Youth Leadership Council Video!

Hello! I know at least some of you were lucky enough to spend Thursday and Friday at our 31st Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference at the NU School of Law. Hopefully those who attended left on Friday afternoon feeling as energized and hopeful as I did, knowing that all 100+ of us who attended are slowly but surely building a tutoring/mentoring movement that will eventually ensure that every child growing up in poverty has access to high quality tutor/mentor programs in their neighborhood. Anyway, today I wanted to share something very meaningful with you all. It's a video that I produced with the help of Matt Lauterbach, Dinesh Sabu and the Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council, Savon Clark, Sean Mayfield and DeSean Hale in particular. Check it out here on youtube.

The goal of this project was to give the Youth Leadership Council one last opportunity to work on a project with lasting impact for the program that would inspire others to get involved over the summer. In order of appearance the video features:
--Cabrini Connections Founder/CEO, Dan Bassill
--Skinner Elementary 8th grader Savon Clark, who interviews his mother Shavonne, a participant of the program back in the 80s.
--Sean Mayfield an 8th grader at Newberry Academy who interviews his mentor, veteran volunteer Allen Tyson, who has been with the program since the 1960s.
--DeSean Hale, a Wells High School Junior, who interviews his mother, longtime Cabrini-Green resident Norrine Rhodes
--LaMonica Garth, Cabrini Connections alumnus and nursing student at Chicago State University. Her sister is Cabrini Connections Senior, Posse and Gates Millenium Scholar, LaFaye Garth

Please let us know what you think about the movie! If you like it, share it with people in your network so that they might find out a little more about the difference we've been making in the lives of students for the last few decades. Hopefully some will be inspired to help support us in this difficult time. See you at the Year end dinner this Thursday where we will be premiering the movie in front of 175+ participants and friends of Cabrini Connections!

Cabrini Connections Students show their appreciation

Just in case you are too lazy to check out http://www.cabriniconnections.net/ please check out these videos that the Youth Leadership Council put together to show their appreciation for everything our mentors do. The top video features our Wednesday Night students and the bottom one features our Thursday Night Students.

Thanks again mentors and volunteers!






Woo hoo! I had no idea how easy it is to embed video in my blog. Be on the lookout for more great clips as the year progresses.

Have a great weekend!

National Mentoring Month winds to a close

Hey everyone! As National Mentoring Month winds to a close, I hope you've all taken this opportunity to thank the mentors in your lives, those who have encouraged you to pursue your dreams and have inspired you to live your life to its fullest possible potential. If you haven't already, you're in luck, there are still 3 days left. So dial up that mentor and let them know how much you appreciate them.

In a similar vein, I'd like to share a video that the Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council and I put together to show our appreciation for the mentors in our lives. You can stream it from our website at www.cabriniconnections.net. I'd highly recommend checking it out, if for no other reason than to see the impact a mentor can have on a child's life. If you're inspired, get involved and help us make every month National Mentoring Month!

Thanks for your support!

Welcome Back!

So yesterday was our first tutoring session of the winter quarter! Despite the sub-zero temperatures, a number of new students joined us as we entered a new year of one-on-one tutoring/mentoring. I was excited to see both of our college zone counselors, Carla Reyes and Stephanie Rogers making the rounds, introducing themselves to our upperclassmen in order to determine their college needs. Carla and Stephanie will be running our new College Zone, which was built over the winter break to serve as a resource center for our college-bound students. The Youth Leadership Council (YLC) met before tutoring to discuss a number of pressing issues here at Cabrini Connections. The kids were excited to get underway on a mentoring month activity that will be unveiled later this month (shhhhhh it's a secret).

Since with our Development Coordinator Cassina out of the picture, I am now going to be playing a greater role in ensuring the financial health of Cabrini Connections we also discussed how the YLC could potentially play a role in fundraising for Cabrini Connections, which the kids were enthusiastic about, explaining how easy it would be to raise money via candy sales at school. This is something that we are likely to persue, since it has since come to my attention that selling 12 fundraising boxes of king sized candy at a buck a pop can easily earn us over a thousand bucks. This form of fundraising nets us additional benefits as well. First and foremost by fundraising independently for our program the kids would be taking some ownership and responsibility for the economic health of Cabrini Connections, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. Secondly, by selling candy, the kids would be telling their peers and fellow community members about the value of our program. This is particularly key right now as we have space for at least 10 more students that we are looking to fill as soon as possible. Hopefully we will make a final decision on this at our next YLC meeting and get this fundraiser underway before the end of National Mentoring Month.

What are you going to do to help before National Mentoring Month ends?

Youth Leadership Council: 1st meeting

Happy Holidays everyone! In the spirit of the holidays I want to share something with you that has filled me with goodwill and cheer, the Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council. Cierria, DeSean, LaFaye, Savon, Eboni, Sean and I came together for the first time last Wednesday afternoon to hash out our plans for the upcoming year. These 6 students, ranging from 8th graders Sean and Savon to High School Seniors LaFaye and Eboni will be convening every other Wednesday to weigh in on a wide variety of issues confronting Cabrini Connections. They will be helping myself and EL Da'Sheon in our quest to provide the most comprehensive and beneficial tutoring and mentoring program possible by helping us to plan, coordinate and follow-up on nearly every facet of our program. This first meeting provided the students with a chance to get to know each other better and share their plans and goals for the council in the coming year.

I was excited to see that they see the council as playing two primary roles. The first is to increase student involvement in our programming and in the planning and execution of said
programming. The second goal, which I am very excited about, is that they want to really use the council to develop their own leadership skills. We followed this with a discussion about what it takes to be a good leader, what skills and characteristics they share. The students came to the conclusion that good leaders:

-should want to lead
-are good communicators both in public and private
-are confident
-follow through
-know their weaknesses and work to address them
-know their passions and follow them
-are open-minded
-lead by example
-are dependable
-respect others
-are good goal setters

We all agreed that we are going to work to develop these skills in ourselves, myself included, throughout the year and I have already thought of a number of different activities that we can do as a group and individually to address these skills, which I will elaborate in a later post.

We also were able to hash out some logistical details. For instance, the council decided that, when voting to recommend a particular action, consensus is not necessary and that only a majority of those members in attendence is necessary. In the event of a tie, the council decided that I can cast the deciding vote. I don't have a vote otherwise, which I think is good; It's their council, i'm just the facilitator.

The council also has the opportunity to send one member each month to a district wide council that makes decisions for other youth development organizations across the city. This job comes with a $200/month salary. Therefore the students debated the merits of having one student go each month and keep the salary or having multiple students rotate the position and split the cash, or have everyone rotate the position and use the $200/month as a budget for the council to spend at their descretion. They unanimously agreed upon the last option, sharing the responsibility and using the money as a budget.

Well that's about it for the first week, but needless to say, I'm extremely pumped about the progress that we've made even in the first week and will be happy to keep the public informed via this blog. I am also eager to unveil a very special announcement that the council is keeping secret until mid January. Until then...over and out

2008 Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council

2008 Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council

This week we’d like to congratulate 6 individuals rather than just one for our Student Spotlight. These 6 students will be making up the 2008-2009 Youth Leadership Council! Three students from each tutoring night, Wednesday and Thursday, were elected to the council last week by tutors and students. These students not only got up in front of tutors and their peers to give an election speech two weeks ago, but sat down in front of everyone and fielded questions last week as part of a “New England Town-Hall” style debate. Last week, democracy reigned at Cabrini Connections as everyone lined up at 3 designated polling places to cast their votes for the 3 students who they thought would best represent them on the Youth Leadership Council. Now we are proud to announce that the following individuals will comprise our 2008 YLC:

From Wednesday night:

Eboni Rivera

LaFaye Garth

DeSean Hale

From Thursday Night:

Cierria Tharpe

Sean Mayfield

Savon Clark

We are putting these youth in the spotlight because they are the future of Cabrini Connections. The ideas they bring to the Youth Leadership Council and the decisions that they make will fundamentally affect the way Cabrini Connections operates. These youth will be assisting Cabrini Connections Staff in making decisions pertaining to everything from field trip destinations and the tutoring schedule to coming up with strategies to increase youth involvement and attendance in the Winter months.

One of these 6 students will also be representing Cabrini Connections on a Regional leadership council. This council is comprised of a youth representative from each of the numerous tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections around the Chicagoland area. This representative will not only earn the opportunity to make decisions that affect youth all around Chicago, but he/she will also receive $200/month to reward their leadership.

Congratulations Eboni, LaFaye, DeSean, Cierria, Sean and Savon on your election victories, we’re excited to see the change you bring to Cabrini Connections in the year to come!

On a personal level, I'm super excited to be working with these 6 kids in the coming months, developing their leadership and communication skills and helping them successfully implement their ideas. This is my first big step towards enhancing youth participation at Cabrini Connections, as I discussed in a post last month http://chrispip.blogspot.com/2008/10/increasing-youth-participation.html.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we work to establish a Youth Leadership Council charter that will determine the nature of the council: i.e. will there be a president, vice president...etc or will everyone's voice have equal sway. Also, must decisions be made by consensus or will a simple or 2/3 majority be enough. We will also be determining recall procedures, should council members fail to follow through with their campaign promises and the exact purview of the council...all very important in getting the kids to really understand both their individual roles in the council as well as the council's role at Cabrini Connections. This is truly an exciting time.

Increasing Youth Participation

Hey everyone! I just wanted to write a bit today about an issue we've been dealing with here at Cabrini Connections and that is the issue of youth participation and how to get our youth to take more ownership of the program. I'm certain this is a common problem that youth workers are faced with and thus am reaching out here to try to share some ideas for potential solutions and ask for suggestions from you all. Basically we feel sometimes that we are offering an abundance of opportunities for our youth that they are failing to take advantage of. For instance, I have been spearheading a college prep support program that has involved campus visits to various colleges in the region as well as encouraging youth to take advantage of on-site college counselors and test-prep materials. Additionally we are coordinating weekend application workshops that will bring our seniors together with volunteers who will help them craft admissions essays, personal statements and otherwise help the students put together top-notch college applications. However, the interest student's expressed beforehand has not converted into attendance and involvement with our various offerings.

We also have not had the levels of participation we would like to see in a recent Halloween essay contest or in some of our clubs such as Art, Tech and Writing clubs. Since kids already earn incentives for participating in our programs, including points redeemable for cash upon graduation from our program, snacks and assorted prizes, we were thinking that perhaps we need to make these incentives more salient or emphasize them more, particularly the points. However, being a non-profit with limited resources, upping the ante for incentives seems like a mis-allocation of resources in the short-term and may lead us down a slippery-slope where the kids expect to be rewarded for their participation, which doesn't benefit anyone, particularly when their own outcomes stemming from their participation should be the primary incentive (i.e. getting better grades, staying out of trouble, opportunities to participate in awesome clubs, help finding jobs & getting into colleges, careers...etc).

Thus I've been thinking that rather than impose a new incentive structure or other apparatus from above, we should be working more effectively to empower the kids we're working with so that they are the ones working together to solve these types of problems. We want to get our youth to realize that this is their program and that they have the right to determine its development so as to maximize positive outcomes for the youth themselves. I have been thinking of various ways to do this and, after consulting with a number of our students, have decided that perhaps the best way to do this is to start what I'm tentatively deeming a "Youth Leadership Council" wherein a number of students, perhaps 6 who will proportionally represent our youth in terms of gender and grade level (i.e. a good mix of jr highers and high schoolers), will convene weekly to discuss issues of importance to Cabrini Connections (such as the aforementioned lack of participation), come up with solutions and work with staff and other students to implement those solutions. I'm thinking of holding elections in a couple weeks to piggy-back off the excitement surrounding the presidential election, which will also give students a chance to campaign, give speeches, get to know the other students and engage more meaningfully with the program. Eventually, I'm hoping to develop enough leadership skills in these youth and get them to really know what it takes to run our program, that they can send a liaison to our board meetings to ensure the youth have an informed say in the decision making at every level.

Basically I'm hoping the success of this Youth Leadership Council will catalyze a shift in the way we run our program from that of a vertical system of power, wherein we staff have unchallenged authority to a more egalitarian and horizontal framework, wherein youth set the agenda, decide on issues and activities and have joint accountability with the staff. In this way we can not only enhance youth participation and allow them to develop their leadership skills, but accomplish more as an organization by converting them into change agents who begin to take on more responsibility and encourage the rest of the youth to do likewise.

Thoughts???