I lead a non profit in Chicago that connects inner city kids with volunteers who serve as tutors, mentors, leaders, friends, advocates and change agents. This program is Cabrini Connections and you can learn about it at http://www.cabriniconnections.net
I have led this program since 1993, and built it from an earlier version, started in 1965 by employees of the Montgomery Ward corporation in Chicago. I joined this program in 1973 when I began an advertising career, and in 1975 I became the volunteer leader. I held various advertising management roles until 1990, while also building the volunteer program from a base of 100 pairs of kids and volunteers to a base of 440 kids and 550 volunteers by October 1992. That's when I and a few of the volunteers left to create the Cabrini Connections program.
When we created Cabrini Connections, we had a larger vision. We wanted to create a leadership strategy that would draw support to all tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region on a more consistent basis, so that good programs could serve kids in all poverty neighborhoods. We've developed that strategy over the past 15 years and it is the Tutor/Mentor Connection. We began to integrate the internet into this strategy in 1998, building an on-line knowledge base which anyone can use to support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago or other cities. You can see it at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org
The key part of our strategy is a database of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, and our use of maps to show where poverty and pooerly performing schools are concentrated in Chicago. We use these maps the way generals use maps (read pdf at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/maps/T_MCmaps04.pdf ). Our enemy is poverty. Our maps show where it is concentrated, and where it has the most negative impact (poor schools, violence, gangs, etc.). View map gallery at http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/programlocator/default.asp for current maps.
These are the places where our army of troops (e.g. volunteers, donors, tutor/mentor programs) and weapons (technology, arts, service learning, job training, mentoring, tutoring, etc) need to be concentrated. Using a map we see that we need a distribution of good programs in many places, not a few high profile programs in only a few places. Using our concept maps as blueprints, we also see that we need to sustain these programs for many years, if kids starting k-6 today are to be starting jobs and careers by age 25.
You can view our use of maps at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and you can see how we're mapping a strategy that leaders from business, churches, universities, and even government, can use to mobilize and sustain a flow of resources into all poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and any other city in the country. Just search "maps" on the blog, to see these examples and find links to many related resources.
In the coming election voters will choose who will be the best general and commander in chief, not just to fight terrorism abroad, but to fight the war on poverty at home. The candidates who demonstrates a grasp for how maps and charts can lead to a flow of needed resources to all of the places where we're losing the war on poverty, should be the one we vote for in the coming election, on the local, and the national level.
The 2008-09 school year starts before the general election. I encourage leaders to step forward to help mobilize volunteers, and donors, to support tutor/mentor programs in August and September so that more k-12 kids in America can start this year with the extra support that comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs might offer.
If we wait until after the election, we will loose another generation of kids.
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