The next three weeks will be a stress-filled period as we determine who will be our next President of the United States, and our representatives in Congress and state and local governments.

As volunteers and students are starting a new school year, this question has huge ramifications.

I posted a blog article on October 14, showing some issues that need to be addressed, and some thoughts on how we connect with each other to find solutions to challenges we, and our students, are facing.

I'm sharing some parts of that article in this newsletter.

Use the ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter to help you build and sustain mentor-rich, school and non-school, tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach K-12 youth in all areas of persistent poverty. These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.

Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!

I featured this concept map and that question again in today's article, which you can read at this link.

My article includes a link to the official Kamala Harris for President website issues page, which is at https://kamalaharris.com/issues/

A project that youth and volunteers in school and non-school programs might engage in would be to compare the issues on my map, with the issues on the Harris website. Then, create your own map, showing issues that are important to you, your students and your community.

I use cMapTools to create my concept maps, but there are other visualization tools you can use. Another activity students and volunteers might do is to go through the links in this page of my library, to learn more about visualization tools they might use for a project like this.

Finally, share your maps via blogs, videos, social media, etc. You can influence what local and national leaders focus on over the next decade.

New Resource: Today I learned of a "Stop Project 2025 Comic Book Project" site, created by comic book writers and artists who are furious about the Heritage Foundations' plan to consolidate power under authoritarian rule. Visit their site and share the comics.

In my blog article I pasted text from previous articles, with links to those pages. I'm repeating that here. I hope you'll take a look at these over the next few weeks and months. Click on the graphic to find links to articles with these quotes.

Thank you for reading.

While I try to send this only once a month, I write blog articles weekly. Throughout the newsletter I post links to a few of the articles published in the past month or earlier. I encourage you to spend a little time each week reading these articles and following the links. Use the ideas and presentations in group discussions with other people who are concerned about the same issues.

I encourage others to duplicate what I'm doing. Write a blog and share your own vision, strategy and challenges. Share your link and I'll add it to this list in the Tutor/Mentor library.

View current and past newsletters at this link.

Please encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter. Click here.

(If you subscribe, don't forget to respond to the confirmation email).

The election did not turn out as many of us wished it would and now there is great fear about what the next few years will bring to America and the world.

Yet, we still need to do the work of raising kids. Our own, and those in different places and with different life circumstances.

Over the Holiday Season youth serving organizations will be reaching out for financial support. Please use my lists to find and choose programs to aid with your contributions.

Use the ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter to help you build and sustain mentor-rich, school and non-school, tutor, mentor and learning programs that reach K-12 youth in all areas of persistent poverty. These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.

Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!

Since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993 I've created many visual essays to share strategies for connecting networks and drawing support to youth, and youth-serving programs, in every high poverty area of Chicago and other cities. View this PDF at this link.

During the past year I've updated most of my visual essays and put them on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website. There are three pages of essays! This is page 1. In the past interns have created their own interpretations of some of these. This video was created in 2013 by an intern from South Korea. This is is another interpretation, created using Prezi. I share these as an INVITATION for youth and adults to create their own versions of these, applying the strategies to helping kids in their own communities. Just include a link back to my website to show where the ideas originated.

NOTE: I updated all of my PDFs in 2024 and showed my account on Twitter. In the past month there has been a growing movement of people leaving the platform. I'll still check there for people trying to reach me, but also am on other social media platforms.

Identifying existing youth tutor, mentor and learning programs in Chicago and drawing attention to them has been my goal since 1993. See my lists at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net

This list is on the left site, middle, of the www.tutormentorexchange.net site. The first link opens to my lists of Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. The second link opens to lists of other types of youth-serving programs in the Chicago region, and to similar programs throughout the country. Further down you'll see that I've created lists showing Chicago tutor/mentor program accounts on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

While many programs post regular updates on one or more of these social media sites, many don't post anything at all. How can they expect volunteers and donors to find them if they are not broadcasting an invitation to visit their website?

In the past year the change in ownership as Twitter has caused many accounts to move from the site. Some have created new accounts on BlueSky and/or Mastodon. Some use Threads. I use all three, but am beginning to use BlueSky more frequently. If you're part of a youth serving program or afterschool network please connect with me and others on one or more of these platforms.

How to apply information to problem- solving I've posted many articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog showing how information can support decision-making and help build and sustain more effective youth serving programs in more places. Here's an article title "If more youth-serving programs took this role..."

Thank you for reading.

While I try to send this only once a month, I write blog articles weekly. Throughout the newsletter I post links to a few of the articles published in the past month or earlier. I encourage you to spend a little time each week reading these articles and following the links. Use the ideas and presentations in group discussions with other people who are concerned about the same issues.

I encourage others to duplicate what I'm doing. Write a blog and share your own vision, strategy and challenges. Share your link and I'll add it to this list in the Tutor/Mentor library.

View current and past newsletters at this link.

Please encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter. Click here.

(If you subscribe, don't forget to respond to the confirmation email).

If you lead a volunteer-based youth tutor, mentor program, or other types of activity that engages volunteers, they need to be recognized, and well-supported, throughout the year.

In one of the graphics I share in this month's newsletter is a "volunteer growth cycle" that shows how volunteers who stay with programs for multiple years often become leaders, advocates and resource builders who help the host organization attract needed resources.

This planning should lead to a constant improvement in what programs do to help kids and volunteers connect and build relationships.

The ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter point to a library of resources that can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world, to help mentor-rich youth programs thrive in all of the neighborhoods where they are most needed.

Encourage others in your city to find and use these resources!

Think of volunteering as a form of adult service-learning

This graphic is the first page of an animation created in 2011 by an intern from South Korea to visualize the growth of volunteers in organized tutor/mentor programs. You can view it in this video, since Flash animation no longer works. This visualization was actually started in 2007 by an intern from Hong Kong. You can see his version in this blog post.

These visualizations illustrate work that youth in schools, non-school programs and colleges and universities can do to help mobilize and sustain volunteers involvement in organized tutor, mentor and learning programs.

If you read this final post by Sam Lee, who created this animation, you'll see that she said "As a result of internship, I learn more than I expected. So it's very special time to me." Schools and non-school programs who engage youth in projects like this are creating valuable learning opportunities while engaging youth in actual efforts to create a better world.

Look at the conversations posted in this Tutor/Mentor Connection group and see the ways I have coached interns to create visual interpretations of our ideas. Anyone could use these same conversations to engage their own students in doing the same type of projects.

"None of us is as smart as ALL of us" - read the president's message at the bottom of this April 2007 Tutor/Mentor Connection eMail newsletter.

What you can do to end Poverty

In 2005 I wrote an article on the Tutor/Mentor blog titled "What you can do to end poverty". I reposted it in this April 2024 article. In March 2024 I included the graphic above, in this article, under the headline "Tutor/Mentor Connection needed in many places.

Most of my maps and graphics show where poverty is concentrated in Chicago. Some of the recent research I've pointed to uses maps to show areas of persistent, long-term poverty. They are the same places!

I use a "birth to work" timeline to show the long-term investment needed in each of the high poverty areas and I use a "hub and spoke" graphic to visualize organized programs that expand the network of "who you know" for kids who have limited connections to work and opportunity because of where they live.

Draw attention to these ideas - share them. Create your own.

The idea for the Tutor/Mentor Connection was born in late 1992 following the shooting death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis in Chicago, and the media attention that followed it. Having worked in retail advertising for the Montgomery Ward corporation, I knew how we used weekly advertising, throughout the year, to draw attention and shoppers, to our 400 stores in 40 states. I recognized that Chicago needed a similar strategy, to draw volunteers, students and donors to every volunteer-based tutor/mentor program operating in Chicago, and to new programs that needed to grow where too few existed.

We did our planning in 1993 and launched in January 1994. Part of that planning was learning to use GIS maps to show "where" programs were located and where they were needed. Part of it was developing an event strategy, anchored by May and November leadership and networking conferences and an August/September volunteer recruitment campaign, to motivate the local news media to tell our story.

In this blog article I share links to a Google archive that shows dozens of media stories resulting from this strategy being followed for over 20 years.

I share this so leaders in other cities might develop their own strategy, borrowing from my archives and the history of the Tutor/Mentor Connection from 1993 till the present (since 2011 the T/MC has been led by the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and our website is http://www.tutormentorexchange.net)

Some day you should be able to find archives like mine in every city where there are areas of persistent poverty.

New Visual Essay. 30-Year History For 30 years I've reached out to universities in Chicago and beyond, to forge partnerships and campus commitments intended to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs grow in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places and help more kids through high school, college, and into jobs. Now you can review this in a new visual essay which I share in this issue of the Tutor/Mentor blog. Share this in your network and help find donors who will bring this strategy to colleges and the cities where they operate.

About this newsletter.

While I try to send this only once a month, I write blog articles weekly. Throughout the newsletter I post links to a few of the articles published in the past month or earlier. I encourage you to spend a little time each week reading these articles and following the links. Use the ideas and presentations in group discussions with other people who are concerned about the same issues.

View current and past newsletters at this link.

Encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter. Click here.

(If you subscribe, don't forget to respond to the confirmation email).