Showing posts with label public health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public health. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Using Maps in Planning - Chicago West Side and Healthy Chicago 2.0

West Side of Chicago
Tutor/Mentor map
I used this map of El Stations on Chicago's West side in an article I posted yesterday.  Today I'm going to add some more maps and resources you might include in doing your own planning.

Below are three images that I created from pages on the Healthy Chicago 2.0 Health Atlas web site.   These all focus on the North Lawndale area which is included in the map I show above.

On the RESOURCE page of Healthy Chicago 2.0 you can learn about hospitals available in different community areas or zip codes of Chicago.  You can see the page below, showing North Lawndale. 


I have written several articles in the past showing roles hospitals, as anchor organizations, could take to help volunteer based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in the area around the hospital. If a team from any of these  hospitals were leading the planning process I have recommended, they'd first create a map showing the area around the hospital.

Then they'd want to know what tutor/mentor programs already exist. The map below shows YOUTH SERVICES included in the database of Healthy Chicago 2.0.


This database does not focus specifically on non-school tutor/mentor programs, and does not include some in the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute database, so you'd need to also use the library I point to in this link to create a more focused, comprehensive map. The map at the top of this article was created using this.

Next you want to understand the need for non-school tutor/mentor programs in this area. I created the graphic below using information from the INDICATORS section of Healthy Chicago 2.0


The area has a very low Child Opportunity Index and a very high economic hardship index with 12,833 young people between age 5 and 24 in the area.  You can supplement this with the information I provide on the map at the top, showing 4100 high poverty kids, age 6-17 in North Lawndale, and 7100 in South Lawndale.   If you look at each youth program and ask how many kids they serve, and what age group, you'd find that in total a very small percent of kids in the area have access to organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

You can find another set of indicator maps on the SCY Chicago web site. I point to it in this article.

Invite people to look at the
information and meet to discuss.

With this information the hospital can take a role of convener/network-builder, inviting people from the community to gather and look at this information, and begin to talk of ways they can draw more continuous support to help the existing youth programs constantly improve, while also help new programs form, borrowing ideas from existing programs in other parts of Chicago and other parts of the US and the world....all available in sections of the Tutor/Mentor web library that I've been building since 1998.


Since the late 90s I've been trying to motivate hospitals and universities to create Tutor/Mentor Connection type planning teams that would do the type of analysis I've just described, and the on-going work that leads to more and better programs helping youth in the service area surrounding a hospital move more safely and successfully through school and into jobs, including jobs in the hospitals themselves.  Here's one article with that invitation.

Unless a wealthy benefactor steps forward and provides the money to make this happen, I don't think I'll make much progress on this goal since leaders in these institutions are already doing their own things to solve these problems, and that reduces their ability to step back and ask "are there other things we should be doing?"

Who else could be helping?  I'm not suggesting that a hospital or university spend their own money to build and sustain well-organized non-school tutor/mentor programs. I'm saying they should use their visibility to draw business people into the conversation and motivate them to take this role.  In this section of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site if focus on role leaders in business need to take to help pull kids through school and into jobs and careers.

Find maps like this on
MappingforJustice site
At the right is another data platform that a planning team could use. It's a US Small Business Administration Business Locator site, which I describe in this article.  Using information like this teams in any neighborhood can build a list of businesses who also share the same geography who should be involved in building and sustaining  youth development programs that lower the costs of poverty in the area while increasing the pool of workforce talent and customers.

This article and the one from yesterday, as well as others that I've written over and over since 2005, are templates that could be duplicated on web sites of different organizations in various parts of the Chicago region and in other cities....all with the same goal!

I'd like to help you develop this strategy. Connect with me on TwitterFacebook or LinkedIN

1-28-2021 update Envisioning better health outcomes for all. The crucial role of geographic thinking to address the pandemic needs goes beyond dashboards to aid all communities.- This article describes the potential uses of GIS mapping to understand where Covid19 has had a greater negative impact and what disparities made that happen. Click here to read.

If you value the information and ideas I'm sharing, please go to this "fund me" page and make a contribution.

Saturday, April 07, 2018

Forming Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection

Some times I'm stuck when trying to decide what to write about on this blog. In those cases I look back to see what I had written on this date in previous years.

I did that today. I looked at April 3, 2008 and found an article titled "Hospitals Bleeding Red Ink" that pointed at local newspaper stories talking about "Hospitals serving the poor are bleeding red ink as the uninsured ranks grow, health-care costs climb, and more government cutbacks loom."

In that article I pointed to a PDF that had been first developed for me by a team of graduate students at DePaul University, which is a strategic planning template that hospital leaders could use in creating a strategy to help lower the costs of poverty in the area around the hospital by supporting the growth of non-school, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs in the area.

I've been trying to form partnerships with local and national hospitals since the late 1990s. The concept map at the right was included in a December 2017 article and points to many previous articles on this subject.

Hospitals and universities in every major city have the potential to take on intermediary roles that influence what happens in the area surrounding their facilities and campuses. Many already do much. My goal is to get ideas that I've been sharing into their strategic planning committees, so they can be asking "Is there more we could be doing?"

Update 4-17-18: Just learned about West Side United - a hospital led initiative intended to improve health of people on West Side of Chicago.

I hope you'll help me by reading and sharing these articles.

I also hope you'll help by making a small contribution to help me keep doing this work. Click here to find a PayPal link that you can use. 

Monday, December 04, 2017

Applying Public Health Strategy to Support Youth in Poverty

The Democracy Collaborative is hosting a Hospital Anchor Network Convening in Chicago this week.  I've been interested in hospitals as leaders in building and sustaining networks of mentor-rich non-school programs in their trade areas since learning about the Hospital Youth Mentoring Network in the late 1990s.

I created this concept map to point to some of the articles and resources that I've collected and shared, with the goal that hospital and university leaders would become anchor organizations, and include a Tutor/Mentor Connection component in their strategies.

Open links at bottom of each node and dig into these resources

At the top of this map are ideas I've shared and links to articles I've posted on this blog since 2005. There's also a link to articles about the Hospital Youth Mentoring Network, which was active in the 1990s, but I don't think has been active, as a network, since about 2003.

At the bottom are some new resources, from the past few weeks.  One points to one page of a presentation by Marcella Wilson, PhD, who spoke at an event in Chicago hosted by Advocate Children's Hospital.  Marcella talked about "Treating the condition of poverty with a client centered community based continuum of care."  She talked about "understanding and treating the condition of poverty" using the same condition-specific practices that health care providers use.  Dr. Wilson speaks of "HOPE" as one of the most important medicines we can give to the youth and adults we work with.

I've a link to her book on the map.

The map also includes a 2010 video, in which "Jeff Duncan-Andrade draws from Tupac Shakurs powerful metaphor of the rose that grows from concrete, as well as research in fields such as public health, social epidemiology, and psychology, and explores the concept of hope as essential for developing effective urban classroom practice."


The map also includes an animated video that shows poverty as a river with many contributing streams and talks about hope, and the upstream roles that social entrepreneurs can fill, to reduce poverty and inequality and turn the river into a flow of "enough".  I found it on Facebook, created by Amanda and Brandon Neely, social entrepreneurs of own the Overflow Coffee Bar in Chicago and lead a support program for social entrepreneurs.

That's a lot to look at, but the condition of poverty is not something that can be solved without doing some deep thinking and on-going learning.

I won't be attending the the Healthcare Convening this week due to lack of funds (and no invitation). However,  my long-term friend, Steve Roussos, from Merced, California, will be attending .  Steve was doing PhD work at the University of Kansas when he introduced himself to me in the late 1990s. This led to him becoming a speaker at several Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences between 1998 and 2002 and to creating Tutor/Mentor Connection's on-line documentation system that I used between 2000 and 2013.

the circle is "information

My role since 1993 has been to gather information, such as the articles I've pointed to in my cMap, then to take actions that motivate more people to look at the information, and to build understanding, via various forms of discussion and facilitation.

Steve and I had dinner last night and I told him  how I'd learned about on-line annotation from a network of educators who I'd been meeting on-line since 2013.  I used this Jan 2016 article to show some of these annotation tools, and demonstrate their use by the #Clmooc network.

Imagine if organizers of this week's event were putting presentation documents on-line and encouraging people at the event, and those who are not there, to do joint reading and discussion in the margins.

That's today's #Monday Motivation from the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.   I've been sharing these ideas for over 20 years and wish leaders from every sector had been reading them regularly and had been applying the ideas since 1994.

However, if you did not plant that tree then, now's the next best time to start.

Maybe in 20 years treatment of the condition of poverty will be much more sophisticated and fewer people will be dying or losing their futures as a result.

8-26-2018 update - here's related article titled titled "Bringing Together Resources Students At Risk Need to Succeed".

3-5-2021 update - University of  Michigan Poverty Narrative panel discussion on Confronting Inequality in Public Health. Panel discussion on YouTube.  The video breaks at several points but the audio is fine. Worth listening to. click here

4-2-2021 update - Redlining and Neighborhood Health - National Community Reinvestment Coalition article. click here

12-2-2021 update - The Future of the Public's Health - article on Deloitte Insights website. click here

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Hospitals as hub for urban development and reducing inequality

I have written many articles over the past 12 years, focusing on the role hospitals could be taking to reduce inequality, improve public schools, lower health care costs and draw more young people into health care careers. Here's one article. Find others by clicking the #publichealth tag at the left.

In many of these I'm pointing to articles and research written by others to support my efforts to motivate hospital leaders to take on a broader set of goals (and to invite me into their conversations).

Today I was pointed to an article titled The Often Overlooked Solution to Income Inequality, which shows that hospitals, as the major employer in many inner city neighborhoods, could take on a much broader set of goals "to help make cities truly livable".

Below is a strategy plan template that was started by a team of DePaul University grad students in 2001. I've updated it a few times since then.



If you're involved with leadership at an urban hospital or teaching university I encourage you to use this and other articles I've written to stimulate thinking and discussion of strategic goals for your institution.




Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Violence Prevention as Public Health Strategy

Yesterday I posted an article with the titled "Reducing Violence, Poverty in Chicago. What's the Plan?" in response to articles on the front page of major Chicago media.  Today in it's editorial page the Chicago Tribune writes "Chicago's Crime Epidemic: How can  you help?" and highlights mentoring as a solution.

That's not enough.

In past articles I've shown roles of hospitals and universities as anchor organizations who could influence the availability of youth and family support systems in the areas surrounding each institution.

Today my Twitter friend Valdis Krebs pointed me to an article titled "Modeling Contagion Through Social Networks to Explain and Predict Gunshot Violence in Chicago, 2006 to 2014" which I've added to my web library and recommend as "deeper learning" for anyone concerned with this problem.

Toward the end of the article the authors added this statement:

"A fully realized public health approach centered on subjects of gun violence includes focused violence reduction efforts that work in concert with efforts aimed at addressing the aggregate risk factors of gun violence, namely, the conditions that create such networks in the first place or otherwise determine which individuals are in such networks (eg, neighborhood disadvantage and failing schools)."

As readers look at the charts in research papers like this, and look for solutions to violence in Chicago and other cities, I encourage you to look at the concept maps shown below.

The first shows supports kids need as they move from pre-school to jobs, over a 20 to 30 year period.
See the map here.


This second map shows that people raising kids in affluent areas have some of the same challenges as people in poor areas, however, as Robert Putnam says in his "Our Kids" book, they have more resources to help kids overcome those challenges.



The next map shows a planning process that needs to be taking place in many places, supporting t he involvement of many people.  Note that on the right there are maps, indicating a need for solutions to be available in every high poverty area of the Chicago region.  On the right are graphics that focus on building and sustaining public will and the flow of resources to support such an effort, and the need to influence what leaders and resource providers do, not just what non profit leaders and volunteers do.


This next map shows four concurrent strategies that need to be taking place to support this planning. The first focuses on collecting information, or intelligence, that can be used by anyone involved in the planning. The second and third steps focus on the advertising and marketing and facilitation that are required to bring more people to the information and help them understand it and apply it in actions that support needed work in all the different poverty areas shown on maps developed as part of the first step.  This four part strategy is described in this pdf.


These concept maps are available to anyone in the world and can be used as visual aids and discussion starters for leaders, volunteers, donors, policy makers, etc.

Throughout my articles I also use geographic maps, showing all of the high poverty areas of Chicago.

At each age level, pre-school through high school, kids in high poverty neighborhoods need a full range of supports, as illustrated by the two concept maps.

Mentoring by itself, can't help kids overcome the lack of these supports on a consistent basis as they grow up.  In many cases, without organized programs operating in different neighborhoods, volunteers representing different career options than what is most often modeled in high poverty neighborhoods, won't even be able to find ways to connect with youth.

My articles have been freely available on this blog since 2005 and on web sites since 1998. I'd love to see more leaders including visualizations and  maps in articles that show strategies and invite others to become involved....and that draw direct and on-going operating and innovation dollars to all of the organizations needed in every one of these high poverty areas.

If you're aware of people who do this, please share the link  in the comments section below.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Growing drug crisis in America

Today my Twitter feed included this post.
The maps in this post are from a Wall Street Journal article (see link in Tweet) which shows the growth of the drug crisis in America since 1990.  I wrote a full article about this on the MappingforJustice blog. Take a look. Share with others.

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Libraries as anchor organizations

These two maps are included in new article I posted at MappingforJustice blog, showing how libraries, hospitals and other anchor organizations can be proactive in filling the area around each location with needed services.

Please read and share.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Involve Youth in Meaningful Ways

For many years I've heard activist say "involve youth in decision making" since they are the ones you're trying to influence.  Today during the Strengthening Chicago Youth (SCY-Chicago) quarterly meeting, the topic was "Holding Systems Accountable for Violence Prevention".  I offered some reflection on this blog.

Many of the participants at the SCY-Chicago event were passionate about having youth voice involved in meaningful ways.


I agree. But. Making change happen requires many years, and the involvement of many people.


This graphic is a collection of three different graphics, related to the same idea. If we want to help young people grow to become healthy, thriving, employed adults, we need to reach them early and stay connected to them, with a variety of different, age-appropriate supports, for many years.  If the youth was born, or is living in medium income or higher level income brackets, there are many supports naturally available to him and his family, to overcome the challenges he/she will face in growing up and finding a job/career. (see map)

If the young person is born or living in areas of low income and/or extreme poverty, she faces many of the same problems as other kids, but without the same type of naturally occurring supports to help him/her overcome those challenges. In addition, he/she has influences in his/her life that other kids don't grow up with, like hunger, high levels of stress related to violence, many adults without college education, with prison records, with low wage jobs. 

For kids who live in high poverty the support systems that would help them overcome these challenges needs to be built and be available to them close to where they live. Such supports don't just appear. They require a group of dedicated people to launch a program, build it to the point where it is effective at what it offers, then keep it great for many years as young people move from first grade to first job.

Assuming every youth age 14-21 were actively involved today in designing this system, they will be adults between the age of 30-40 before the first kids entering first grade today will be entering jobs and careers in their mid 20's. That's assuming great programs in every neighborhood were made available by next year. Not likely.

Thus, while youth need to have their voices involved, the system they help create needs to be one that will keep them continuously involved, engaged and contributing time, talent, dollars and votes, to solutions, for the rest of their lives.

 The Internet offers a platform for such "stickiness" but I've not yet seen any magic pill that builds the type of learning habits and personal accountability that will get people from both sides of the poverty gap consistently connected for a lifetime of learning and involvement.

Which leads me to this. During 2016 youth will be invited to write letters to the next President, via a program led by the National Writing Project and the Bay-Area PBS station KQED. Read this blog article to learn about this opportunity for young people to voice their ideas about what the next President (and local elected officials) need to do to end violence and create greater opportunities for youth in America.  

I will post notes from today's SCY-Chicago meeting once they make them public. If you've written a blog article, with your own theory of change, or strategy maps, then please share your link in the comment section, or share it with me on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. 

Friday, January 29, 2016

Building Community Wealth: Role of Cities

I wrote an article about the Role of Anchor Organizations in 2013 after hearing the Democracy Collaboration talk about this.  An anchor organization is a hospital, university, or other institution that is a long-term part of a neighborhood, and often the major employer.

Today I've been listening to a panel discussion titled: Cities Building Community Wealth: A Gathering at the CUNY Law School.  Here's a link to the video.  

When I focus on volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs I'm thinking of them as a form of bridging social capital, that connects people from high poverty, mostly segregated neighborhoods, with people, ideas and resources from beyond the neighborhood. Such programs can have a transformative affect on the lives of young people, if they are available in the neighborhoods where young people live.

To me, anchor institutions should be the lead convener trying to make such organizations available in the areas where they operate.

Since we're in the middle of a Presidential campaign, and inequality, wealth gaps, Black Lives Matter, and so many issues are at stake, the comment made by the Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin is really important.

"We've elected progressive Mayors. They just have been too ineffective in governing."

Nearly 1000 people attended this weeks Mentoring Summit in Washington. I followed the even via live stream and Tweeted using #mentoringsummit2016.  I hope that this results in a growing number of tutor/mentor leaders from around the country, and Chicago, looking at this blog, and then looking for ways to motivate their volunteers and students to spend time looking at my articles, and the links I point to, like today's panel discussion.

There's lots that needs to be learned. 


Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Can Hospitals Heal America's Communities?


I've been using maps to show high poverty areas of Chicago and to show assets, like hospitals and universities, who could be developing strategies that influenced the growth of tutor/mentor programs and community health in areas around each hospital. Here's a sample article from 2008.

Here's a set of articles on the MappingforJustice blog, that focus on  public health and hospitals. 

In my email today I received the Community Wealth.org newsletter, which featured a white paper titled "Can Hospitals Heal America's Communities?"

I started reading this, and was making mental notes of comments I'd like to add. If I printed the article, that's what I'd do. I'd get my yellow marker, and my pen, and add notes throughout the article. I've done this for nearly 40 years.

However, last week Terry Elliott posted a Tweet sharing with me an collection of my blog articles, which he had annotated, using an on-line tool title 'Diigio". 



So I signed up and marked up the article this afternoon.  Here's the link. https://diigo.com/08835u

I hope readers will share this article with hospital and university leaders in their own community, who will read the article by Community Wealth.org, but also read my comments, and follow the links.  I think they can also add their own notes, and share it with others.


If you look at the map above, and draw a circle around each hospital, you create a network of circles, or influence areas,  This graphic is from a set of articles I've written showing my goal of influencing what others do to support the growth of high quality non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in  high poverty neighborhoods. 

If this strategy were adopted by CEOs of some of Chicago's biggest hospitals it could have a much, much greater impact than what I've had thus far.

That's the goal.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Mobilize your community assets to fight violence

In the June 19, 2013 issue of Chicago's REDEYE newspaper, the front page story was "Life & Death on E. 79th" which according to the paper has been one of Chicago's deadliest streets over the past 4 years.  In the story was a map of the 2 block area, with an inset showing where this is in Chicago.

Using the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator's interactive map platform I created a map of the East 79th Street area, adding poverty overlays and overlays showing poorly performing schools (from 2008) in the area as well as any volunteer-based, non-school tutor/mentor programs (based on what I have in my database).  This map is shown on the left, below.

I also created a map of the second neighborhood mentioned as "tied with East 79th Street" for the most homicides since Nov.2009. That was the 1300 Block of West Hastings. This map is shown on the right, below.
In the two areas you can see different degrees of poverty, a few poorly performing schools, but almost no volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs. I created another map using the Chicago Health Atlas, to show the South Side of Chicago, and rate of homicides.

As I write this some faith leaders are organizing marches in Chicago to draw attention to violence. My goal is to show how they can use maps and the resources on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site to do planning that mobilizes resources to build and sustain non-school youth tutoring, mentoring and learning resources in these neighborhoods.

When we hosted the Tutor/Mentor Conference on June 7th, one of the speakers said "Think about it this way. Somebody will be there for the kids. If it isn’t the right somebody, there is a greater risk that those hooded guys on the corner also known as “the wrong somebody” will introduce them to the false courage or false bravado found behind guns and violence." Read the full transcript.

During the conference I shared some slides showing the number of youth below the poverty line, age 6-17 , living in each Chicago Community Area.  I encouraged participants, and I encourage people who read this article, to use the maps as a community mobilizing tool.

Using the Asset Map section of the program locator you can create a map image like the one at the left, showing assets in the neighborhood, such as businesses, faith groups, hospitals and universities. These groups share the issues of the neighborhood because they are part of it!  They should be part of on-going meetings aimed at building and sustaining a wide range of mentor-rich non-school youth tutoring, mentoring, learning, jobs and career prep programs.

The maps also show transit routes through the neighborhood, enabling workers from the suburbs to "drive by" poverty areas of the city. Marketing campaigns should attempt to engage these people as volunteers, donors, leaders, organizers rather than just readers of sensationalist stories in the local media.

If adults don't have time to try to understand the ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site, why not enlist young people from their school, faith group or non profit to do this work. Here's a project that interprets ideas on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site, done by an intern working with me in Chicago. Young people in many places could be doing the research and learning that adults don't have time to do.



When the media do stories showing where poverty takes place there should be bye-lines pointing to places where readers can connect with information and with community organizing efforts that lead to strategies that build and sustain programs that compete for young people's attention and participation and help them better prepare to succeed in school and life.

When faith leaders do sermons connecting scripture and service, or when the do marches to protest violence, they should also point to web libraries and information like this, so more people get involved in supporting the growth of youth organizations in more places.

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC can help you organize these meetings and learn to use the Program Locator and other resources on our web sites. Just ask for our involvement.   Visit other sections of this web site, our blogs and our Facebook page to find more information and get connected.


Thursday, June 20, 2013

Chicago Hospitals Face Uncertain Future

The map below was included in a June 19 Chicago Tribune article titled "Chicago Safety-Net Hospitals Face Uncertain Future" The article talks about how the "high costs of poverty" are putting tremendous financial pressures on inner city hospitals. 
I've written about this in the past in this set of articles.  I've also pointed to other articles showing challenges of hospitals, which are posted in this section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library.   This Chicago Health Atlas is a tremendous resource for understanding the distribution of public health issues throughout the region.

I've even shared a "strategic plan" that any hospital could adopt to lower its costs of poverty as well as its cost of attracting skilled workers. This document is designed to be used as a planning tool that leaders in hospitals and teaching universities can use to build their own strategic plan. It is available on Scribd.com for a small fee.

In this section of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator you can build maps that zoom into the neighborhood around each Chicago hospital, showing levels of poverty, locations of poorly performing schools, and non-school tutor/mentor programs that are in the database.

The circles on the Chicago Tribune map illustrate how each hospital could be an anchor institution in its neighborhood, bringing people together, organizing collective efforts, and mobilizing support for the growth of a wide range of "birth to work" programs supporting youth in the area. Such programs can include mentors from the hospital who model health careers and teach youth and other volunteers about healthy lifestyles. As these messages are adopted the hospital lowers the costs of poverty at the emergency room and inspires young people to think of careers in health care professions.

If you'd like to have my help in exploring these ideas, just connect with me on Facebook, Twitter or Linked in.

Read more articles about using maps. "Don't Ride By Poverty. Get involved."

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Violence as a Contagious Disease

I've written about violence in the past and often struggle to define mentoring as a strategy to end violence. I encourage you to view this TED talk featuring Epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, MD, founder of Cure Violence. If you lead a volunteer based tutor/mentor program, encourage your volunteers to view this and to share it with their friends, co-workers, family, etc. As you do look at the way Dr. Sltkin talks about using maps and the three strategies he deploys.

I've posted a number of articles related to this. One of these points to an article I wrote in 2007 titled: Reframing School Dropout as a Public Health Issue

Gary Slitkin is in Chicago and I've had him on my mail list since the mid 1990s. I've met with Tio Hardiman who is with Gary's organization. I've tried to show how mentoring can not only provide specially trained people who intervene to keep kids from dropping out of school, but can also increase the number of people who build personal connections and have empathy and understanding of the problem, and who then are more willing to use their own time, talent and dollars to help support interventions such as Cure Violence, or tutoring/mentoring and other non-school youth engagement and workforce preparation activities.

I'm hosting a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference on June 7. I hope some who have looked at Dr. Sltkin's video and understand the importance of intervention and edcation efforts in areas where maps show high concentrations of violence, youth drop outs, gangs, etc., will try to attend so we can build 2013-14 and beyond strategies that get more people involved and make these interventions available in more places.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Community Wealth Building, Anchor Institutions, Mentoring

This week I attended a meeting of the Illinois Task Force on Social Innovation and listened to Ted Howard's recommendations for building community wealth in high poverty areas of Illinois. If you've not heard this term, or thought of a neighborhood tutor/mentor program as part of a wealth-building strategy I encourage you to browse the resources at http://www.community-wealth.org and view this infographic describing community wealth-building.

I was particularly interested in Ted's description of the role of anchor institutions, like hospitals, who often are the largest employer in a high poverty neighborhood. Since 2000 I've shared a vision of hospitals being anchor institutions in building tutor/mentor programs in the trade area around a hospital, because of the potential they have to lower the cost of poverty services at the hospital, while also encouraging young people to seek health careers and work in hospitals, thus lowering the costs of employment. Workforce productivity research(here and here)shows that employee volunteer engagement improves workforce productivity, providing more reasons for businesses to become strategically involved in tutor/mentor program growth.

As I listened to Ted's comments, he kept pointing to other organizations as models for community wealth-building. I asked myself, "Does he have a web library with these examples and more?" The next day I visited his web site and found a huge, well-organized library.

A few years ago I created this graphic to show the importance of aggregating information that anyone could use to support the growth of youth support programs that help lead youth through school and into jobs and careers. At the bottom of this pyramid I show the need for someone collecting information showing who's already involved, where they are located, what they do, as well as who provides funds, volunteers, etc. I created this concept map showing intermediary organizations supporting Chicago youth and this library with web links to nearly 175 Chicago area youth serving organizations. These are part of a library with more than 2000 links pointing to research, capacity building, innovation and process improvement ideas.

While this information needs to be constantly managed, it also needs to have an on-going advertising/outreach effort to increase the number of people who find and use the information, along with an on-going facilitation process to help people understand and apply the various ideas so that more people are strategically involved in helping to build and sustain birth-to-work youth serving organizations in every high poverty neighborhood of the city and suburbs. See 4-Part Strategy Description.

I use maps to show where programs are located, and to identify assets who are part of the neighborhood and who could be anchor organizations that support this process. In articles like this I show how others could create their own maps from the platform I host.

After listening to Ted Howard and visiting his web site, I realized that community wealth building is a parallel process, based on the same need for a knowledge base. I created this pyramid to illustrate the steps in common. I updated the strategic planning PDF that graduate students from DePaul University had created for me in the early 2000s to include a graphic showing that a hospital or other anchor institution could support a Tutor/Mentor Program Development strategy and a community wealth-growing strategy as part of the same set of goals. This graphic shows the two strategies side-by-side and can be copied and used by any community organizer in Chicago or beyond who wants to engage hospitals, faith groups, universities and/or businesses as partners and lead institutions in this neighborhood focused strategy.

I've been creating graphics to illustrate ideas since the mid 1990s and interns have been helping do this since the mid 2000s. I've created some boards on Pinterest with many of my graphics. Each includes links to a web page or blog where the graphic is used. My hope is that others who are interested in communicating these same ideas will use my graphics in their own articles, or will innovate new versions of the same graphics, that communicate the idea more effectively. If you do use these, just send me a link, and provide an attribution so the people you are connecting with will take a look at more of the ideas and resources in the knowledge base I've been building for more than 20 years.

I'm testing new tools for communicating ideas. Here's the Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection PDF on Flipsnack. I need a sponsor to pay fees for me to use this site.

While all of this information is on the Internet, I host a conference twice a year in Chicago and invite people from my on-line world to connect face to face. The next is June 7 at the Metcalfe Federal Building. You can see the agenda and registration information here. I hope you'll participate if you are in the region.


Monday, January 28, 2013

Mentor Summit Workshops. Take a Look.

Yesterday I posted an article with some quotes made by mentoring leaders at last week’s National Mentoring Summit. I also posted a map showing people I met. I do this to draw attention to the need for operating resources and to try to connect with others who will add their time, talent and dollars to building a year-round public attention and resource generation strategy that supports tutor/mentor programs in every neighborhood of Chicago and every city with flexible, constantly flowing operating and innovation resources.

I was able to attend only one workshop in each time frame out of six or seven offered. Thus, unless others are sharing their reflections from the workshops they attended, most of us will only benefit from a fraction of the ideas shared.

I’ve been part of an Education Technology MOOC since Jan 13, in which more than 1600 people are sharing ideas with each other. My hope is that on-line learning events like this can grow in the youth development, mentoring, tutoring fields.

All of the workshops I attended were full of value. Visit this page on the MENTOR website for workshop descriptions, downloads of handouts, and bios of all speakers.

One workshop and one keynote offered a unique new perspective on mentoring opportunities.

The workshop was The Rudd Adoption Mentoring Partnership at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Renee Moss and Jocelyn Nelson of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County, MA and Dr. Harold Grotevant and Jen Dolan from the university, described a mentoring partnership in which college students who had been adopted were matched with middle and high school students who had been adopted.

This project focused on a specific population of special needs youth, matched with college mentors who had the same life experience (adoption) and who met the BBBS stringent guidelines for match compatibility.

Dr. Grotevant provided an overview of some of the issues adopted youth face that only others who have been adopted themselves can really understand. Today he sent an email with links to two presentations that tell more about this unique program.

Mentoring Partnership PDF and PPT of presentation from Summit.

A couple of highlights: The university gave class credit to the mentors, who were required to participate in bi-weekly feedback sessions. Thus there was tremendous coaching provided by the university. Dr. Grotevant reported that the unique program has begun to attract students to the university who have an adoption background.

Renee Moss, the BBBS leader, has been in her role for 27 years! We need to find ways to encourage this depth of experience in thousands of programs. A needed research project might develop information showing tenure of leaders and staff of tutor/mentor programs.

The second special needs program was Eye to Eye, a mentoring program focusing on LD/ADHD youth, which was featured during the Friday lunch time session. This project matches college and adult mentors who have overcome learning disabilities with LD/ADHD youth still in middle school and high school. Visit the web site and see how volunteers serve as Think Different Diplomats to share this program with others.

As with the adoption model, the mentor having the same experience as the mentee was the basis of the match, and the population served cuts all economic levels. Neither of these programs focus primarily on youth living in poverty.

I would expect both models to expand rapidly since affluent parents of adopted or ADHD youth will be more than willing to provide personal philanthropy and fund raising leadership to make such programs available to their own kids.

The second morning workshop that I attended was titled: NYC Mentoring Investment – The Young Men’s Initiative Click here to view workshop description and down load power point presentation.

The most impressive thing about this initiative is the number of organizations involved and the huge financial commitment behind the initiative. The New York City public school population is close to 1 million and the number of youth at risk of drop out in New York City is huge – 532,434! I've written in the past about the unique challenges of big cities with school-age populations over 100,000 youth.

One of the partners in the Young Men’s Initiative, is the department of Probation, which operates the Neighborhood opportunity networks (NeON) among other programs.

I would like to have seen a use of maps in this initiative, to show where the drop out problem is concentrated, and to support marketing efforts aimed at building a flow of needed operating resources, volunteers, ideas, etc. to all of these neighborhoods, and all of the partners in the initiative.

On Thursday afternoon I attended a workshop that described the Coaches Mentoring Challenge

I wrote about this in an article last month. Since I’ve wanted to unleash the power of coaches and athletes to mobilize volunteers and dollars to support tutor/mentor programs in all part of the Chicago region, this was a workshop that I really wanted to attend.

Mentoring network leaders from Iowa (Sarah Hinzman and Chad Driscoll), Kansas (Nicolette Geisler) and Nebraska (Suzanne Hince) described how head football coaches at Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Nebraska were leading a competition to see which state could recruit the most mentors between September and December.

The planning was broken down to “pre season” “game day” and “post game” with lots of information on the web site. See details here and here.

A lot of work goes into this and the mentor leaders deserve a lot of credit. They did a great job of showing the challenges of working with high profile coaches and universities.

This puts a bit of a damper on my own hopes because 99% of the work comes from the Mentor Partnerships while the coaches and universities lend their names and get credit for the good will generated.

I’m idealistic. I want coaches and other leaders to spend quality time trying to make mentoring and tutoring available, just as other volunteers do. If we do all the work for them, the commitment is not really there, nor are we benefiting from the talent and creativity these leaders might apply to building tutor/mentor infrastructure in their cities and states.

I don’t have the manpower, or brain power, to do all of the thinking that is needed to ensure the coach’s involvement has the desired impact. Will need partners to help with this.


On Friday morning I attended a workshop titled Recruiting Policy Advocates to Support Inspiring Program Innovations. An Urgent Call.

This was probably the most valuable workshop of all that I attended. Why?

The facilitator was Janet Forbush, a consultant supporting mentor program growth. We’re both part of the mentoring email list hosted by Dr. David DuBois of UIC. Janet set the stage for the workshop when she said: “You can’t run mentoring programs without money” as part of the introduction to this workshop.

That’s my own view and the efforts I’ve led for past 20 years have attempted to increase the flow operating resources to all tutor/mentor programs in the city.

Trudy Perkins, Office of Congressman Elijah Cummings, MD, was the first speaker on this panel, and provided valuable insight for reaching out to elected officials. I’ve not been very effective in this myself.

Heather Harvison, founder of My Sister’s Circle, , described a girls mentoring program that she formed in 2000. I appreciated this program because it focuses on helping girls from 5th grade through high school and college, and keeping volunteers involved for all seven years. In addition, Heather has been reaching out to build networks with other tutor/mentor programs in Baltimore, similar to my efforts in Chicago since 1976.

I think that there is too little effort to determine the different types of mentoring programs in each city, based on who they serve, and based on how broad-based and long-term their support of young people extends.

Conference speakers said “MENTORING Absolutely Works” but they did not say what that means or that it works when programs are able to support youth and volunteers effectively and sustain youth and volunteer involvement for multiple years. In the rush for “numbers” many programs are not designed to keep youth involved for multiple years. I’ve been trying to build a distinction between different types of tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Chicago since 1993, but never have had the resources to go beyond creating a database of providers which breaks down by age served and type of program. See http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net Connecting with leaders like Heather who also are trying to build a connection with peers, is one step toward gaining more attention and support for this intermediary role.

The final member of the panel was Lynn Sherman, Baptist Health Center in Jacksonville, Fl. Lynn described the Tipping the Scale mentoring program lead by the hospital with partnership from a local CBO. It includes a mentoring and a workforce development component.

This program seems very similar to the programs in the Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership network, which I connected with in late 1999. Members of the network attended one of the T/MC conferences in 2000 and I was a speaker of a HYMP conference in Baltimore in 2001. As it turns out, Lynn also attended that conference!

I’ve written many articles on the role hospitals can take in building networks of mentor-rich programs in their trade area, but have failed to find a champion who would rebuild the HYMP and expand its focus to one of community network builder from just innovative mentor program operator.

This article describes the partnership and the program at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

This is a press release from Ceasar’s Siani Hospital, which also was part of the partnership

This PDF includes a Commonwealth Fund Report on Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership from circa 1999

2001 Hospital Youth Mentoring Partnership Conference and list of member hospitals.

My vision of hospitals in intermediary roles, supporting the growth of tutor/mentor programs in their community. I've written about this often since 2005.


The final workshop I was able to attend on Friday before heading to the airport was one focused on Mentoring Central, an on-line training resource that can be used to provide pre-match training to new volunteers. Mentoring Central includes research-based, pre-match blended learning mentor training curriculum; post-match Web-based mentor training on special topics; post-match mentor support resources; and many tools to support mentoring program staff. I was impressed with the creativity and quality of the training modules that were shown during the workshop.

Visit this link to see other workshops I attended and people I connected with.

Summary: For the past 20 years I’ve built a database of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs and a web library with links to research, editorials, programs in other cities, “how to” info, etc. Through the Internet I attempt to connect with representatives of these organizations with a goal of getting help in maintaining the library, and in building public will needed to support tutor/mentor programs in thousands of locations with public and private dollars and volunteer talent. I have hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago every six months with invitations to those in my network to come and share their own ideas and build relationships with others who they may not know.

There are dozens of conferences and events around the country that have workshops and speakers with equal value to the MENTOR Summit. Due to financial restraints I’ve never been able to participate in many of these. While I try to get to as many events in Chicago as I can, I’m so committed to connecting people who attend these conferences via the Internet because with more the 650 attendees, no one is able to connect with more than a few other participants.

You never know who you will meet and what will happen. At the end of the first day of the Mentor Summit as I was collecting my coat a man introduced himself and handed me a book that he was sharing at the Summit. I said thanks and stuffed it in my bag with everything else I picked up to read. Since my flight back to Chicago was delayed, I had time to read the entire book. I found it uplifting, and maybe you will to. It’s titled Mentor: The Kid and the CEO and was written by Tom Pace. Learn more about this book and Tom’s work at http://www.mentorhope.com/

This Forbes article was in my email today. It talks about the need to support the program infrastructure connecting many different programs in efforts to help young people succeed in school and life.

The Tutor/Mentor conference in Chicago in May/June and November is part of an on-going effort to build a collective commitment that supports tutor/mentor programs in all high poverty neighborhoods of the Chicago region. It will be held on June 7 and I hope some of you will help recruit speakers and workshop speakers, as well as a few sponsors. However, the next opportunity we have to connect and share ideas is today, tomorrow and any time you’re motivated to reach out to me on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Skype or via email or the traditional telephone.






Thursday, December 06, 2012

Impact of income inequity and wealth gap

As we in the US begin to gather with family and friends for the holidays, I encourage you to take a few moments to view and reflect on this discussion of "How economic inequality harms societies." The speaker is Richard Wilkinson, a public health researcher.




I support volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs because they are a bridge that connects people from beyond poverty with young people and families from within high poverty neighborhoods. Learning takes place on both sides.

Last spring I talked about "empathy" with Edwin Rutsch and described how I feel the on-going involvement of volunteers in tutor/mentor programs builds a greater understanding of the problems facing youth in poverty, creating empathy and a commitment to devote personal time, talent and resources to closing the gaps between rich and poor by helping young people have more of the support they need to succeed in school and life.



As you review these videos over the holiday I hope you'll become more willing to support a tutor/mentor strategy in your own community, and to dig deeper into the ideas shared in these videos so that we can create a more equal America that has a benefit to both rich and poor.


I hope you'll also read this Holiday Letter and send a contribution to help me continue the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2013.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Place Matters - Where You Live Affects Your Life

I've used maps to show where poor schools are located and where acts of violence take place in an effort to mobilize more people to support mentor-rich non-school tutor/mentor programs in these places.

From time to time I point to research done by others that reinforce these points, as well as to news stories that bring attention, but not solutions.

Here's a new report titled: Place Matters for Health in Cook County: Ensuring Opportunities for Good Health for All. A Report on Health Inequities in Cook County, Illinois
Prepared by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute and the Cook County, Il, Place Matters Team

In the introduction the first paragraph says "Where one lives may be the most important factor in determining health outcomes. And because of our history of racial oppression and the legacy of that oppression in residential patterns today, the intersection of place and race in the persistence of health disparities looms large."

The Executive Summary provides this motivation for citizens throughout the Chicago region to be concerned and involved.  "Clearly, there is a strong moral imperative to enact policies to redress the inequities of the past, as well as current inequities, in ways that will improve health for all. But, there also is a powerful economic incentive. A study released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in 2009 found that direct medical costs associated with health inequities among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans approached $230 billion between 2003 and 2006. When indirect costs, such as lowered productivity and lost tax revenue resulting from illness and premature death, were included, the total cost of health inequities exceeded $1.24 trillion.7 Thus, for both moral and economic reasons, we must address health inequities and their root causes now."

In today's Chicago Tribune is an article titled "Violence takes a toll on child's play." which also draws attention to "place" and the challenges that face parents, schools and children in these neighborhoods. 

I hope that one of these articles will make some of your concerned enough to launch a "learning group" in your company, family, faith group, alumni group, etc. Only when more people are engaged with the information and actively involved in building youth support programs in all of the poverty neighborhoods will we ever have enough people involved to change these conditions.

If you do have a group of people focusing on this issue why not participate in the November 19 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference where you can share your own understanding and help more people get involved? 

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