Our Vision: Because of the work we do, more youths born in poverty will start jobs and careers by age 25, and more volunteers will make a lasting commitment to tutor/mentoring.

This vision will only be possible if a growing number of volunteers, business leaders and philanthropist do more to help us and other tutor/mentor programs connect and stay connected to K-16 youth living in high poverty areas of Chicago and the country.

This Web site is a meeting place and knowledge center for people who want to make this vision a reality—in Chicago and in other major cities throughout the world. 

This "village" graphic illustrates the aim of using the web site to connect volunteers and leaders from many sectors and many cities.

You can go through the information in any sequence you choose. I encourage people to think of my web sites as a huge shopping mall. The first time you visit you just walk the mall and peek into every store to see what's there.Then you go back later to investigate stores that you were more interested in.  Some of these become your favorites and you repeat your visit over and over.

This T/MC Resource PDF is a quick guide to the various web sites where we share information.

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Thus, we hope you'll browse the site like you would the first time you go to a new shopping center with hundreds of stores. Open the various sections and links to see what they offer, then go on to the next section. Bookmark those that you feel will be most useful to you, so when you visit again, you can spend more time there.

The web site links to many different web sites, which is also confusing. But again, a shopping center has many different stores. As you learn to move back and forth from one site to another, just like you go from store to store, we hope you'll begin to get comfortable with this arrangement of information. 

Why do we do this?
We believe volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are the bridges that connect volunteers, donors and business leaders with the children, families and schools on the other side of the socioeconomic divide. However, we don't have all of the answers. When we formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 we said "Let's try to learn every thing that is known about this problem, and about solutions that work in some places that could be working in other places if the money and volunteers were available."

Thus, while you can go to five or six different web sites hosted by the T/MC, you can go to more than 1500 other sites hosted by other organizations, universities, businesses and government.  In addition, most of these sites were selected by the T/MC to be on our sites because they have libraries of links that point you to even more extensive networks of information.  If you spent enough time  in this network of web sites you could earn a Ph.D in this subject!!

This Web site is for: