Hi Dan~ Finally, I finish my presentation about introduction. I hope that you'll like it. A pdf version is at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/images/PDF/songmilee.pdf
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hi dan !
this is jade
iam with you right now
this is my introduction ppt. .
Hello~ Dan! I'm happy to work with you. I'm impressed with the mission that the T/MC gives education and motivation for young people to work in society. I also can be consider about myself and the way that visualizing to promote other people about T/MC.
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.
This article quotes Malcolm Gladwell saying "if you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours".
It goes on to say "The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field."
The map at the right shows nearly 180 locations where great leaders are needed to operate volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs that are constantly improving their ability to transform the lives of youth and adults.
How many of the leaders and key staff or board members have 10,000 hours of experience learning to lead a tutor/mentor program?
Our maps show that there are many neighborhoods and zip codes in Chicago and the suburbs with no tutor/mentor programs. How many more are needed? How many more leaders are needed? How many incorporate the "mentoring to careers" vision of the Tutor/Mentor Connection? In the 25 cities of the US with youth populations of 100,000 or more, how many more tutor/mentor programs and experienced leaders are needed?
The chart at the right illustrates the K-16 path young people take to finish school and begin jobs and careers. What will it take to convince industry, philanthropic and government policy makers that we need systems of leadership development that begin to prepare people to lead tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas when those people are in middle school and high school!
Imagine service learning programs in city and suburban schools engaging youth in research that enables them to learn about poverty and its impact on learning and aspirations. Imagine if the same programs were providing service opportunities and were teaching youth to make videos, write blogs and organize social media communities aimed at building greater understanding of the challenges faced by inner city kids and aimed at generating a flow of volunteers and operating dollars to the different tutor/mentor programs operating in different neighborhoods.
If students practice this and learn from their service they can log 10,000 hours before they are in their mid-twenties and they can log another 10,000 hours as they move from that stage of life till they depart this worldly existence.
Everyone subscribed to this Ning community can be part of this learning and information sharing and can apply the ideas to building a network of experienced leaders for youth development and social problem solving programs in their own communities.
As Gladwell says, "it is practice, however, that makes perfect. The best way to achieve international stardom is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills."
Here is my final project for my internship, that breifly demonstrates what I have learned from my experience with Tutor/Mentor Connection. This is a brief synopsis of what I learned and in what ways I feel that this project can impact the future. I am greatful for the time I was involved with T/MC and hope to remain connected to it in the future. The ideas are simple, yet go against the way in what I feel most people think about in terms of how non profits operate and how to address large, societal issues. I know my thoughts regarding low income communities were almost from a victim blaming perspective, where I did not view the larger system as the force that keeps these individuals disempowered. Learning to view the world around from this perspective has opened up my eyes on ways to combat this problem that will be more effective, and one key thing I learned is the importance of different nonprofits working together towards a unified goal, instead of working in isolation from each other or even against each other for resources and volunteers.
Throughout my internship at T/MC, I have been struggling with the idea of how universities can become actively involved in the nonprofit sector and with tutor/mentor programs, and even provide a source of constant revenue. One idea is simply to have students involved in the school go out and become volunteers with different organizations, providing the tutor/mentor programs with a constant stream of tutors and mentors, however this would probably only last for a short time (6 months perhaps) and due to this, would have limited impact on the child in terms of needing a stable mentor in their life to promote change. Merely addressing the academic needs individual children that come from low-income, disempowered neighborhoods for roughly a semester equates to symptom management without fixing the overall problem. It's too small scale to create lasting change, and the students who come out of a program such as this may feel as though they did all that they could do to help these children. This is the strategy that I most commonly see coming from universities, and it is a good idea and good things can be done, but I feel as though universities can do so much more.
This report goes into detail regarding partnerships between community colleges and nonprofit agencies to develop funding streams to help adult students through their college career and into an actual career. The article targets a few different partnerships in different states, and details their funding streams, emphasizing that the funding streams are in constant flux for nonprofit agencies, which tends to limit the amount of time they can dedicate to their mission. The article also focuses on three individuals and how they were changed due to these partnerships. I feel as though the article, while well written, should broaden its perspective a little bit. It focuses only on adult students and how the partnerships were able to find them grant money and governmental funding to help them graduate, but it does not specify how the partnerships assisted the nonprofit agency in obtaining funds to operate. It is left to speculate that the college gained financial resources through local businesses to train these adult students to enter the workforce, thus providing financial resources to the nonprofits. The nonprofits were focused on locating funding for adult students from low income neighborhoods, to help them gain a secondary education and help them locate jobs. This is not horribly different from what T/MC is doing, however T/MC is focusing on children from school age to career. If a child is unable to complete high school, then they would be unable to even go to secondary education. I believe it is a false assumption to make that people from low income areas need help going to community colleges, when these are the individuals who are motivated to succeed (probably due to a good mentor in their life), graduated high school with decent grades, and realize that there are options out there for them (otherwise they would not apply to a community college to begin with). These are the individuals who are at the lower risk category to begin with, and this ignores the higher risk individuals who may not realize there are options for them out there, and did not graduate high school. I feel that meaningful prevention needs to focus earlier in one's life than these examples in the report are.
Keeping that in mind, it leads me to call for partnerships between universities and nonprofits such as T/MC, much in a similar design that the partnerships in the report were designed as. T/MC is able to educate students in the need for an infrastructure for nonprofits that will better lead tutor/mentor programs to partner with each other, which will hopefully lead to a greater education of the students regarding the need for more, better tutor/mentor programs, not just teaching the student how to tutor a child. I feel that this would create more change than the traditional "partnerships" that exist currently between universities and nonprofits.
These partnerships could be as simple as a university dedicating some space and perhaps students/financial resources to focus on establishing this infrastructure. If most every student in a university were to learn the need for an infrastructure to tutor/mentor programs and were to learn the problems facing these tutor/mentor programs that an infrastructure can help to solve (funding problems, locating quality volunteers, volunteer retention, how to start up a new tutor/mentor program, where to start a new program, etc.), then there is a greater chance that down the road a little ways, when these students enter the workforce, that they may begin to create change in the traditional way that people and businesses view nonprofits and the importance of tutor/mentor programs. This would also encourage systemic thinking amongst the students by teaching them to address the larger issue and not focus only on the individual children. To help a community that the system is failing, one needs to address the failing system, not just the individuals that are being affected by it.
Partnering with a program like T/MC could also benefit the university as well, as they would be helping to educate and empower the youth in low income communities, which would greatly increase the potential student pool that may wish to attend the university that assisted them so greatly. This would cut down on the necessity for the university to have to advertise itself nationwide, as there would be a suitable student population locally. Universities also have partnerships with businesses, so businesses may be interested in financially supporting this type of partnership as well, to increase the employability of the local communities. This final step follows closely to the organizations that the report focused on, but as I stated, it is only a final step, not the only step. This article focuses on the benefit that entire cities can gain from increasing the employability of their community and from the partnerships of nonprofits and universities.
Hello,
I'm too sad to leave for Korea soon. I'll miss IIT and T/MC.I was learning many things by internship.
Especially, I had knowledge about system of volunteer organization.
Although there are many volunteer organizations in Korea, it's different from Tutor/Mentor Connection.
First, volunteer organizations located in Korea didn't build a database as I know. To keep managning and increasing association, it's very important to maintain a database.
Next, there are scanty opportunities for connecting with a volunteer organization except for big organizations which supported by major company. people can see a lot of infromations through Internet in information-oriented society because most people have smart equipments as well as computer. If we make a blog or website like Tutor/Mentor Connection, we also can encourage more people to participate in volunteering personally and donating.
And I hope that next intern will introduce the Tutor/Mentor Connection to his/her hometown.
Thank you for having a great time during internship.
I have worked at Tutor/Mentor Connection for six weeks where is a non-profit organization for anyone who wants to help inner city youth connect with extra adult tutors and mentors. Even if it could be short time, it was very long time to me. Because I learned American culture as well as computer skills during that time.
First, I knew American culture especially company culture. I knew how to communicate with my boss and work promptly. Furthermore, I have worked with co-worker and realized again that cooperative activity is essential to effective work. For instance, we have to send invitations to millions of people in order to invite congratulation dinner party. From putting a letter in an envelope to posting a stamp, all work is done manually. To finish quickly, we cut the pie up the task to share it, so we can end easily.
In addition, I could begin to pay attention to graphic. Though my major is related to IT, I have no opportunity to design graphic. But my primary responsibility is to make something that helps people to understand easier. I usually create one or several pages of presentation file and image after viewing an article posted at blog. To make creation, I need to read carefully and summarize on my words. And it was represented by new form. While I worked, I’m interested in infographic which is very useful tool. Because in traditional way to represent information, data was usually expressed by a variety of numeric and text-only. Infographic can help people to understand information easier in new nontraditional ways to use graphics, easy to identify, clear, simple, fun. Also, another form, animation is very helpful to give information to people. I created several animations. One is to encourage people to donate to keep organization. Another is to explain company’s system of maintenance.
As a result of internship, I learn more than I expected. So it’s very special time to me.
Do you want to add anything?
***This post was created a few weeks ago, but was "saved to draft" and was never published...I'm new to blogging...don't judge***
On May 19 and 20, Tutor/Mentor Connections hosted its bi-annual conference in Matteson, IL. Leading up to the conference, I did not know what to expect or how it would look like, but I was optimistic about a good turnout. I was not disappointed. The conference itself was much larger than I had anticipated, and everyone I met during those two days were very excited about participating and were very open to discussing their own organizations and about how to improve on what they do. The conference itself consisted of multiple rooms with workshops being held by organizational leaders from a variety of backgrounds, and featured a wide variety of topics ranging from how to utilize online media to better your organization, to legal issues surrounding Illinois tax laws, to alternative methods to engage children in tutoring/mentoring programs. I personally enjoyed the workshops that I attended, and highly recommend anyone who is interested in becoming involved in tutor/mentor programs as an organizer or even as a volunteer, to participate in these conferences.
At lunch on the second day, I sat with a group of individuals who were discussing the struggles that face non-profits working with children, sharing stories about behaviors that the children displayed, and educating a young woman about where to send her resume and about whom to contact to get her foot in the door. This young woman was interested in getting involved in the field of working with children from under-privileged backgrounds in Chicago. I began realizing that this was in part, what the conference was all about: spreading information between leaders from multiple organizations, and sharing that information with people who want to make a difference. Who knows, perhaps that young woman will start up an organization that will go on to help many children in need, all because she was given an opportunity to network at this conference. Every story has that moment where the individual became informed and got their foot in the door, and this conference was definitely a great breeding ground for those moments to occur.
Apart from all the great things that occurred at the conference, I must ask one question, why does it have to take place at a conference? To put it more simply, why can't this exchange of information and ideas occur on a daily basis through sites such as this one? Over the past few months, I have come to realize the value of this massive amount of information that Tutor/Mentor Connections shares through their websites, but the discussion regarding this information needs to occur more frequently and needs to involve leaders and future leaders to be able to make an impact on a large scale. I encourage anyone reading this to spend a moment reading through some of the discussion topics and to contribute in any way that they can to keep the conversation alive. Whether it is as a comment or just bringing up the conversation at the dinner table or at lunch with your co-workers, spreading the information about the importance of tutor/mentor programs in the fight against poverty and crime is the foundation for change.
When I came here for work as a intern, I was a little bit confused because all things in here were not familiar and all things I do look like awkward. However, the more time I spent here, everything in here was getting comfortable. Through this internship, I learned lots of things. First of all, I learned how to working process going in America. My initial purpose of coming here is to get to know America’s culture. At this aspect, I think I achieve that. Secondly, by working here, because Tutor/Mentor Connection is Non-Profit Organization, I could know how to help other students a little bit by Tutoring and Mentoring. Also, while I working in here, most of works that I did were making something to animation or video. There upon, I could improve my computer skills and I learned how to use one program, clearly.
On the top of that, making decision for my future is come to easier. Before I came to USA, my ultimate purpose was experience America’s culture as I said earlier. The reason for that is I have wanted to transfer to America and settle my life in here. However, I actually cannot be sure about life in America before I came here. Consequently, when I look back my internship experience and classes that I took in here, I think America is nice to live in. Anyway, I will always remember all things happened in here and learned in here. In addition, I would like to say this to next PLP students that wherever you will have an internship, you will learn something. However, if you want to learn something about volunteering and doing computer works through your internship, I am sure that T/MC is going to be best choice for your internship. You would never regret your choice.
I saw the article about infographic on blog.
I think Infograpic is very useful.
Because in traditional way to represent information, data was usually expressed by a variety of numeric and text-only.
Infograpic can help people to understand information easier in new nontraditional ways
to use graphics, easy to identify, clear, simple, fun.
This is examples which use infograpic to represent information.
I like that and try!
This is a volunteer-recruitment video created by Minsub Lee, and intern from Korea working with the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The video does not promote a single program and instead points to this page on the Tutor/Mentor Connection web site that shows how programs can build campaigns to support recruitment for all tutor/mentor programs in a region.
There is sound, too. Please turn on speakers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykM9y-kyn40
This video was created by Minsub Lee to show how athletes might adopt and become spokespersons for different neighborhoods in the city where they are star players. See blog article with more info.
Sam Lee, an intern from IIT working with Tutor/Mentor Connection in May-June 2011, was asked to look at two graphics created to illustrate the role people might take in expanding the network of support for tutor/mentor programs. Below you can see the interpretations she created.
I created a new graphic interpretation for the graphic Dan had posted(labeled A and B)
I uploaded PPT file.
Labeled A HOW%20CAN%20WE%20GROW%20THE%20%25%20OF%20PEOPLE_old.pot
Labeled B BUILDING%20COMMUNITY%20FOCUSED%20ON%20KIDS_old_2.ppt
separated files
HOW%20CAN%20WE%20GROW%20THE%20%25%20OF%20PEOPLE_old.pot
BUILDING%20COMMUNITY%20FOCUSED%20ON%20KIDS_old_2.ppt
Good morning : )
I summarized five articles in a presentation.
1) Friday, June 13, 2008 article - Each of us has a Civic Responsibility. Marketing Solutions.
2) Wed, June 11, 2008 article - Expanding the volunteer workforce - capacity building
3) Tues, June 10, 2008 article - War on Poverty Requires Sophisticated Battle Plan
4) Monday, June 9, 2008 article - "Our greatest challenge is the gaps between rich and poor." Jimmy...
5) Saturday, June 7, 2008 article - Maximizing Value from Civic Engagement
Maximize%20Value%20from%20Civic%20Engagement.pot
There is five articles, and summarized presentation.
Tell me what I need to correct.
Thanks
During my research last week, I came across a study that dealt with mentor volunteer retention and recruitment, specifically looking at the gap between male and female mentors. This is an important subject to tackle as the authors cite studies that show that mentees who are connected with the same mentor for 2 years show the most significant positive change, whereas the mentees who are paired with the same mentor for only 6 months show almost no positive change, illustrating the importance of mentor retention. The authors also cite the value of mentoring programs on "at risk youth" but then state that despite growing research to demonstrate this, there are very few mentoring programs and some have very long waiting lists for youth to get paired up with a mentor.
If there is so much research showing the benefits of tutor/mentor programs, then why isn't there a larger push to develop more across the nation? I feel as though it is the failing of the information reaching the right people (people who might fund a program, people who may start up a new program) that is impacting this, highlighting the importance of Tutor/Mentor Connections and its goal of collecting all of this information and presenting it to as many people as possible. By maintaining a database of information regarding volunteer recruitment/retention, Tutor/Mentor Connections is also providing the infrastructure for the growth of new, strong tutor/mentor programs that are better able to make an impact in the lives of at risk youth.
Going back to the article, the authors reported findings some differences between males and females in regards to becoming a mentor. The primary reason that women gave to becoming a mentor was due to a sense of personal gratification, or a belief that they would experience a sense of personal gratification. Men however, listed their primary reasons for becoming a mentor revolved around social and peer expectations and interactions. In regards to retention, men were more likely to follow through with their time commitment of one year due to having to fulfill their obligation, whereas females continued as long as they felt a sense of gratification. All of the mentors used in this study had strong mentors in their own lives, and thus understood the importance of a mentor in a youth's life. I am wondering if educating more people as to the strong benefits of having a mentor in a youth's life would encourage more people who may not have had a strong mentor in their own life to volunteer their time.
Some conclusions can be drawn from this study, primarily in methods of "advertising" your program to different genders. On one hand, to have a better chance at recruiting females, a program may want to focus on stories of current mentors and how it feels to become a large part of a child's life, where to recruit more males, a program may want to focus on recruiting groups of men who may already be linked together socially (a group that works together or golf together). Focusing on the social interactions that the mentors have with each other may increase recruitment of males, as the study indicates that as a large factor.
