Today in the Chicago Tribune you can find a half-page story by Mary Schmich titled "Dantrell Davis shouldn't be forgotten. If you don't know the name Dantrell was a 7-year old boy shot to death in Cabrini Green as he walked to school in October 1992.
At the left is the front page from the ChicagoSunTimes of October 15, 1992. The headline says "7-Year Old's Death at Cabrini Requires Action". I've kept this page in my office as my own reminder and I've posted it in my newsletters and blog at least once a year to remind everyone else.
Mary Schmich has written about life in Cabrini Green for almost 20 years. Her stories are emotional and focus on the struggles and triumphs. However, like most stories in the major media, they don't focus on all of the neighborhoods in Chicago and the suburbs where kids live in fear of violence and attend poorly performing schools. The don't point to databases of tutor/mentor programs, like the one I host, where volunteers, donors, public leaders, etc. can learn about existing programs working to help kids succeed in school and avoid gangs, or where there are neighborhoods of high poverty, but few or no existing non-school tutor/mentor programs.
It's been 20 years and not enough has changed to improve the lives of youth in poor neighborhoods. One story in one newspaper on one day is not enough. Stories that don't point to on-line discussion forums, libraries of deeper information, or call on people to volunteer time, talent and dollars TODAY, and every day, tug on the emotions but don't move people to action like a good 50% off Sale at a local retailer does.
Anyone can look at maps of Chicago to see where poverty is concentrated, where poorly performing schools are located, where incidents of violence occur most frequently. Using the Program Locator or Chicago Program Links library you can identify nearly 180 youth serving organizations who each constantly seek operating dollars, talent, leadership, volunteers and public attention.
If you are want to remember Dantrell Davis pick a neighborhood near where you live or work, or along the route you travel as you go from home to work and adopt a tutor/mentor program. Use the information in the Tutor/Mentor library to build your own understanding of what these programs do, how they differ and how volunteers and donors and third-party supporters can help each program constantly improve over many years of YOUR consistent support.
Dantrell Davis was 7. He would have been 27 now. Because he lived in a high poverty neighborhood he might still be needing people from Chicago's extended business community to serve as mentors and to open doors to jobs and careers for him. Or he might need the same people to be operating a tutor/mentor program in one of Chicago's neighborhoods for his own kids to be enrolled.
In yesterday's article I quoted General Colin Powell as he called on business to become strategically involved. He said "This isn't charity. You're doing it in your own self-interest."
I also pointed to a Wiki Page with quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel . One says "Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments."
The front page of Sunday’s Chicago Tribune Metro section headline was “I see that Danny died in vain” referring to the October 13, 1992 murder of 7-year old Dantrell Davis, as he walked to school in Cabrini Green.
The sub-head was “Latest child killings reflect ’92 Dantrell Davis tragedy”, and included photos of three Chicago kids killed in the last week.
At the left is a copy of the front page from the October 15, Chicago Sun Times, with a full page editorial, saying “7-Year-Old’s Death at Cabrini Requires Action.”
We started Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the month following the shooting of Dantrell Davis. The Cabrini Connections part was an extension of a 2nd to 6th grade Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program that I had led since 1975.
The Tutor/Mentor Connection was also something that had been growing for many years. From 1975 to 1992 as I lead the Montgomery Ward Cabrini Green Tutoring Program (which became Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, Inc. in 1990), I learned much from th leaders of a few other tutor/mentor programs operating in the Cabrini Green area, and the rest of the city. However, there was no master database showing all of the programs in the city, thus from an advertising perspective, there was no way the media could point resources to these programs when they were talking about "taking action" in their editorials.
I recognized that whenever the media went into an editorial frenzy focusing on the killing of a youth like Dantrell Davis, they focused on the human tragedy of a single person, or a single neighborhood, just like Sunday’s story. While I was the volunteer leader of the Montgomery Ward tutoring program, I was also an advertising manager, developing weekly print ads that were distributed to 20 million people telling them about our 400 stores spread over 40 states.
We used these ads to draw customers to all stores, not one or two. Nothing like this existed in Chicago in 1992 to draw volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in all poverty neighborhoods on a weekly basis.
In 1992 there was no master database showing what tutoring and/or mentoring programs were operating in Chicago, thus when the media did write a “do something” story, they often only pointed to a few brand name organizations, or a few high profile neighborhoods. They did not point to a map like at the left, showing all of the poverty neighborhoods where good tutor/mentor programs are needed, or a Program Locator database that could be used by readers to find programs in every poverty neighborhood that they could support, or to find information to use to create programs in neighborhoods with poverty, but not enough youth services.
In this timeline you can see the growth of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection since 1992. More than 500 7th to 12th grade teens have participated in Cabrini Connections for since we started in January 1993 with 7 volunteers and five teens.
More than $2.5 million new dollars have been raised to support tutor/mentor programs by the Lawyers Lend A Hand Program, since we began working with them in 1994.
We did not even know about the Internet in 1992, but were introduced to it by volunteers in 1998. Since then our web sites have provided information to more than 100,000 people. Since 2000 we've been documenting actions to achieve the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Yet, as the headline in yesterday’s Tribune suggested. “It’s not enough.” We must do more. Much more.
Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection did not start as a result of a Mayor’s Task Force, or a major donation from a big local or national foundation. It started because seven volunteers, with no sourse of funding, said “If it is to be, it is up to me.”
We have been helped by many volunteers, and many donors, but we have never had more than a few month's rent in the bank, and after 1999 when our major sponsor Montgomery Ward went out of business, and 2000 and 2001 when the dot-com economy went bust, and the war on Terror began, we have had even fewer dollars to try to help tutor/mentor programs grow in all parts of the Chicago region.
Yet we have not given up.
We keep bringing out the front page of the October 15, 1992 Sun Times to remind our selves of the commitment we made, and to remind everyone else that if we want to end this inner-city terror we need to be spending quality time, talent and dollars on a regular basis, not just at random times when the media decide to bring this to our attention again.
“Just don’t forget”. As the SunTimes editorial writer said in 1992, “Please don’t let this be someone else’s problem. It’s yours. It’s mine.”
You can help us do this work by sending financial donations to help us do this work. Send them to Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, 800 W. Huron, Chicago, Ill. 60642. Our FEIN is 36-3893431. See our financial reports on Guidestar.
You can help by using the Zip Code Map to search for tutor/mentor programs in other areas, and picking one or two to offer time, talent and/or dollars.
You can help by adopting the Role of Leaders, to engage your company, your church, college or social group in this war on poverty.
You can help by passing this message on to someone else who also might help.
This being the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, my Twitter feed is full of powerful, emotional, and motivating posts. Some use the #NeverForget tag. Not all focus on the 9/11 tragedy. Some focus on other tragedies, including US interventions around the world that have resulted in the loss of life and unimaginable suffering of millions of people.
We are not alone in our suffering and our memories. I encourage you to click on the link and scroll through some of the comments.
ChicagoSunTimes 10-1992
This Chicago SunTimes front page, from October 1992, is my own #NeverForget message. As with many other times before then, and since then, the editorial writers were eloquent in saying "it's everyone's responsibility" to solve this problem.
Unfortunately, that never was sustained. Other than a few days, to a year, of editorial indignation, these headlines did little to bring people together, develop solutions to complex problems, and generate an on-going flow of talent and dollars into every high poverty neighborhood, and to all of the organizations needing those resources to help kids and families overcome poverty.
Furthermore, few news stories about urban violence, or poorly performing schools, pointed readers to a library of articles that showed the institutional racism that has existed in America since before the Declaration of Independence, and which has continued up until today.
In one section of the Tutor/Mentor web library, which I show in this concept map, I point to many articles that point out these injustices.
Thus, when I say #Never Forget, I'm reminding you of Dantrell Davis and calling on you to do your homework to learn more about the problems we face and more about ways you can use your time, talent, dollars, votes and voice to bring about solutions.
Here's one more reminder, from today's ChicagoSunTimes. It's a story of three innocent people killed by gun violence in Chicago. If you click on the image and enlarge it you can see that I drew a red line around the last paragraphs of the story, then wrote that text in the yellow highlighted box. It's a quote from the father of one of these three victims. He said,
"This has been going on for 20 or 30 years, and has been evolving. The teens and young adults caught up in the cycle of violence need additional funding for education and jobs programs to get them off the streets.” “I haven't seen anyone with that kind of leadership. I don't have a lot of hope."
Share this with others.
I've been trying to draw people to a growing information library that people could use to build and sustain these types of youth development, tutor, mentor and jobs programs. Too few have seen these stories or chosen to respond. Share my articles with people you know and you become part of the solution.
Visit my FUND ME page, and make a contribution, and you help me continue to keep the memory of Dantrell Davis and others like him alive through my on-going efforts.
Scroll through articles I wrote during the second week of September, in past years, to see other ways I've remembered this tragedy.
In early May I watched a presentation hosted by the Urban Institute, featuring Matt Desmond, author of a new book titled "Poverty in America". Open this link to view the video of the presentation.
In a follow up email the Urban Institute summarized some of the key points of the webinar. They wrote: While no one policy is a silver bullet, Desmond suggests keeping these ideas in mind:
Social justice: “It’s impossible to write about poverty in America without writing about racism in America,” Desmond said. Black and Latinx families have lower incomes, a lower homeownership rate, less in savings, and ultimately less average wealth than white families. Therefore, any steps forward must come from the position of breaking down segregation and structural racism.
Targeted universalism: Rather than targeting one solution to each group or each problem, Desmond recommended identifying the desired societal outcome, then implementing many universal solutions that could address it.
Then, on May 21, an opinion article in Politico, by Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University and author of several books on racial justice and American democracy, provided an in-depth analysis in an article titled: America’s Poverty Is Built by Design: How did the U.S. become a land of economic extremes with the rich getting richer while the working poor grind it out? Deliberately."
I added links to Matt Desmond's website to the Tutor/Mentor Library. You can find them here, and here.
I and six other volunteers created Cabrini Connections (a site-based tutor/mentor program) and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in November 1992 following the shooting death of a 7-year old boy, in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. I've used this front-page story from the October 1992 Chicago Sun-Times as a reminder and motivation every year since then.
In the summary above Desmond is quoted as saying "individual actions can built political will for larger changes".
This is not a new problem. However, it's a problem that our leaders can't stay focused on every day, because there are so many other problems.
That's why I think it's important for another level of leaders to emerge, who are totally focused on building a better community understanding, and response, to the problems and solutions.
I've been issuing this invitation for the past 25 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.
I've developed my own actions steps, and posted them on this blog in the past. Here they are again:
If we want to stop this violence, we have to act now, and keep acting to solve this problem for many years. We have to think spatially, that is, look at the entire city and suburban problem, not just one neighborhood. At the same time, we need to act locally, because none of us has the time, or the resources to help each of the kids in the entire Chicago region who live in neighborhoods where poverty is the root cause of the violence.
This animation was done by one of my interns after reading this article.
Here are some ways to remind yourself. Think of ENOUGH, is ENOUGH
E – educate yourself – most of us do not live in high poverty neighborhoods, so we only understand the root causes of senseless shootings from what we read in newspapers. We also only read negative news in the media, so we’re not really well informed on where these events are taking place most frequently. Finally, while there is a perception that there are plenty of youth programs, we really don’t have a good understanding of the distribution of different types of youth programs, to different age groups, in different zip codes. The only way this will change is if each of us pledges to spend one hour a week reading books, articles and web reports, that illustrate the root causes of these shootings, or of poor performance in schools. Through our learning we can draw ideas that we use in our own actions. We can also begin to contribute information that other people use to support their own decision making.
To help with your learning about race, poverty and inequality in America browse the different sections of the Tutor/Mentor library, shown on this concept map.
N – engage your network – find ways to draw others who you know into this shared understanding. Recognize people who volunteer time and talent, or who help kids through the programs they operate. If you are a business leader, or a church leader, engage your corporation or your congregation. You can use your web site, advertising, point of purchase materials, etc. to point to web sites that show all of the agencies in the city who do tutoring/mentoring, such as www.tutormentorexchange.net. If you do this weekly, year after year, your friends, coworkers and customers will become involved in solving this problem with you.
O – offer help, don’t wait to be asked. As you build your understanding of where poverty is most concentrated, and what social services are in those areas, choose a neighborhood, and reach out with offers of time, as a volunteer, talent, help build a web site, do the accounting, or offer Public relations services, and dollars, if the web site of an organization shows they do good work, you don’t need to ask for a proposal of how they would spend your donation, you need to send them a donation so they can keep doing that good work
U – build a shared understanding. Form groups of peers to share reading and learning assignments, just as you meet every Sunday to read passages of scripture and build the group’s understanding of the Word of God. Use the many different resources of the T/MC Links library as the starting point for your search for wisdom, and understanding.
G – give until it feels good – people who generously donate time and dollars to causes they believe in feel good about their giving. If we’re going to surround kids living in poverty dominated neighborhoods with extra learning and adult mentoring networks, donors will need to give more than random contributions of time, dollars and talent.
H – form habits of learning, and pass these on to your kids. Imagine how much more successful teachers were if youth came to school every day asking questions about where to find information, or how to understand information they had researched on the Internet the previous day? We can model that habit if we build it into our own activity. Keep a chart where you can document actions you take each week to same sure that this time ENOUGH, really means ENOUGH.
If you document actions, you can review what you’ve done at the end of each month, and each year, and begin to see a growing mountain of actions you have taken to solve this problem. Some of these will be actions that got other people involved, so that the good work you do is multiplying because of the good work others are also doing.
Through this process you help build this shared understanding, which will lead to better public policy. Without this habit of learning, and without learning to use the Internet to find good ideas from people in all parts of the world, we won’t be able to problem solve as well as we need to, and we won’t be able to teach this habit to our kids.
Share this post and the links I point to. Start discussions in your own circles of influence. Be the YOU in the graphic shown above.
If we do this, we’ll not only reduce the root causes of youth on youth violence, we’ll also address one of the growing issues facing America in a global economy. We will begin to create a nation of learners, problem solvers, creative thinkers and innovators, who use learning and information as the basis of creating opportunity and keeping America great.
The idea for this article came to me over the past week. Since May/June is the time of each year when most tutor/mentor programs are shutting down activities for the current school year, my focus is on helping with their planning so they are even better when they start again in the coming year.
I led one volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975 to 1992, then with the help of six other volunteers, started a new program in November 1992, which I led until June 2011. These were hosted at the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters until 1999.
When I say "volunteer-based" I'm not just talking about the adults who serve as tutors and mentors, but those who do more, helping to organize and operate the program.
The program I started leading in 1975 was already 9 years old when I became its leader. It had 100 pairs of volunteers and elementary school-age youth participating by the fall of 1975, after starting in 1965 with just a small group of corporate volunteers.
I had started as a volunteer in 1973, then joined the leadership committee in 1974. I took over when the previous leader decided to take off for Europe, saying "Dan should lead, since he talks the most!"
The graphics below illustrate the growth of the program from 1974 to 1992.
The committee in 1974-75 had nine members. It was led by Roger Kennedy, a copywriter in the MW Catalog Advertising Department.
By 1976-77 I had increased the committee to 13 people. I was a retail advertising copywriter.
By 1987 the program had grown to over 250 pairs of kids and volunteers. 33 volunteers, including students in grades 7 through 12 who were graduates of the program, were offering time and talent to lead the program. We had a part-time paid staff, of three students from Moody Bible Institute. My own jobs had grown and I was now a divisional advertising manager.
In the spring of 1990 I left my corporate job with Montgomery Ward and we converted the program to a non-profit, named Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc. This enabled me to raise money to pay myself a salary to continue leading the program and to hire others to help. The 1991-92 volunteer leadership structure reflects the growth of the program to 440 kids and 550 volunteers by June 1992. More than 60 volunteers, including student alumni, were involved in planning and operating the program. I was the only full-time employee. We had three part timers helping.
As we ended every school-year, starting in 1975 I had to recruit new volunteers to take on leadership roles. While this was a year-round process it peaked in April-May. My year-end speech always included a "help me" message. We spent the first part of every summer teaching new committee members about the work involved in operating the program and then the rest doing the work of starting the next year's program.
I starting a written annual plan in the late 1970s and rather than starting each new year from scratch, we built on what we'd done before, getting better, adding new elements, discarding what was not working. Here's an example of this annual plan. This is from 1984-85.
That's one of the secrets of growing a tutor/mentor program from "good to great" over many years.
My departure from the CGTP was painful, and the result of a lack of agreement on how the program should operate and what its future growth would be, between myself and the volunteers who I had recruited to be our Board of Directors in 1990 when we created the non-profit.
It was during this timeframe that 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed in Cabrini-Green. While Chicago media were "demanding action" I remember driving down the highway and saying to myself, "I don't need to lead an under funded, under supported program with over 900 participants, to share what I've learned to help similar programs grow in all parts of Chicago."
I immediately began to focus on what had divided myself and the other program. First was the decision to expand and serve 7th to 12th grade kids who had graduated from the original program at the end of 6th grade. Second was to help similar programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago.
We created Cabrini Connections to help kids from the original program go from 7th grade through high school. Starting with 5 teens and 7 volunteers in January 1993 we grew to 80 teens and 100 volunteers by 1998 and due to the limited space we had, we stayed around that number until I left in 2011. We used our first grant in 1993 to hire two part time staff (veteran volunteers from the original program). As we raised more money in 1994 I began to draw a salary. We never had more than 3-4 full time staff members and 3-4 part time staff and interns between then and 2011.
We spent all of 1993 planning what became the Tutor/Mentor Connection and launched it in January 1994. In 2011 I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to continue to operate the T/MC in Chicago and help similar intermediaries grow in other cities.
In both versions we drew upon volunteers to help.
In both cases we applied the "Good to Great" principles that Jim Collins made famous in his book, "Good to Great and the Social Sector".
I first used the graphic at the right in the late 2000s, then in a 2011 article, which I updated in 2022. If you have read this far, I urge you to visit the 2022 article and read more about "Good to Great" and what it takes to build constantly improving tutor/mentor programs.
Then read this article about re-thinking philanthropy. If we don't change how programs are funded there will be too few great programs and far to few programs of any kind reaching K-12 kids in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places.
This 1994 Chicago Sun-Timesarticle shows how I traded my advertising job at Montgomery Ward to build Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
I've shared much of what I learned over those years in the articles on this blog and in the information I share on the www.tutormentorexchange.net site.
However, the details of what I learned and how I did this are in my archives. I hope that someone who reads this will recognize the potential value of this history and will recruit a university to take ownership, so students can learn from what I've learned and more systematically share it to help "good to great" youth programs grow in more places, reaching more kids.
You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon and a few other places (see links here).
If you want to help me pay the bills, please visit this page and make a small contribution.
This photo was on the front page of my Chicago Tribune yesterday. If you're a subscriber to the Tribune's internet site you can read the full story online. The print version included two full pages of stories about kids in Chicago who have been victims of street violence.
Included was a map showing where these shootings occurred, which is mostly on the West and South parts of Chicago. I've been pointing to media stories like these for the past 20 years as part of an effort to get more people involved in strategies that build and sustain a wide range of youth serving organizations in these areas.
Here's one story I wrote in July 2010. It includes a copy of the Chicago SunTimes from October 1992 after Dantrell Davis was killed. Here's a story I wrote in 2008 following a SunTimes series about how street violence impacts inner city kids. In this I posted maps of neighborhoods where violence was taking place, with a call for people to be involved in supporting those programs.
I've been following media stories with map-stories since 1993 when I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Since I never have had advertising dollars to attract public attention, I try to build off of the attention the media have generated with negative news, and images of kids and suffering parents. In my stories I always post a link to the story I'm talking about. However, after a year or two, maybe shorter, these stories are no longer available at the same link. Thus, they don't have an accumulated weight that might motivate more people to become involved in trying to reduce the conditions that cause the violence in the first place. Recently the papers have been hiding these stories behind subscription services, and I feel that further reduces the number of people who will read the story and be motivated to get involved.
While the Tribune and SunTimes and other media have community service and charitable foundations, these only provide funding to a small group of the youth serving organizations in the city and suburbs, and only a small portion of the total funds every youth organization needs every year. Using the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, and drawing from maps that are produced by media and other organizations, I've been able to create graphics and map stories, like below, to try to draw people together who would innovate ways to build a better distribution of resources to all of the neighborhoods where youth serving organizations and other services are needed on an on-going basis.
I think youth can learn to create these visualizations. Interns working with me have been doing this for several years. You can see examples at this page.
I'm hosting another Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago on Monday, November 4 and will be doing a series of workshops showing how to use maps to create stories, and how youth can create and communicate these stories as part of their own learning and service. I'm still looking for additional volunteers to host workshops at this conference, and others who will help build participation. If you'd like to get involved email me at tutormentor2@earthlink.net or fill out the workshop presenter form on this page.
I've collected media stories that draw attention to violence and poorly performing schools for almost 20 years. I've seen passionate editorials saying we need to do something. Yet, I've not seen a consistent effort to draw people together and draw resources to youth serving organizations and schools that works like the advertising done by most corporations every day to draw people to their stores and sell products and services.
Since media outlets are in business to generate profit we need to find others who will provide the resources and leadership that makes the archive of media stories more open to community activists, and that encourages media stories to point to directories of youth serving organizations throughout the region so more are supported by the people who are reading and following the daily news.
I spent three years in the US Army from 1968 to 1971, following my graduation from college. I was no hero. I was lucky not to be in a combat zone. I was fortunate to spend time in Baltimore, Washington, DC and in Seoul, South Korea, where I expanded my understanding of the world.
When I returned from South Korea, with my tour of active duty completed, I spent six months working at the Woolco department store in the DeKalb, Illinois area, then came into Chicago and joined the Montgomery Ward company as a retail advertising copywriter. Over the following 17 years I rose through the ranks and held various management roles in the advertising department between 1980 and 1990.
Leo & Dan - circa 1974
Shortly after joining Wards I was recruited to be part of the company sponsored, volunteer-led, tutoring program that connected employee volunteers with 2nd to 6th grade kids living in the Cabrini Green housing complex, which was located near the Wards headquarters complex where I worked.
I was assigned to work with a 4th grade boy named Leo, and at the end of the first year his mother said to me "He talks about you all the time. You've got to tutor him again next year." I did, and we've stayed connected for the past 45 years.
I've given this 'get involved" message every year since 1975
At the end of my first year I was also recruited to be part of the committee of volunteers who led the program, then the next year, I was tapped to be the leader. I held that role until 1992 when I and a few others left the original program and formed a new program (Cabrini Connections) to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have a support system that helped them from 7th grade through high school and beyond. I led that until 2011.
As we were launching the new kids program a 2nd grade boy named Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in Cabrini Green and the media headlines were demanding that "everyone take responsibility".
I had been building a list of Chicago non-school tutor/mentor programs since becoming a leader in 1975, using it to invite peers to connect and share ideas on a regular basis, so I knew that no one had a master database of existing programs, thus, no one could lead an on-going communications effort intended to help great tutor/mentor programs reach k-12 youth in all high poverty areas of Chicago.
So, as we created the new kids program we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The graphic below visualizes our local commitment to youth in one program and our global commitment to help youth connect with volunteers in other programs throughout Chicago.
I started trying to find ways of using maps in 1993
Over the past 28 years I've continued to lead that effort, with various degrees of success in different years, and also with an on-going series of set-backs and struggles, that ultimately led to the creation of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011, and a decline in what I've been able to accomplish in the years since then.
Yet, I still maintain a web library and use my blog and newsletters weekly to draw attention to this information and try to motivate others to take meaningful, on-going roles, in helping youth tutor/mentor programs grow in multiple locations.
I created this concept map to show milestones from 1992 through 2019. In the upper left corner you can find this link, showing milestones from 1965 to 1992.
The goal of this work has been to help well-organized, mentor-rich, non-school youth programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities around the country. The strategy applies to rural areas and reservations, too, but with different challenges driven by the size of the geography and the low density of the population and pool of potential volunteer mentors.
I'm writing this the week before Memorial Day, which celebrates the ultimate sacrifices service men and women have made in all wars. I've posted Veteran's Day and Memorial Day themed articles often since 2005. They all focus on what we can do to honor the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in foreign wars, from many countries, not just the USA.
I have received various awards and recognition for my years of service, ranging from the Army Commendation Medal in 1975 to an honorary PhD from Illinois Wesleyan in 2001.
However, the best reward is the "thank you's" I've received, such as this, and this, from kids and volunteers.
I don't find many people who have been in leadership roles at youth tutor/mentor programs for as long as I have been. I find even fewer who have spent as much time every week for 25 years or longer to help youth tutor/mentor and learning programs grow in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago or any other place in the country, or the world using the four part strategy I have piloted since 1993.
I keep looking for such people. I also keep looking for a benefactor who will recognize my efforts and provide more than a "thank you" to help me upgrade everything I've been doing, while embedding the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute in one or more universities and/or think tanks.
Thus, this is my Memorial Day 2022 message:
Remembering the sacrifices of those who have given their lives, bodies, spirits and loved ones to this country can be best done by making daily commitments to actions that reduce poverty, strife, inequality, conflict and destruction of Mother Earth and other forms of life.
I hope you've read this and will share it with others as you do your own remembrance.
Here's my FUNDME page. I hope you will help me continue doing this work.
Dawn Turner Trice wrote a column in the Oct. 23 Chicago Tribune with the headline shown above. You can read it here, along with about 160 comments. Since my post is number 157, I doubt that many people will read it. Thus, I'm posting it here, too:
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Dawn, thanks for letting your anger show, but I wish media people would try to find a way to write about this every day, not just when they decide to.
I've been writing about this since 1992 when Dantrell Davis was killed in Cabrini Green. When I write about it I point to ways people can become tutors/mentors in non-school programs operating in some of these neighborhoods. You can read one of my articles at here.
I don't claim to know all of the answers to this problem, but I've been building a library of information that anyone can learn from, to support their own thinking and actions. You can see this at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org
I believe in volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs not because they are a magic solution, but because the connect people who don't live in poverty with kids who do. As a volunteer meets with a kids each week, often for several years, it's hard not to become angry, or to become personally involved.
Until we get more people beyond poverty personally involved, not much will change.
Finally, I use maps to help people understand where poverty and poor schools are located, and where tutor/mentor programs operate, or are needed. In these maps I create overlays showing churches, hospitals, universities, and business operating in these neighborhoods, who would benefit if the poverty and violence were reduced. These are the groups who need to be strategically involved.
I also have mapped a few political districts, such as those of State Senator James Meeks. I do this to provide a tool these leaders might use to convene people who will make more and better non-school tutoring, mentoring, learning and workforce development opportunities available in their districts. Hopefully they'll use these and show the people who vote for them how they are helping such programs grow in all parts of the district where there is a need. You can see these maps at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/
I can create all of this, but if no one looks at it, I'm a crowd of one. It's up to you in the media to connect your stories to information that people can use to learn more about the problem and to get involved in the solutions. If you do this once a week for the next ten years, maybe others will follow your example and they will help us put more programs in these areas to help parents, and compete with gangs, for the attention of kids.
It's also up to faith leaders, businesses and others to use their own communications to connect people who want to solve these problems with places where they can learn, and where they get involved.
It does take a village. But the village needs a plan, a map, and needs to stay involved for many years if we're to change what took many years to create.
In today's SunTimes, Stella Foster's column is a "CALL TO ACTION". The article says "where was the security at the Agape Youth Center?", "where were the police?", "where were the parents?", and "what are the schools doing to keep kids safe?"
Above is the map the T/MC created to show where this tragedy took place. You can read the story that goes with this on the Mapping for Justice blog.
I ask, where are the business leaders, political leaders, faith leaders, media, hospital and university leaders? What are people in the suburbs doing, who drive past these poverty neighborhoods every day as the come and go to work?
If you read the articles I've written on this blog, I've been asking for this type of leadership for many years. This is the front page of the SunTimes in October 1992, when Dantrell Davis was killed as he walked to school. How many times in the years since then have leaders and media been pointing to places where volunteers and donors could be surrounding kids with different hopes and aspirations and future opportunities than what they see modeled in their neighborhoods? Not enough.
What are the media doing to point readers to resources they can use, every day, to help programs like Agape have the funds needed to pay for security, or to even operate in these neighborhoods?
Other than getting involved with a few high profile programs, where else are readers being pointed to by this article? If it included a link to the Mapping for Justice blog, or the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, the article could have been teaching people to use maps to choose what part of the city they want to get involved with, and what programs in each area they want to help with time, talent, and DOLLARS.
If the media were pointing to the maps, and strategy maps that show actions leaders can take, and long-term goals of their involvement, then the stories would lead to more and better involvement in all neighborhoods where poverty breeds the type of violence that randomly appears in the city throughout the year.
In advertising and religion, leaders know they need to communicate every day to potential customers, and they need to draw those customers to stores, churches, temples, and mosques in many places.
Surely we can teach leaders that if we want to change what is happening in inner city neighborhoods we need to put non-school programs in multiple locations, and use advertising and other store-support strategies to draw volunteers and donors and good ideas to every one of these places on an on-going basis.
Who can help us get this message out more often? Who can help us find the money to keep making these maps, and publishing this blog?
Once again a horrific act has moved violence to the front page of Chicago's Sun Times newspaper, with the headline "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".
In the article Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis is quoted saying “So I say, enough is enough. We are coming for you. We will find you, and we will bring you to justice.”
The article also quotes St. Sabina’s pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who said "it’s not enough to pray, not enough to lower flags every time an officer is killed."
How many times must we read the same headlines? How do we move beyond the prayers, marches and flag-lowering, to the research, planning, brainstorming and action steps that are needed?
This is not a new problem. However, it's a problem that our leaders can't stay focused on every day, because there are so many other problems.
That's why I think it's important for another level of leaders to emerge, who are totally focused on building a better community understanding, and response, to the problems and solutions.
I've been issuing this invitation for the past 17 years, since we formed Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, in the weeks following the shooting of Dantrell Davis in Chicago back in October 1992. I keep the front page of this Chicago SunTimes story in my office, as a reminder of my responsibility.
I've developed my own actions steps, and posted them on this blog in the past. Here they are again:
If we want to stop this violence, we have to act now, and keep acting to solve this problem for many years. We have to think spatially, that is, look at the entire city and suburban problem, not just one neighborhood. At the same time, we need to act locally, because none of us has the time, or the resources to help each of the kids in the entire Chicago region who live in neighborhoods where poverty is the root cause of the violence.
Here are some ways to remind yourself. Think of ENOUGH, is ENOUGH
E – educate yourself – most of us do not live in high poverty neighborhoods, so we only understand the root causes of senseless shootings from what we read in newspapers. We also only read negative news in the media, so we’re now really well informed on where these events are taking place most frequently. Finally, while there is a perception that there are plenty of youth programs, we really don’t have a good understanding of the distribution of different types of youth programs, to different age groups, in different zip codes. The only way this will change is if each of us pledges to spend one hour a week reading books, articles and web reports, that illustrate the root causes of these shootings, or of poor performance in schools. Through our learning we can draw ideas that we use in our own actions. We can also begin to contribute information that other people use to support their own decision making.
N – engage your network – find ways to draw others who you know into this shared understanding. Recognize people who volunteer time and talent, or who help kids through the programs they operate. If you are a business leader, or a church leader, engage your corporation or your congregation. You can use your web site, advertising, point of purchase materials, etc. to point to web sites that show all of the agencies in the city who do tutoring/mentoring, such as www.tutormentorconnection.org. If you do this weekly, year after year, your friends, coworkers and customers will become involved in solving this problem with you.
O – offer help, don’t wait to be asked. As you build your understanding of where poverty is most concentrated, and what social services are in those areas, choose a neighborhood, and reach out with offers of time, as a volunteer, talent, help build a web site, do the accounting, or offer Public relations services, and dollars, if the web site of an organization shows they do good work, you don’t need to ask for a proposal of h ow they would spend your donation, you need to send them a donation so they can keep doing that good work
U – build a shared understanding. Form groups of peers to share reading and learning assignments, just as you meet every Sunday to read passages of scripture and build the group’s understanding of the Word of God. Use the many different resources of the T/MC Links library as the starting point for your search for wisdom, and understanding.
G – give until it feels good – people who generously donate time and dollars to causes they believe in feel good about their giving. If we’re going surround kids living in poverty dominated neighborhoods with extra learning and adult mentoring networks, donors will need to give more than random contributions of time, dollars and talent. On the Bolder Giving web site donors are inspired to give to their full potential and those giving 50% or more are given recognition. Can we inspire donors who support youth services to give at this level?
H – form habits of learning, and pass these on to your kids. Imagine how much more successful teachers were if youth came to school every day asking questions about where to find information, or how to understand information they had researched on the Internet the previous day? We can model that habit if we build it into our own activity. Keep a chart, such as the OHATS on the Tutor/mentor connection web site, where you can document actions you take each week to same sure that this time ENOUGH, really means ENOUGH.
At the end of every day, look in your personal mirror and check of what actions you took. If you document actions, you can review what you’ve done at the end of each month, and each year, and begin to see a growing mountain of actions you have taken to solve this problem. Some of these will be actions that got other people involved, so that the good work you do is multiplying because of the good work others are also doing.
Through this process you help build this shared understanding, which will lead to better public policy. Without this habit of learning, and without learning to use the Internet to find good ideas from people in all parts of the world, we won’t be able to problem solve as well as we need to, and we won’t be able to teach this habit to our kids.
If we do this, we’ll not only reduce the root causes of youth on youth violence, we’ll also address one of the growing issues facing America in a global economy. We will begin to create a nation of learners, problem solvers, creative thinkers and innovators, who use learning and information as the basis of creating opportunity and keeping America great.
Today's Chicago Tribune featured a column by Mary Schmich, talking about the coming merger of two elementary schools serving the Cabrini Green area of Chicago.
I've known Mary for many years and she has written many columns on the past about the challenges of living in Cabrini Green, and even about the work we do to mobilize volunteers to help inner city kids overcome those challenges.
I've been leading a tutor/mentor program connecting Cabrini Green youth with tutors/mentors for more than 30 years. I started Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993, following the shooting of 7 year old Dantrell Davis in October 1992.
Some of our kids attend Jenner School then go on to area high schools. I know these kids well.
In her column Schmich says "Jenner lies on the south side of Division Street, Schiller on the north. Students on either side cross with a sense of peril."
This map, created with the new interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator shows the locations of Shiller and Jenner Schools, with overlays showing poverty demographics, in the Cabrini Green neighborhood. You can create your own version of this map if you visit this link.
She goes on to say, "Cabrini may be vanishing, and many of the displaced students may commute to school here from far parts of the city, but gang rivalries and assorted resentments continue to be handed down like family recipies."
She interviewed a teacher at Jenner who is trying to build harmony between the new students from Schiller and the current students at Jenner. She quotes a teacher who says "The students are on a shrinking iceberg".
Schmich wrote, "When this teacher asked kids to list potential problems of the merger of two schools one student responded, 'Fighting. Guns. Disrespect. Arguing. No Friends. New teachers. Bad feelings."
I believe in non-school tutor/mentor programs because they offer a place during the non-school hours where kids can meet, and be supported by extra adults beyond the family. We held our annual year end dinner on June 4, and a video was shown, in which two students interview their parents, who talk about the value of Cabrini Connections. View it here.
Schmich is a great writer, and I'm glad she pays attention to what is going on in Cabrini Green. However, I just wish she and other writers would talk about programs like Cabrini Connections who are working to help these kids, but who are limited in their ability because they constantly struggle for operating dollars.
The story could have gone on to talk about ways tutor/mentor programs are trying to help kids in Cabrini, but are struggling because many people don't think the neighborhood still has kids who need our help. The article shows that kids from Schiller and Jenner are still dealing with poverty. The video from our year end dinner hows that parents feel we're a value to their kids.
In addition, the reporter could have used the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to create a map image as I did. Anyone reading the story could search the Program Locator to determine the need for tutor/mentor programs in different areas of the city, and to find programs that exist in these areas.
There are thousands of people in Chicago who might support programs like Cabrini Connections, but unless reporters and media show us as one solution to the challenges kids face, too few people will know we exist, and too few will support us. We don't have the advertising dollars to get this story out as often as it needs to be heard.
Thus, if you are reading this, pass it on. Ask people you know to send donations to Cabrini Connections, or to other tutor/mentor programs operating in other neighborhoods, who are just as isolated, and just as in need of funding. Parents value our services.
In addition, if you appreciate what we're trying to do with the maps and Program Locator, please provide some funds to help us keep developing this resource. The demographics of the city are changing and with each Census, we need to update these maps so they are as accurate as possible. We cannot do that without funds to pay for the staff who do this work. If you'd like to help call us at 312-492-9614.
If tutor/mentor programs are to remain in places where they are needed, it will be because private sector leaders have stepped forward with their own time, talent and dollars to help us do this work.
On the lower left side of this blog you can see a list of years that I've written this blog, starting in 2005. This shows articles written each month, of each year. Thus, you could look at January in past years and find reflections that I've posted, like this one that says "What the heck am I trying to do?"
I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from 1975 to mid 1992 (while holding full time retail advertising management roles with the Montgomery Ward corporation), which connected 2nd to 6th grade kids from the Cabrini-Green homes with volunteers from Montgomery Ward's corporate headquarters and many other Chicago companies.
We created Cabrini Connections as a strategy to help kids who aged out of the first program after 6th grade have support through high school.
We launched the Cabrini Connections program in January 1993, meeting with 5 teens and 7 volunteers on Saturday mornings in the day room of St. Joseph's Church on North Orleans Street in Chicago. Our volunteers had backgrounds in video production so our weekly activities centered around improvisation, as a form of relationship-building.
At the same time we started meeting at Wells High School with a small group of high school students who had been part of the first program.
In July 1993 Montgomery Ward donated space in its corporate office tower for us to operate, and we moved the program there, meeting on Thursday evenings. That first year we recruited 30 teens. Each year after that we added more 7th and 8th graders until by 1998 we were serving close to 90 teens with over 100 volunteers. Due to available space, we never grew larger than that over the next 12 years. I left the program in 2011 and sadly, it is no longer operating.
Last week I received a message from one of the teens who joined us in 1993. She said, "y'all help me grow in so many ways so I want to say thank y'all for being a great team helping us out in the neighborhood."
I've received variations of this comment consistently over the past 10 years as I've connected to a growing number of alumni on Facebook who were in elementary school in the 1970s and 1980s and were in middle school and high school in the 1990s and are now adults raising their own kids.
These are an affirmation of the importance of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs and why I start each January with a new commitment to help such programs grow in more places.
When I first started leading the tutoring program at Montgomery Ward in 1975 one of the Vice President's said "Dan, you don't know much about leading a tutor/mentor program. Why don't you find others in Chicago who already lead programs and invite them to lunch. See what you can learn from them."
That began 17 years of informal leadership in building a network of Chicago tutor/mentor programs and drawing them together to share ideas and work jointly in training volunteers. It's probably one of the main reasons I stayed involved for as long as I did.
Then, in October 1992, after I left the original program (read The Tutor/Mentor Business, by Sara Coover Caldwell), and was working with a small group of volunteers to determine a next step, a 7-year-old boy named Dantrell Davis was shot and killed on his way to school. The front page of the Chicago Sun-Times had an editorial demanding action.
This inspired me to create the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
From my previous years of networking with Chicago programs I realized that no one was keeping a master list of all the different volunteer-based tutor and/or mentor programs in Chicago, thus, no one, other than myself, could invite programs to gather regularly.
From my retail advertising career at Montgomery Ward I had learned how the company used weekly advertising to draw millions of potential customers to our 400 stores, spread across 40 states.
I saw a pattern in which media would occasionally give featured attention, and anger, to a tragic shooting, or a poorly performing school, or a street gang, but that the story only focused on one neighborhood of Chicago, and seldom included a "call to action", motivating readers to support existing youth programs in that neighborhood, and all others in the city, as volunteers or donors.
And, then, those stories went away after a few days, replaced by other stories. My advertising career taught me that you need to keep your story repeating over-and-over, to reach more people, and to have a frequency that would capture readers attention, and ultimately motivate action.
None of this was happening in Chicago. So we spent 1993 planning a strategy that we launched in January 1994 as the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
You can read the 1994 Tutor/Mentor Connection Case Statement at this link.
Each year between 1993 and 2011 I used part of the money we raised to support our own Cabrini Connections program. And I used part to build a library of Chicago tutor/mentor programs and lead efforts intended to help each program (including our own) get more consistent attention and a better flow of volunteers and dollars, while sharing ideas that each could use to constantly improve based on what they learned from their own work, and what they learned from others.
While initially we published our list of programs in a printed Directory, and shared ideas via a quarterly printed newsletter, one of our volunteers built our first website in 1998 and by 2000 we had moved our library and list of programs on-line. That was a needed strategy as we did not have the money to continue our print newsletter strategy and needed to reach more people than the 10-12,000 we were sending that newsletter to.
This concept map shows highlights of the Tutor/Mentor Connection's growth.
In mid 2011 after I left the Cabrini Connections program (long story) I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection available to Chicago and to try to help similar intermediaries grow in other cities.
If you read some of my past January articles you'll find more details of what I've been trying to do and the challenges I've faced to do it as well as is needed. Here are some other articles that show my 30 year history.
So as we enter 2024, Chicago and other cities still have areas of concentrated poverty and youth in these neighborhoods attend poorly resource schools and a influenced by too few people modeling a wide range of career opportunities and expectations and too many who model negative habits.
Chicago still needs a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy (even if it's not led by me, or called the Tutor/Mentor Connection). So do other cities. So I continue doing what I do with whatever resources I can find, just as I started doing in 1993.
Will you help me?
Read some of my past articles, like these about forming a new Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Share my articles with your network.
Help me find a benefactor and/university that will take ownership of my archives and this strategy and teach leaders to do what I've been doing for the past 30 years.
Make a contribution to help me pay the bills. Click here
Thank you for reading and if you made a contribution in 2023, thank you for continuing to support my efforts.
Here's how to use this blog. Each article includes graphics. Click on them to get enlarged versions. Each article has many links (which are often broken on older articles). Open the links to dig deeper in the ideas and strategies I share. On the left side are tags which you can click to find articles that focus on the same topic. Below that are links to other web sites with relevant information. Learn more about me at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/dan-bassill.
I combine 17 years of retail advertising, 3 years in Army Intelligence and 40 years of leading site-based tutor/mentor programs, the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Few people in the US have a similar depth of involvement and experiences.
I describe my work as information-based problem solving and host a library of my own ideas plus links to more than 2000 other sites which people can use to build and sustain volunteer-based non-school tutor, mentor and learning programs in high poverty areas.
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