The Tutor/Mentor Connection's Public Awareness Strategy is based on the marketing/advertising strategies used by big companies to draw customers to multiple locations in many states. Our quarterly event strategy has resulted in dozens of news stories in Chicago media since 1994. See these here.

T/MC does not have an advertising or Public Awareness budget.
Thus we look for other ways to create media and public attention. 

One strategy is to create  maps that follow feature stories in local papers, which usually sensationalize violence and poverty. We call our map strategy "THE REST OF THE STORY"  The map at the left is an example. This map shows the area around the Little Village Academy in the South Lawndale area of Chicago, which was featured in an August 2008 Chicago SunTimes story about how violence affects inner-city kids. The map shows the level of poverty and number of poorly performing schools in the area and indicates sites of tutoring and/or mentoring programs listed in this database.

We post these maps and write blog articles (see here and here) that intended to leverage the public awareness generated by the media, into volunteers and donors helping tutor/mentor programs grow in these areas.  All of our stories point to the Tutor/Mentor Connection's Program Locator database, where media, potential volunteers and donors, and parents can all search the same Zip Code Map to find contact information and web sites for tutor/mentor programs in the area of the story ( 60623 zip code), or in different zip codes of the Chicago region.

In March 2009 T/MC launched an interactive program locator, that enables visitors to create their own maps of different sections of the city. This blog article shows a map created in just 10 minutes, using this feature. Now students in high school and colleges can become advocates, and journalist, drawing media, volunteer and donor attention to neighborhoods where more non-school learning, mentoring and career opportunities are needed.

With the help of students, volunteers and the business community, we can get THE REST OF THE STORY on the internet, within 24 to 48 hours,  while it is still featured in the news, the local papers become our advertising partner.  This is a strategy that we hope youth journalists and advocates in high school, college, or other community technology centers, will adopt, with youth creating maps of their own neighborhood, and drawing volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in their own community.  Contact the T/MC if you'd like to learn how you might use the T/MC map gallery and database for this purpose.

View this concept map to learn more about the Tutor/Mentor Connection's Public Awareness Strategy.