomery Ward program I observed that no one had a master database of tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Chicago, and media were inconsistently giving attention to tutoring/mentoring, or to all of the neighborhoods where tutoring/mentoring programs were most needed. In my advertising jobs at Montgomery Ward, we created 3 waves of weekly advertising which we sent to 20 million people to draw attention to more than 400 stores in 40 state. I recognized that without this type of consistent public attention, pointed at all tutor/mentor programs, and all poverty neighborhoods, only a few brand name programs and a few highly visible neighborhoods would get the consistent resources needed to build long-term programs. Thus, as we created Cabrini Connections we decided to build this database, and collect information that would not only help tutor/mentor program leaders and volunteers, but would help businesses, media, donors and volunteers "shop" to choose where to get involved and how to get involved. We launched a survey in January 1994 with the help of Metro Chicago Information Center, a professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and a PR firm named Public Communications, Inc. 120 programs responded, providing the basic information you now see in the Program Locator at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net. (Note: the server on the www.tutormentorconnection.org web site is being replaces, and that site is not accessible this week). Of the 120 programs 54% said they had little or no contact with peers. Over 70% said they wanted more contact and 90% said they would come to a conference if it fit their schedule and was low cost. Thus we hosted a first conference in May 1994. We also published our list of programs as a first directory. Response was good enough to both, that we held another conference in November 1994 and more than 200 people attended. We published a second version of the Directory in 1995 and begin to organize a public awareness campaign, to draw attention to the programs in the Directory. Our focus has always been to create a better understanding of who the different tutoring /mentoring programs are in Chicago, and where they operated in relation to where high poverty and poor schools were located. In the Program Locator you can search the database for more than 240 listing of programs that offer tutoring and/or mentoring. You can also see maps we've created to help point resources to all parts of the city and suburbs. Over the years we've developed this strategy. I encourage you to review this strategy map". This is a long introduction, but it is intended to provide a basis of understanding and networking. We've identified many who operate tutoring/mentoring programs, but do not yet know much about who is doing research or evaluation, especially around some of the issues we focus on, such as availability of programs for each age group, in high poverty neighborhoods, impact of programs on volunteers, and role of volunteers in building sustainable resources for programs. I hope you'll introduce yourself and tell about the tutoring and/or mentoring program you lead, or your role in helping such programs grow in the community where you live.

Read the Blogs of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection staff and volunteers

Posted by Daniel Bassill on August 17, 2008 at 9:30am

In every email I point to my own http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and I hope you all read that occasionally. Each month more than 1200 visitors go to that blog, coming from all over the world. However, I'm not the only one at Cabrini Connections writing a blog. I've encouraged our staff, interns, and volunteers to also write blogs because they offer a fresh perspective, and they attract readers from their own personal networks. Here are the blogs they are writing: El Da'Sheon Nix, Administrative Coordinator, - http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com Chris Warren, our 2008-09 NU Fellow - http://chrispip.blogspot.com Cassina Sanders, marketing, PR & Fund Raising - http://cassinazcabrini.blogspot.com/ Nicole White, 2007-08 NU Fellow, and current T/MC coordinator, http://nicolecabrini.blogspot.com/ Vjeko Hlede, eLearning and Technology Coordinator http://blog.mentorforme.org/2008/11/tmc-conference-11212008.html Mike Trakan, our part time map maker, http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com Alice Toth, Tech Club volunteer, http://cabrinitechclub.blogspot.com/ On the Cabrini Blog you can also find links to other blogs written by Interns and our eLearning coordinator I hope you'll read these and enjoy the different ways each one of us is describing the work Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection are doing.

Talent of volunteers and interns expands capacity of non profit

Posted by Daniel Bassill on June 12, 2008 at 9:17am

I encourage you to visit http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2008/06/conference-presentation-created-by.html and view a flash presentation about the Tutor/Mentor Conference, which was created for my organization by two student interns from Korea. This does a great job of showcasing the conference and drawing attention to some of the tutor/mentor programs who participate on panels and delivered workshops. It also illustrates our use of maps. This is work that could be done by high school and college students and business volunteers. They don't even need to be located in the same city or country as the charity. Pass this message and example on to others. If we can unleash this type of talent we can all be more effective in reaching and helping kids.

My opinion after Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference(May.29-30)

Posted by SEUNG JUNG LEE on June 5, 2008 at 6:30am

I attended the conference from May.29 to 30 in Northwestern University Law school in downtown. I felt honored to attend this conference because anybody can not have this chance like me.I was anxious because I should meet someone who attended at this conference. But they were very kind and so sweet to us, when I told something they were patient even though I could speak english very well.I was amazed to see their passion, they explained something deal by their company or organization.I was interested in volunteer from when I was in Korea, but in Korea, I think the activities of voluteering, tutoring are not big issue better than USA.The scale of this activity is not big in Korea, I thought Korea government and organization have to follow the example of USA. On other side, I felt pity about situation that has a problem between racial and poverty. I could see the graph present about the component ratio of education by area and religion something like that. I think this problem is the most important problem can not be solved easily in USA. Out of sight the United State of America is best country.Unlike that, USA has a lot of problem. I think the USA has to solve this problem are the gap between the wealthy and the poor, the racial problem and the education problem to make better country. I hope you have a understanding , it is just my opinion.But to solve the this problem, there were many people in there for 2 days. I want to applaud to them who work everyday for the weak person. As many as there are many people, the world wil be more great and peaceful.

Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference

Posted by Eunjin Cho on June 4, 2008 at 8:54am

May 29- 30, 2008I attend to the conference for 2days. I had attended 3 conferences while I was in the work shop.The first one was the "panal of tutor/Mentor program Leaders share strategies, challenges of different program"There were lots of people from other countries. hearing peoples opinion,they had a great feeling about the volunteers and the donors. They had talked that showing the outcome of the student will help the people who wantes to donate to the T/MC. like showing the GPA of the university or the measurement of somthing they had achieved with their donation.the second conference that I had attended was "Tutoring/Mentoring Networking and Collaboration in South-Southwest Suburbs of Chicago". This conference was especially for the male. the presentation they had shown told me the graduation of male was lower than the females. It needs more program about the male. Especially in south-southwest Surburbs of Chicago. They had found that men of color has difficult to express themselves by saying like "I need help, I am Sorry, I need love".So they had made some program for them and achieved a great success.The third conference I had attend was "Discussion of mentoring and Tutoring Strategies within a YMCA, Boys & Girls club or youth center". In this conference they had talked about to thing big.We need to look other thing not only one thing of the person. Without wearing colored glasses we need to find out the students telent and make it.Finally, as I thought about the conference, It was a great experience. I had talked a lot with people. I was glad they had interested in Korea and asked lot of question through the break time. All the person that had attend had an open heart. So I could get near to them. And I got much more understood with the Tutor/mentoring program.

It takes a Village ... who are we trying to reach?

Posted by Daniel Bassill on March 7, 2008 at 11:01am

I created a new concept map today, showing the many different groupings of people/organizations with an interest in helping kids born in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers over a 25 year period of support. You can view the charg here In the chart I included links to information sections on the T/MC web site, where you could find links to other organizations and information related to that sub group. In my tutor/mentor blog article this weed I wrote about a report released by the UCLA Center for Mental Health In Schools, titled Frameworks for Systemic Transformations of Student and Learning Supports . In this report you read about how the education and development of a child has many different silos of support within a school, and community. Until these are connected in some sort of collaboration, they compete with each other, and there are too few of most of the resources not reaching too many of the kids. My chart expands on this thinking to show how the business community needs to be involved, and how volunteerism and civic engagement, via tutor/mentor programs, can expand the number of people who are personally involved with the lives of inner city kids, and who would lend their time and talent to building this village of support for more kids living in poverty. The conference that I host every May and November is intended to draw some of these people together so we begin to break down the silos and start sharing information, resources and successes. If anyone reading this wants to organize a workshop, or a discussion, intended to draw some of the groups listed on this chart to the conference, or to on-line meeting places such as this, please use the workshop presenter form to send me your ideas.

It takes a Village ... who are we trying to reach?

Posted by Daniel Bassill on March 7, 2008 at 11:00am

I created a new concept map today, showing the many different groupings of people/organizations with an interest in helping kids born in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers over a 25 year period of support. You can view the chart here In the chart I included links to information sections on the T/MC web site, where you could find links to other organizations and information related to that sub group. (NOTE: this now has an animation that helps you understand the chart better. Created by interns from Korea in 2009.) In my tutor/mentor blog article this weed I wrote about a report released by the UCLA Center for Mental Health In Schools, titled Frameworks for Systemic Transformations of Student and Learning Supports . In this report you read about how the education and development of a child has many different silos of support within a school, and community. Until these are connected in some sort of collaboration, they compete with each other, and there are too few of most of the resources not reaching too many of the kids. My chart expands on this thinking to show how the business community needs to be involved, and how volunteerism and civic engagement, via tutor/mentor programs, can expand the number of people who are personally involved with the lives of inner city kids, and who would lend their time and talent to building this village of support for more kids living in poverty. The conference that I host every May and November is intended to draw some of these people together so we begin to break down the silos and start sharing information, resources and successes. If anyone reading this wants to organize a workshop, or a discussion, intended to draw some of the groups listed on this chart to the conference, or to on-line meeting places such as this, please use the workshop presenter form to send me your ideas.

Hospitals as Strategic Leaders

Posted by Daniel Bassill on February 25, 2008 at 4:02am

I network and share ideas with many people in many forums. One is the Smart Communities forum hosted by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change. Today, there is an article showing the role of Hospitals as leaders of economic change. Read more at http://smartcommunities.typepad.com/suzanne/2008/02/hospitals-as-ec.html One of the T/MC goals is to enlist hospital, business and professional leaders as owners of the T/MC strategy, using their own leadership and resources to help build and sustain comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in areas where there is high poverty and where a business, university, church or hospital has a facility, or where their members or employees live. Such leadership can start in any city, and connect via forums like this, or via workshops at the May and November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. If you know people who already take this role, please connect them to the T/MC via the conferences of this forum.

Connecting those who can help with those who need help

Posted by Daniel Bassill on July 2, 2007 at 11:15am

I lead Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection based in Chicago and on the Internet.

Cabrini Connections is a site based tutor/mentor program where volunteers connect with 7th to 12th grade teens living in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. Once a teen joins us in 7th and 8th grade, we promise we'll do everything we can to help that youth be starting a job, or career, by age 25. That's an open ended promise that is only limited by how many volunteers and donors we can recruit to help us make this vision true for every youth who joins us.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection was born out of our understanding of how difficult it is for a small, community based program to keep such a promise. Cabrini Connections was started in 1993, by volunteers who had already been involved in a site based tutor/mentor program serving 2nd to 6th grade kids. As leader of that group, I had led the tutor/mentor program at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago since 1975. I began my mentoring in 1973. I had a 17 year advertising career and served 3 years in the Army prior to that.

Thus, by 1992 when we started Cabrini Connections, I already had more than 17 years of experience in connecting youth and adults. I knew how difficult and how rewarding this work was. I also knew that no one in Chicago maintained a master database of tutor/mentor programs and no one supported all of the programs in the city the way corporations like Montgomery Wards were supporting multiple locations around the country. At Wards, my job was to prepare advertising that would tell customers near our 400 stores in 40 states that we had merchandise they might want at stores near where they lived.

Understanding this void the founders of Cabrini Connections agreed to split half of their time and resources to fill this with a leadership strategy that would draw volunteers, donors and other needed resources to all tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, and that would help neighborhoods without programs find information to create new programs to fill these voids.

That strategy is the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I write about this on my http://tutormentor.blogspot.com blog and implement this in the T/MC web site. I hope that in this community space we can attract others who will take a role in supporting us, and in suporting the growth of T/MC type structures in big cities throughout the world.

Since I write a blog I won't be updating this blog often. I will participate in discussions that form on this site, as well as in many other forums where people who care about kids, or workforce development, or diversity or poverty reduction, are gathering to share ideas and work together to solve these problems.

Please introduce yourself and let's try to get a group to use this space to make a difference in the world.

Note: this page contains paid content.

Note: this page contains paid content.

Note: this page contains paid content.