Most don't think about the money and manpower it takes to enable each member of the village to do his/her job properly. Most funding of non profits is "random acts of kindness" or charitable giving that is restricted to a specific geography, based on where the donor is located, or a limited number of years, based on donor guidelines.
No business could succeed with such restrictions on revenue. For non profits working to help kids grow from pre-school to first job, a 20 year journey, such funding strategies actually work against the ultimate goal, of kids in careers.
The T/MC library has links to many articles that illustrate challenges and opportunities. We show how volunteer involvement in a tutor/mentor program isan important form of civic engagement. It expands the network of adults supporting youth development and education strategies.
T/MC also has done surveys with program leaders to understand their most important challenges. A discussion of challenges is hosted on the Tutor/Mentor Connection's Ning.com forum.
We encourage you to read and understand these, and build giving strategies that provide on-going and flexible funding to organizations working to help kids to careers.
The words tutoring and mentoring mean different things to different people, based on the social-economic status and age of the youth being served, and of the different goals being served. Some times our pictures and videos help people understand how a tutor/mentor program connects kids from high poverty areas with adults and learning experiences from beyond those neighborhoods.
The Tutor/Mentor Institute (T/MI) has published more than 1000 blog articles, focusing on a wide range of issues, illustrated by this graphic. Do a Google search for the words "tutor mentor" plus any of these words, and several links on the first page will point to articles posted about that topic. Use these to expand your own understanding of problems and potential solutions. T/MI has also created over 60 short PDF essays, such as one, titled Tutor/Mentor, Same Words, Different Meaning - defining the terms , to help leaders understand the different forms of tutoring and/or mentoring that exists.
When the Tutor/Mentor Connection was created in 1993 one of our goals was to "collect all that is known" about tutoring/mentoring and education-to-careers in a "library" of knowledgethat anyone can draw from at any time to help kids from a poverty neighborhood get the adult support they need to move to careers. As the Internet became available, this process began to collect ideas from all over the world.
This "mentoring kids to careers" graphic illustrates the career focused goal of the T/MC. Thisknowledge map, illustrates the different types of information being collected. This Debategraph outline is another way of trying to engage people from many places in this discussion. These are intended to serve as a "blueprint" which anyone can draw from, or contribute to. While we will never map all of the knowledge, the ideas we do collect may reach a tipping point where the broader range of ideas leads to more comprehensive solutions applied in more places around the world to help kids move out of poverty and into jobs and careers.
In 2011 the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC was created to support the continued operations of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago and to help similar intermediary groups form in other cities. Throughout our web sites you'll see the names Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute used interchangeably. They both focus on the same mission but represent a non profit and a for-profit structure for generating resources.
Read more about the T/MC goals in the Vision and Mission sections
Understanding Issues and Benefits
Many people say "It takes a Village to Raise a Child". This 
