This month's newsletter is going to focus on poverty research and ways volunteers in organized tutor/mentor programs can use this information to change conditions and do more to help K-12 youth move safely through school and into adult lives.

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!

Data maps provide information in a visual way, making it easier to look at indicators for a small part of a city or state, or the entire city or state. This concept map points to many of the websites that I point to in the Tutor/Mentor library. Use them to build your understanding of where people need more help, and then to create stories that mobilize that help.

I've often asked "Who is teaching youth and adults to make sense of this data, and to share it in stories that get other people involved?" In a recent forum I was introduced to the New American History website. This page titled "Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America," shows lesson plans that can be used in school and non-school programs throughout the country. Take a look.

In order to reduce poverty, we first need to understand it, and empathize, so we're willing to do more with our time, talent, dollars and votes to change public and private practices and beliefs that have contributed to the levels of poverty and inequality that exist in America today.

If you've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program for multiple years, or volunteered for multiple years, you know the many different benefits these programs offer, to young people and adults. If your program operates in a big city like Chicago, with huge areas of concentrated poverty, you also know how difficult it is for one volunteer, or a single program, to reduce the many barriers caused by systemic racism and long-term government policies.

Over many years I've seen how some volunteers who have been well-supported by the programs they are part of, begin to do more to help the kids they work with, and the programs they are part of. Some may even become politically involved.

Why can't that be happening more frequently?

What if the poverty research that I point to above were part of the library of every volunteer-based organization and that efforts to keep volunteers involved, led to more taking greater roles?

Explore this graphic in this blog article.

Then read this "Mentor Role in a Larger Strategy" article.

I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago for 35 years. For the first 15 years I was a volunteer with a full-time advertising job in the headquarters of a big retail store corporation. The program I led had 100 pairs of elementary school kids and workplace volunteers in 1975 when I became its leader and grew to over 300 pairs by 1990, with volunteers coming from more than 100 companies in the Chicago region. That program still serves Chicago, under the name of Tutoring Chicago.

I had to learn to recruit volunteers who would help with leading the program and doing all the work involved. Over time this became the formula - R&D+F&L. This means Recruit and Delegate. Follow-up and Lead. View this blog article to learn more about this strategy.

In the article I pointed to above, I share pages from the annual yearbook that I created each year from 1975 to 1999. One set of pages shows the tutoring program volunteer committee in 1975, with 13 people. The second is from the 1991-92 program, with a committee of more than 60 volunteers! There's an important lesson from these photos.

Great programs don't start great, they grow great over a period of many years of constant innovation and improvement. This is a lesson we need to share with donors so that more will provide the constant flow of dollars needed to build and sustain constantly improving programs.

Imagine the potential impact of this volunteer growth strategy in hundreds of volunteer-based organizations serving youth and families throughout the country. Imagine connecting these people to each other in a movement intended to reduce barriers to learning and opportunity.

What's you strategy for growing your program and getting volunteers involved? Do you have a blog where you share the work you do to make your program great? Please share it with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and/or Mastodon.

This month's newsletter focuses on planning that needs to be taking place during the summer months and leads to constant improvement in the quality and structure of existing youth tutor/mentor programs as well as to the launching of new programs more are needed.

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!

I've used graphics like this for more than 25 years to visualize the long-term support kids need to move more successfully from birth to work, recognizing that kids in high poverty areas don't have as many of these resources as do kids in more affluent areas. Thus, leaders need to be intentional in making these available.

Very few non-school tutor/mentor programs have a 12-16 year strategy of helping youth through school. If you know of any, please share links so I can add them to the Tutor/Mentor Library. However, without a long-term strategy a neighborhood might need multiple programs reaching different age groups, with different types of age-appropriate programs. If kids can move from program to program over their school years, this offers the same benefit as a single long-term program.

How many zip codes have such a network of programs?

View this concept map at this link.

This is a different way to visualize the various support kids need at each grade level as they move through school and into adult lives.

A planning process at the neighborhood and community level needs to build an understanding of what types of support already exists. A communications plan would draw these support providers together to learn from each other while drawing volunteers and donors to each program so they have the resources to constantly improve.

An analysis of the information would determine where gaps in service are and would lead to building new programs to fill those voids.

I've used free cMapTools since 2005 to create my concept maps. Other tools are available.

Here are some articles to stimulate your planning.

View this concept map at this link,

Step 1 involves collecting and organizing information, or creating the knowledge base. Step 2 and Step 3 involve motivating a growing number of people to visit the library regularly and helping them find what they are looking for and understand how to apply the information in Step 4, different places where youth and families would benefit from organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. Here's one article where I explain the four steps.

While different people and organizations in a city may be collecting some of this information and drawing some people together this needs to be an integrated, on-going strategy. If you can't find someone in your city who visualizes and leads a strategy like this, share it with business, university and philanthropic leaders with the goal that one, or many, will adopt it.

Who leads this process in your city? Is someone visualizing the planning steps? Share links if you have them.

I used this graphic in the 1990s and 2000s to visualize how the tutor/mentor program I led connected youth from high poverty areas of Chicago with volunteers from different background, different careers and different universities. Each youth had a primary one-on-one tutor/mentor who often stayed with the youth for several years and a network of other volunteers who they connected with in weekly activities. They were all supported by a paid staff (although in the original program that I led from 1975 to 1992 the leaders were all volunteers up until it became a non profit in 1990.)

I did not realize in the early years that we were helping expand social capital for these kids....and our volunteers ... by expanding the network of "who they know". I was first introduced to the concept in the late 1990s and I've written about it often on blog articles like this and in these.

If you view websites of Chicago youth programs on these lists you'll find very few (if any) using graphics like mine to describe their programs, or using social capital in articles about their program design, yet you will see photos and stories of volunteers with kids. Thus, many are helping build social capital, even if they don't talk about it as part of their theory of change.

By sharing my program design graphic with program leaders, volunteers, parents, donors and policy makers my long-term goal has been to nudge the entire sector to grow programs that expand networks of support for kids living in high poverty areas.

Share links to websites that you think do this well.

Your planning should also aim to influence resource providers.

From 1990 to 2011 I led a non-profit youth tutor/mentor program in Chicago, after having led one of these as a volunteer for the previous 15 years. I was constantly networking with peers, reading research and looking for ways to improve how my program supported youth and volunteers. However, I was constantly frustrated by how difficult it was to find the money and talent needed. Thus, this final visualization focuses on INFLUENCE of resource providers (#9 on the graphic), not just program leaders and staff (#7 on the graphic).

I've posted several articles using this graphic. Here's one.

If leaders in Chicago and other cities champion this strategy, your volunteers and donors can be looking for your program, and looking for ways to help you help kids, in just as many ways as you are trying to find them.

Does your city have a strategy like this? Share links if you have them.

Use these additional resources in your planning and networking. See latest additions to the Tutor/Mentor Library at this link.