United We Serve

Yesterday President Obama kicked off his new summer volunteerism campaign, United We Serve, which aims to motivate Americans of all stripes to volunteer their time and talents through an online clearinghouse of volunteer opportunties, www.serve.gov. As a volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring organization, we depend on mobilizing passionate volunteers to achieve our mission of helping at-risk Chicagoland youth enter college and careers by the age of 25. However, few of our potential volunteers comprehend the wealth of potential volunteer opportunities at our organization. Beyond mentoring a youth one-on-one or in enrichment activities such as Tech, Writing, or Art Clubs through our Cabrini Connections program, volunteers can help The Tutor/Mentor Connection accomplish it's important aims by serving in the following roles.
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Information Management

Web Researcher and Links Manager —Collect and maintain the information and links on the T/MC Web site. Volunteers search the internet for new links, check existing links and organize online discussions to help people find and use this information.

Event Organization

Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign—Work on a year-round basis to develop and implement strategies that recruit volunteers for tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. Raise funds to support the campaign. Time commitment: approx. 4-6 hours per month

Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference and Volunteer Training—Organize the May and November leadership conferences and eConferences. Provide training, education and support to volunteers, leaders, and business, media and philanthropic partners. Time commitment: approx. 3-6 hours per month

Public Relations

Here are links to some articles about the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Help us increase the number of people who visit this web site and use this information, and you play a valuable role in helping us connect inner city kids in long-term volunteer-based programs.

Communications—Prepare publications, brochures and other media used to connect youths, volunteers, parents, donors and other stakeholders with each other and the tutor/mentor community. Volunteer roles can be ongoing or project-based. Time commitment varies.

Net-Worker—Actively spread the word about tutoring/mentoring to others through church sermons, Web site links, email, letters, or word-of-mouth. This is the easiest and possibly most important role anyone can take. Just by encouraging someone to visit this Web site you enlarge the army of tutors/mentors and resource builders in Chicago. Time commitment varies.

Blogger—Write about tutoring and mentoring in blogs and forums. Time commitment varies.

Fundraising

Fund raising—Raise funds to support T/MC or other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Become a champion of tutoring/mentoring in your company, church or civic organization. Help organize fundraising events, write grant proposals and recruit a network of potential donors. Time commitment varies.

Technology

Technology Planning—Develop and implement the TM/C technology plan. Determine necessary technologies, acquire technologies through a variety of fundraising efforts, and work with Technology Coordinator and volunteers to maximize use of technologies. Time commitment: approx. 4-8 hours per month.

Database and Information Management—Develop and maintain interactive databases used to collect and share information. Volunteers should have extensive experience in database design. Time commitment varies.

GIS Mapping and Training—Build the GIS mapping capacity of T/MC and create a youth apprentice program that teaches teens to create map views and Web pages that show where tutor/mentor programs are needed and where they are located. This is a career development activity. Time commitment: approx. 4-6 hours per month.

Call (312-492-9614) or contact us if you're interested in volunteering. Volunteers can serve more than one role and can also be one-on-one tutor/mentors if they wish.

Anyone can make maps! (That means you!)

For those interested in learning more about the many applications of our free online, tutor/mentor program locator, check out Tutor/Mentor Connection's President/CEO Dan Bassill's blog, where he demonstrates how you can use it to create your own maps that help you better understand the news, the geography of Chicago's many unique neighborhoods and ways to get involved in improving opportunities for the youth of these neighborhoods. In his post, Dan explains how he used the interactive maps to create a map showing the location of failing schools and tutoring/mentoring programs in relation to census data about the amount of poverty in these neighborhoods. This helps him and others make sense of the recent ranking of Washington Park's intersection of State St and 55th as the 2nd most dangerous neighborhood in America. His map shows a clear relationship between increasing amounts of poverty and increasing numbers of underperforming and underresourced schools, while highlighting the few programs that are present in these areas where people like you and I can get involved.

Instead of encouraging people to avoid the neighborhood for fear of being victims of crime, an act that only serves to further isolate and deprive its residents of vital commercial activity and positive media attention, mapping the news in this way helps us to understand what positive steps we can take to help the neighborhood's residents change the violent face of their neighborhood through engaging its youth in constructive tutoring/mentoring activities. Though we may not live in these neighborhoods, we can play a role in helping foster their future success by informing our US and IL state representatives as well as aldermen of the positive benefit of tutor/mentor programs that youth tutoring/mentoring programs are already having in these communities. For example, using the interactive tutor/mentor program locator, you can easily look up your congressional district, see what high poverty neighborhoods fall within its borders and identify programs that are already making a difference there. As a constituent, you can contact your rep and encourage them to support these programs.

For example, residents of some of Chicago's most affluent communities, including: Lincoln Park, The Loop and Oak Park share the same 7th district representative, Danny Davis, as residents of some of Chicago's poorest communities: Austin, Washington Park, Garfield Park and North Lawndale (see map above). As Rep Davis' constituents, residents of these affluent neighborhoods have a uniquely powerful voice that can be used to encourage Rep Davis to support programs like ours. I encourage you to go to www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and map your congressional district to see who your political neighbors are. You might be surprised!

NYC Mayor supports youth mentoring...why not Chicago?

During a recent visit to mentoring.org I came upon a press release announcing that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just appointed the nation's first municipal Chief Service Officer to lead volunteer recruitment efforts across the city. During the official announcement, Bloomberg and Diahann Billings-Burford called on New Yorkers to volunteer to mentor at-risk middle schoolers through their first NYC Service initiative, which aims to connect 2000 mentors with inner-city students across the city. Read more details here. In this historic initiative, the Department of Education partnered with a variety of high-profile mentoring organizations and funders to train these new mentors and connect them with children in need. The NYC Service program has three main goals:

::Channel the power of volunteers to address the impacts of the current economic downturn
::Make New York City the easiest city in America in which to serve, and to
::Ensure every young person in New York City is taught about civic engagement and has an opportunity to serve

This large-scale public/private partnership is using the Mayor's office to connect nonprofit tutoring/mentoring organizations with the resources they need to increase their impact. These resources include volunteers, publicity and dollars. At a fundamental level, this is what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been doing since 1993, albeit without the abundant resources of the Mayor's office.

Given that in his press release, Mayor Bloomberg sets out a major goal of this initiative to be making New York the easiest city in America in which to get involved in mentoring at-risk youth, why hasn't the leader of America's Second City, Mayor Daley, stepped up to the plate and taken him up on his challenge?

Given that Chicago already has an infrastructure in place that is designed to connect tutor/mentor programs city-wide with volunteers, which includes an easy to navigate tutor/mentor program locator that helps potential volunteers find the perfect program for them, it's not like Daley would have to start at square one. He could very easily use the bully pulpit of the mayor's office to inform people about what we're already doing, directing people to our myriad online resources and connect us with funders who could help us dramatically increase our impact on the city. Considering the flak Daley has been getting for his recent parking meter deal and promise to the IOC to take full financial responsibility for the Olympics (a potentially disastrous deal for Chicago taxpayers) this could provide Daley with some sorely-needed political capital and a great opportunity to help make a difference in the lives of thousands of at-risk youth citywide. Thoughts?

A Call to Action: Help Protect Our Youth!

Friends and youth advocates around Illinois we have a problem,

It has just been announced that Governer Quinn's Fiscal Year 2010 budget axes the state budget for necessary youth services by 15%. I, along with The Chicago Area Project (CAP) the Illinois Collaboration on Youth (ICOY), and Illinois Council of Area Projects (CAP), together representing a coalition of more than one hundred (100) community-based agencies and organizations throughout the State, believe cuts in Youth Services, as proposed in the Governor’s FY 2010 Budget, will seriously erode the ability of community-based agencies to have a meaningful impact on the lives of young people in high-risk situations. With a proposed reduction of 14.80% (higher than in other areas of DHS) the system of community-based youth services is shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden. These programs represent a coordinated continuum that intervenes in the lives of youth in high-risk situations – many of whom are involved in, or about to enter, the juvenile justice or child welfare systems – making our communities safer places in which to live.

Call your legislators attention to the budget pages and “grants” lines that are listed below and asking them to restore funding to youth services.

Youth services programs are less costly and less restrictive forms of support, and are now seriously at-risk due to chronic under-funding. In our current economic condition, budget cuts may be necessary, but disproportionate cuts targeted at youth services are unfair to vulnerable youth and more expensive to taxpayers in the long term.

Community Services: Budget Page 7-26,
Under “Grants” Line “Community Services” Proposed CUT: $893,500

The product of 70 years of cooperation between the State and Chicago Area Project, this program prevents juvenile crime and violence, and diverts youth from the criminal justice system through the development, organization, and operation of grass-roots community organizations that manage programs for youth and families, plan and implement community betterment and development programs, and allow youth to safely pursue constructive and productive activities in economically disadvantaged communities.

Comprehensive Community Services: Budget Page 7-26, Under “Grants”, Line “Comprehensive Community Services” Proposed CUT: $1,661,000

These programs provide shelter and family reunification services to runaway and homeless youth, and accepts 24 hour, seven day a week referral from police and DCFS Child Welfare and Protective staff for youth and families in crisis situations. This program focuses on youth age 10 to 17 that are in danger of entering the Child Welfare System. It seeks family reunification, or the development of independent living capacity for affected youth.

Unified Delinquency Intervention Services: Budget Page 7-27 Line “Unified Delinquency Intervention Services” Proposed Cut: $459,900

UDIS programs provide the last hope for youth about to be committed to the Department of Corrections. Results over the past 28 years have indicated that intensive intervention at this final state has succeeded in redirecting large numbers of youth, and saving the state huge amounts in incarceration costs.

Teen REACH: Budget page 7-27 Line “Youth Programs” Proposed CUT: $2,450,000

This program funds intensive educational assistance programs for at-risk youth in danger of failing or dropping out of school. Programs are provided after school and during other out-of-school times, thus giving youth alternatives to gangs, violence and the risk of substance abuse.

Juvenile Justice Reform: Budget Page 7-27 Line “Juvenile Justice Reform” Proposed CUT: $550,800

These programs divert youth from the Juvenile Court, and refer them to intensive counseling and other psychological services, support services, and community advocacy and basic community support activities. Juvenile Court Judges and State’s Attorneys in number counties have recognized the effectiveness of these efforts as opposed to traditional involvement of identified youth in the juvenile justice system.

Since youth cannot vote and can't afford to make generous campaign contributions to those in power to influence policy, those of us with some political power need to advocate on their behalf. Please stand up for our at-risk youth by calling or writing your Legislators in the Illinois House and Senate. Thanks for your support.

The Serve America Act

Back in September I wrote a post about public service and the election. In it I mentioned a bill that Edward Kennedy had introduced in the Senate called the "Serve America Act", which aims to expand and improve opportunities for public service. Since this bill has the potential to benefit tutor/mentor programs and other organizations making a difference, I think it's important to examine the meat and potatoes of the bill. According to opencongress.org, if made law, the bill will:

+Create a "Youth Engagement Zones to Strengthen Communities program which will provide grants for partnerships between local educational agencies that serve high-need, low-income communities and community-based or state entities to engage students and out-of-school youth in service-learning addressing specific challenges faced by their communities

+Create a Campus of Service program, which will annually grant up to 30 Universities with exemplary service-learning programs the funds to assist their students' pursuit of public service careers

+Direct the Corporation for National and Community Service to contract for a 10-year, longitudinal service-learning impact study.

+Establish the Commission on Cross-Sector Solutions to America's Problems to study ways in which the federal government and businesses can more effectively collaborate with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations to address pressing national and local challenges.

+Create a Community Solutions Funds Pilot program awarding competitive matching grants to grantmaking institutions or partnerships between such institutions and state or local governmental entities which will use the grants to provide competitive matching subgrants to community organizations for use in replicating or expanding proven solutions to specifically identified community challenges.

+Establish an "Innovation Fellowships Pilot Program" that will award competitive grants to individuals who have completed at least one period of national service, to establish innovative nonprofit organizations that address national and local challenges.

+Create a ServeAmerica Corps program that will award competitive grants to states and nonprofit organizations to fund national service in low-income communities by founding an:

--Education Corps that improve certain education indicators, including student engagement, achievement, and graduation

--Healthy Futures Corps that improve certain health indicators, including health care access; -- Opportunity Corps that improve certain opportunity indicators, including financial literacy and access to housing, and employment-related services

-- Encore programs designed to take advantage of the skills of participants age 50 and older. Creates additional incentives for national service participation by individuals age 50 and older.

+Establish the ServeAmerica and Encore Fellowships program providing ServeAmerica Fellowships to university-nominated individuals and Encore Fellowships to individuals age 50 or older who agree to be placed with nonprofit organizations to carry out projects in specified areas of national need.

+Creates a Volunteer Generation Fund program awarding competitive matching grants to states and nonprofit organizations to increase the availability and capacity of volunteers to address state priorities with regard to areas of national need or work with nonprofit civic entities, including faith-based organizations, to address such needs.

+Ensures the commencement of a nationwide Call to Service Campaign.

+Requires the Office of Volunteers for Prosperity (VfP) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement a VfPServe program providing skilled professionals with fixed-amount stipends to offset their costs of volunteering abroad to address specified VfP objectives aimed at ameliorating living conditions in developing countries.

This is some really good stuff! As you can see, Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection potentially has a lot to gain from the passage of this bill, from increased availabilty of funding and volunteers for Cabrini Connections, to increased government support for some of the ideas that I've been discussing on this blog and on tutormentorexchange.net. Unfortunately, despite getting press in such high profile publications as the New York Times, the bill is currently stuck in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions with only 17 co-sponsors. The co-sponsors are as follows:

Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D, MD]
Hillary Clinton
Sen. Thad Cochran [R, MS]
Norm Coleman
Sen. Christopher Dodd [D, CT]
Sen. Richard Durbin [D, IL]
Sen. Judd Gregg [R, NH]
Sen. Orrin Hatch [R, UT]
Sen. John Kerry [D, MA]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln [D, AR]
Sen. John McCain [R, AZ]
Sen. Barbara Mikulski [D, MD]
Sen. Patty Murray [D, WA]
Barack Obama
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY]
Gordon Smith
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D, RI]
Sen. Roger Wicker [R, MS]

Therefore, if your senator isn't on there, give their office a ring and ask them why the heck they haven't come out in full support! You can find their contact info here.

Considering that the federal govt has already SPENT NEARLY 5 TRILLION DOLLARS BAILING OUT BANKS AND LARGE CORPORATIONS, don't you think it's time to put a little of our taxpayer money to good use?

Public Service and the Election

In the midst of a presidential campaign that seems to be increasingly mired in issues further and further removed from the lives and cares of most Americans it was encouraging to see both major party candidates on the cover of TIME magazine this week discussing the importance of public service. The feature article discusses how the number of volunteers in civic organizations has grown by over a million Americans in the last 5 years and that this new wave of volunteerism is bringing together the 2 largest generations in American history: baby boomers and the so-called "millenials" through civic engagement. In fact the National Conference on Citizenship's 2008 Civic Report Card, which will be unveiled this month, will show that "Americans overwhelmingly support policy changes to increase service incentives and opportunities". When these recent findings are combined with those of a new study by the AARP that found that boomers ranked "making a difference by helping others" as one of their most important goals, it is clear that Americans want to increase their service and feel that they should be asked to to more. Riding this wave is Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy who is introducing a bipartisan national service bill, the "Serve America Act", before congress with Republican Orrin Hatch that aims to recruit 175,000 Americans of all ages to tackle national problems such as health care, poverty, education, energy and the environment. He will announce more details about the bill this Friday, which will hopefully ignite debate and discussion about the issue of civic engagement.

So far we know that the new bill "would provide an estimated $5 billion over five years to encourage citizens from kindergarteners to retirees to get involved in community organizations, including faith-based groups, on a series of programs targeted at national problems.
The new corps members would be paid modest salaries to spend a year working on specific national problems. Employers would be eligible for tax cuts for giving workers time off to do community service, while a new venture capital fund would also be created to boost the creation of new service organizations."

To address on aspect of the proposed bill: giving tax incentives to employers to allow their employees time off to participate in public service would potentially be a great way to encourage corporations to engage in this unique yet proven method of workforce development (which I will discuss in a coming post). That is, helping to develop and enhance professional and organizational skills such as teamwork, outside-the-box thinking and problem-solving while at the same time building morale, increased employee retainment and boosting the public image and community relations of the company.

If the "Serve America Act" is passed, it would indeed bring about an impressive expansion of former national service initiatives undertaken under the presidencies of JFK, the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. However, let us keep in mind that the 1 billion dollars a year that this bill proposes would fund roughly 3 DAYS of our current occupation of Iraq (according to recent estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and the Congressional Research Service) OR five C130 Specter Gunships (the planes responsible for the continual bombardment and deaths of Afghan civilians in our escalating war in Afghanistan). Given that Iraq and Afghanistan are just two of the countries where the Pentagon admints to maintaining some of their 761 admitted military bases, (according to the Pentagon's declassified 2008 "Base Structure Report) and that neither Obama nor McCain have seriously discussed closing a single one during the 2008 campaign, it is assured that no matter who is elected, we will continue to spend outragous sums of money to maintain our military presence across the globe that will dwarf spending on much needed social programs such as the ones that will benefit from the Kennedy-Hatch Bill if it is enacted.

That said, regardless of whom is elected this November, it will remain of the utmost importance to maintain pressure on our elected leaders to support programs such as those offered here at Cabrini Connections throughout their stints in office and not only around election time. We need to take note of the campaign promises that the candidates are making about public service and the importance of civic engagement and hold them to supporting these programs with not only their rhetoric, but government funds and other necessary resources. This will ensure that the "new era of service" and "call to service" promised by McCain and Obama, respectively, will provide potential volunteers and their communities with more than one way tickets to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Headlines, communication and collaboration

Hello all! Chicago area tutoring/mentoring programs have recently been receiving some unintended publicity as a result of a Tribune story about the lack of oversight of $20,000 "tutor grants". In fact, today's Chicago Tribune lead with the headline "Illinois to scrutinize wasted 'tutor' grants" http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-afterschool-folojul22,0,49961.story. The fact that certain lawmakers chose to support their political backers and not one of the hundreds of well run, legitimate tutor/mentor programs in the area is unfortunate. However, this gives advocates of tutoring/mentoring an opportunity to inform the public as to the necessity of effective programs and how such programs differ from the questionable programs currently being discussed in the press.

In the article, the author mentions a church on Chicago's West Side that was empty and dark during after-school hours, even though it was supposed to house a tutoring center. Another alleged program coordinator was quoted as saying his "Children at Risk" program was "in flux" and "I run it when I can". Even if these programs are legitimate, when doors are closed and the programming is inconsistent, even for a short time, it is difficult to retain both students and volunteers. Why should they be investing their energy and resources in the program if its organizers are not demonstrating the same committment? For this reason (among others) tutor/mentor programs that lead to the most positive outcomes for their participants are those which are best organized to train and empower dedicated volunteers to take on responsibility for administering and organizing various programs. The most effective programs, as the results of a meta-analytic review of 55 controlled studies recently argued, have various methods of regularly engaging volunteers and youth, ensuring their continual involvement and dedication to positive outcomes. These methods include coordinating: "ongoing training for mentors, structured activities for mentors and youth as well as expectations for frequency of contact, mechanisms for support and involvement of parents, and monitoring of overall program implementation" (Dubois, Holloway, Valentine and Cooper 2002). Essentially, these methods ensure that youth and their tutor/mentors are provided with adequate support so that their mentor-mentee relationship can grow.

However, these types of engagement with volunteers to maximize positive outcomes in youth can stretch an underfunded and/or staffed organization. Things like volunteer recruitment, training, screening and program monitoring can all be drains on a tutor/mentor organization. However, at tutor/mentor connection we realize that there are many organizations attempting to do these things effectively in relative isolation, and that through the formation of collaborative relationships amongst our various programs and that if we share strategies as well as some of the legwork, (especially in volunteer recrutiment and training) everyone can benefit. In our view, more collaboration= a higher profile for all tutoring/mentoring programs and thus hopefully more funding to provide more at-risk youth with the benefits of a dedicated relationship with a tutor/mentor vis a vis one of our programs. Find out more at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/ .


David L. DuBois, D.L., Holloway, B.E., Valentine, J.C.,
and Cooper, H. (2002). Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs for Youth:A Meta-Analytic Review American Journal of Community Psychology, (30)2.