June-July 2025 T/MI News

There are terrible things happening across the United States and around the world. My daily media is filled with these stories. To me, this drowns out needed calls for support for youth-serving programs in Chicago and other places.

As we head through summer toward the new school year, use the resources in my newsletter and website to find and support organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. They all need your help.

At the same time, use other resources that I share to find ways to support people in your community who need help and to close the gaps that are dividing us from each other.

These resources can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world.

Please share this so others in your city can find and use these resources!

This was posted on LinkedIn by Chicago Scholars, celebrating alumni who have been part of their program. It is one of many posts I see on my feed every day from Chicago area youth-serving programs.

Use this list to find many other Chicago area youth-serving programs who have accounts on LinkedIn.

This was posted on Facebook by Diamond in the Rough Youth Development Program, Inc.

Use this list to find other Chicago area youth-serving programs who have accounts on Facebook.

Find lists of Chicago area programs using Twitter and Instagram, plus my list of tutor/mentor program websites at www.tutormentorexchange.net

One thing anyone can do to help kids living in high poverty areas is get to know existing youth serving programs and help them attract attention from media, donors, volunteers, parents and students. You can do it by sharing links to their websites or by liking and boosting their posts on social media. If you're able, you can even volunteer and/or donate.

Scroll through this set of Tutor/Mentor blog articles to see how I've highlighted work of other Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. Do you have someone in your community hosting a website and encouraging others to draw users to it the way I do?

Independent Sector's annual report on the "value of volunteer time"

The Independent Sector is one of the leading resources in the philanthropic sector. One of its annual reports provides an estimated national value of each volunteer hour. Read the report at this link.

Visit the blog article section on the Independent Sector website and find leadership articles that focus on the disruption and chaos caused by actions of the current administration. click here

Are you aware of the City of Chicago's violence reduction dashboard, created by the University of Chicago's Urban Crime Lab? The graphic below shows one page from the website.

A few weeks ago I watched an introduction to this dashboard and its many interactive features. It's a publicly available tool launched to support efforts to reduce gun violence through transparent, real-time data. This link points to the Urban Crime Lab page that includes a video of the webinar and many other resources. View the dashboard at this link.

I wrote about the webinar and shared other screenshots on this Mapping for Justice blog article. Use your own blog to share resources like this.

Reimagining leadership in the Nonprofit Sector

I saw this message on BlueSky recently: "Nonprofits are being called on to do more with less in an impossible environment. With deepening polarization, an affordability crisis, and labour force shortages, it's time to reimagine leadership in our sector". It points to a PDF at this link.

In the mid 2000s I added another report form the Ontario nonprofit network, titled: The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change. view it here

These are two of many resources that can be found in the collaboration and community building sections of the Tutor/Mentor Library. Make sure your staff and volunteers are making time to learn from these.

Most of the information shared in this newsletter and on the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC website and blogs is focused on sharing information across networks that can be used to solve complex problems. This article, from The Weaving Lab, was found on LinkedIn. It describes the network building process, its challenges and its opportunities.

If you read the post on LinkedIn you'll see a comment that I added, sharing the 4-part strategy concept map, which you can see at this link. Once I've finished upgrading the www.tutormentorexchange.net website I will add a link to this article in a sub-section focused on innovation and knowledge management. It already has many articles that I've collected over the past 20+ years.

Resources & Announcements
(New additions are at top of this list)

* Knowledge Alliance - research and evidence to support education policy - click here

* TutorCruncher - resources for tutoring companies - click here

* UCLA Center resources - Guide to Learning Supports pdf - click here; and, here

* Every Hour Counts - network of intermediaries building after school systems - click here

* MyChiMyFuture - Chicago youth programs map and directory. click here; visit the website - click here

* Chicago Mentoring Collaborative - click here

* Chicago Learning Exchange supports Out-of-School-Time community in Chicago - click here

* ACT Now - Championing Quality Afterschool Programs in Illinois - click here

* Trust Talks - podcast by The Chicago Community Trust highlights the Trust's strategic priority to close Chicago region's racial and ethnic wealth gap - click here

* Chicago Community Area Hardship Index (2019-2023) - click here

* To & Through Project website - click here

* Center for Effective Philanthropy - click here

* Forefront -Illinois' statewide association of nonprofits, foundations and advisors. click here

* AfterSchool Alliance resources - click here; New report - click here

* Chicago Public Schools locator map - click here

* National Mentoring Resource Center - click here

* Proven Tutoring clearinghouse - click here

* Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative - click here

* South Side STEM Asset maps - read about using maps - click here

* Incarceration Reform Resource Center - click here

* Prison Policy Initiative - click here

Recent Tutor/Mentor Blog articles that point to Tutor/Mentor Connection archived files:

(Do you have a blog? Share it on social media)

Changes to this website - click here

Still judged by the color of their skin - click here

It takes a village - click here

Mapping Strategy, Ideas and libraries - click here

Poverty and racism in America - understand the issues - click here

What are your volunteers learning? - click here

Reaching youth in high poverty areas - click here

Bookmark these Tutor/Mentor Resources

* Lists of Chicago area, volunteer-based tutor, mentor programs - click here

* Homework help and volunteer training resources - click here

* Resource Library - click here

* Strategy essays by Tutor/Mentor - click here

* Work done by interns in past - click here

* Maps and Map-Stories from past 30 years - click here

* Political Action resources - click here

* Featured collections on Wakelet - click here

* Tutor/Mentor Institute Videos - click here

* About T/MI articles on blog - click here

* History of T/MC - T/MI articles - click here

* Create a New Tutor/Mentor Connection - click here

* Reaching out to Universities to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy - click here

* Chicago Youth Serving Organizations in Intermediary Roles - click here to view a concept map showing many organizations working to help improve the lives of Chicago area youth. Follow the links.

Thank you for reading.

Please share this newsletter with people you know who work in non-school youth serving programs, or in sectors that should be strategically supporting such programs, such as business, philanthropy, education and public policy. If they are not receiving these newsletters then we have no way of engaging them. Also encourage friends, family, co-workers to sign up to receive this newsletter. 

I encourage others to duplicate what I'm doing. Write a blog and share your own vision, strategy and challenges. Share your link and I'll add it to this list in the Tutor/Mentor library.

View current and past newsletters at this link. 

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