Below is a post that I found on Mastodon.social today when I did a search for #youthdevelopment.
This is an interview of me (Dan Bassill) recorded by Phil Shapiro in 2014. You can listen to it here. Note. This is a platform called "MakerTube" not "YouTube".
I hope you'll take time to listen to it. Phil is a librarian from the Washington, DC area. It shows how Phil and I met in an Internet discussion group in the early 2000s and have stayed connected through constantly changing Internet platforms in the years since then. While the interview is from 2014, Phil shared it in August 2025. Wow.
During the interview I pointed Phil to a series of article about my use of concept maps, that I wrote in late 2014 and 2015. You can find the collection at this link.
If you listen to the entire interview (about 32 minutes) you'll see that I end with the goal that alumni of the programs I led will some day take my place leading this effort. That was 10 years ago. It's still my goal, only I'm now a lot older.
Since doing the interview in 2014 I've moved my library of concept maps to this page on my Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC website. And, you can find 93 articles that feature concept maps on the Tutor/Mentor blog.
Thanks Phil for doing the interview in 2014 and sharing it on Mastodon. Maybe a few more people will take a look.
This was not the first time Phil boosted my work. Take a look at this 2009 article that Phil posted in PCWorld, titled "Crowdsourcing the MacArthur Awards".
Thanks for reading. You can find me on LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a few other places. (see links on this page).
If you value what I'm doing and can help, please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.
I've been using maps since 1994 to show where Chicago area kids need extra help based on the level of poverty and inequality in the areas where they live. This blog was created in 2008 to show maps my organization was creating. Since 2011 the blog has shared maps created using our interactive map-based Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.
The Program Locator has only been available as an archive since around 2017, so the blog has been used to show data platforms hosted by others. Below is a concept map showing some of the platforms found in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.
On this concept map I've circled one node, titled "Education data". Click on the small box at the bottom of the node and you see three links. I opened the one titled "Education Opportunity Map".
This is the "Education Opportunity Project at Stanford University". This page shows three projects. I chose the "Segregation Tracking Project" and opened the map shown below.
In the lower right is a legend. The green shading shows the level of White-Black Segregation between schools in each state, with the dark green being the most segregated. The orange shading shows the percent of White Students in individual schools, with the darker Orange being the highest.
I zoomed in to the Chicago region, to the map-view shown below. This map shows the level of segregation in individual schools. Just click on any of the dots and a pop-up will show the name of the school and level of segregation.
I zoomed in as far as the site would allow. The map below shows the South Side of Chicago.
The dark green background shows that this is a highly segregated area and the white dots showing individual schools, confirms that.
I've written about segregation several times in past years. Open this link to find articles on this site, and open this link to find articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog.
Now create your own map stories.
Explore the data platforms shown on the concept map at the top of this article. Zoom into your own city, state and/or neighborhood. Learn about needs and opportunities.
Then brows my blog and use my articles as templates, to see how you might embed maps in articles and/or videos intended to draw more people to information about race, segregation and inequality, and to draw more people to organizations working with youth and families living in areas of persistent poverty.
Students in middle school, high school and college can learn to do this. At some point in the future every city should have at least one blog like this one, sharing datamaps and stories created by others, and drawing attention to places where people need extra help.
I've created many visual essays that show how maps and map-stories, created by many people, can have a huge impact on changing public policy and influencing the flow of needed resources into high poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods. Here' one example.
Thanks for reading. I hope you'll share this, and your own work. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky and Mastodon (see links here).
I depend on help from a small group of donors to fund the work I'm doing. Please visit this page and add your own support.
Since March 2025 I've not added new links to the Tutor/Mentor library since the site was being upgraded. That work finished last week so I've added many links that I'd seen in the past few months.
Below is a view of the VizDex website, which is a library of personal and independent blogs and newsletters dedicated to data visualization.
I saw mention of this on one of my social media feeds and once I visited the site I asked if my MappingforJustice blog would qualify. The answer was "yes" as you can see from the image I've posted.
I've now added that link to my own library. For the past few years, as I've added new links, I notified viewers by putting that link on my "new additions" page. Below you can see the "new links for 2025" page.
When you look at this list, note that under every listing is a "find in this section" statement, with a link to the section of the library where I added the link.
In this case, it points to a page where I've several dozen links to websites that demonstrate uses of concept maps and visualization.
These are in alphabetical order so you need to scroll to the bottom of the list to find the VizDex site. As you do you'll find many more sites where you can learn ways to use concept maps and visualizations.
One of those you'll see is this Power Mapping article on a website named "The Commons: Social Change Library".
This article is particularly relevant because it describes my own vision of using concept maps to "know the network, then nudge the network". And it's part of a much larger library of social change information managed by The Commons.
Below is a page from a visual essay where I describe how the links I point to are experts in specific topics and often host libraries of their own. Thus, I don't need to have "everything" in my own library if I can point to others who have greater depth of specific topics than I have.
I've posted several articles on the Tutor/Mentor library showing how my library was intended to stimulate innovation and constant improvement within the youth/workforce development ecosystem. In this article I included this statement.
I started building a library of research and peer tutor/mentor program information in the 1970s, to stimulate the thinking and innovation of volunteers working with me to build the tutor/mentor program I was leading at the Montgomery Ward Corporation in Chicago. As I created my library, began sharing it with peers, leading other programs. I formalized this information collection/sharing in 1993 when I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Now I host an extensive web library of information, with links to more than 2000 other web sites, that anyone in Chicago, or the world, can dig into to find "carrots" that inspire their own innovation and constant improvement.
I was pleased that the VizDex leaders added this blog to their list. I wish more were doing the same and that we were working collectively toward motivating more people to use the libraries for on-going learning and problem solving. Furthermore, I'd love to find people using the Power Mapping ideas who are building maps showing the ecosystem needed to change policy and make more, and better, long-term youth development, learning and career development resources available in every area with concentrations of persistent poverty.
We need to be connected and working collectively to draw attention to the resources we are sharing.
Thanks for reading. I hope you'll connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon and other platforms and share links to your own libraries and blogs.
I also ask that you consider making a contribution to help me fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC so I can continue to keep the library on-line and freely available to the world. Click here to learn more.
A few days ago I watched an introduction to Chicago's Violence Reduction Dashboard which was created by the University of Chicago's Urban Crime Lab. Below I'm showing a few images I made from the video. Click on the images to enlarge them.
If you scroll back through articles posted on this blog since 2008 you'll see my interest in maps, and how my organization created an interactive tutor/mentor program locator that plotted locations of Chicago volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs as overlays to demographic and crime data such as shown in these graphics.
The two images below show the data plotted on a Tableau GIS platform. The first show the entire city and the second illustrates how you can zoom in to look at a smaller section. The data sorts by zip code, aldermanic ward, community area, etc.
View the video below and you'll see how the above images are from the dashboard.
While this Mapping For Justice blog is fully focused on maps and visualizations, the Tutor/Mentor blog shows uses of maps as part of the larger strategy of helping kids in high poverty areas that I launched in 1993, and have supported through the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011. Here's one example.
I wish I had this type of functionality in the 1990s and 2000s! Over a period of 16 years I mixed together volunteer and paid talent to create maps and map-stories intended to show where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs were most needed in the Chicago region and why. By 2009 when the interactive Chicago program locator was built the financial crisis had hit and we lost our funding and ultimately the capacity to continue to update the program locator and create map stories.
The concept map below shows my 30 year history of using data maps. You can find the link to it in this article.
This graphic visualizes my goal in using maps and it's one I hope others who now have this capacity will adopt.
Creating data dashboards that help people understand the distribution of problems within a big city like Chicago and keeping those updated is a huge challenge. However, unless layers of information are added that show organizations working in different places who are constantly looking for volunteers, donors, talent, technology and ideas to do good work, the maps are not connecting "people who can help" with "places where help is needed".
They are missing a big opportunity to be part of the solution.
And if this role is not taken by many leaders there will always be a few great organizations in a few places, but too few great organizations in all the places they are needed, because of the competition for scarce resources.
Below is a concept map that I created to show layers of information that I'd love to see on these data maps, along with strategies that get more people to view and use the information. See it in this article.
In mid 2011 when I created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in order to keep the Tutor/Mentor Connection available in Chicago. As I wrote above, I lost the funding and capacity to continue building and maintaining my own program locator. However, in the 14 years since then I've pointed to data platforms built by others that could be used to create map stories that draw volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in high poverty/high violence areas of Chicago and other places.
I hope you'll take a look. I hope donors will provide you with the funding to build and maintain this capacity.
There's too much information on my blog and website for a quick review. Unless someone keeps referring to the information, they way college students review course material, or faith group review religious texts, too few people will build the understanding needed apply the ideas I'm sharing.
That's why I keep encouraging wealthy donors to fund the creation of Tutor/Mentor Connection-type programs on college campuses, where my archives can serve as study material, intended to build the new leaders needed to build the technology and apply these ideas.
Thanks for reading. Please share this with your network and connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram, Mastodon and Threads (see links here).
If you value what I'm sharing and are able, please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund my work.
Below is one of the first concept maps that I created, back in 2005, to visualize the ideas I was sharing in my blog articles, e-Mail newsletters and website.
I wrote about these in a series of articles posted on this blog in 2015.
I use cMapTools to create my concept maps. It's easy. It's free. Each map has nodes that are connected by lines and arrows, so you can "read" the map to understand what it is offering.
At the bottom of each node are two small boxes. The one on the left has links to external websites. The one on the right has links to additional concept maps. Thus, you have layers of connected ideas.
A few years ago I created a page on my main website where you could see, and open, all of my concept maps. That site has been down for repairs for a few days so I decided to add lists of cMaps to the concept map shown below.
At the lower left you can see how a single node might include several maps. I encourage you to make a visit and just open the links in each node, to learn what types of maps are available. Later you can dig deeper into any single map that interests you.
In my concept maps I embed many geographic maps showing areas of high poverty in Chicago where volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs are most needed, and where current programs are located.
These maps intend to draw volunteers, donors, media, youth, parents and others to programs throughout the city, not just one or two high profile programs. They also are intended to support a planning process that identifies where more programs, or specific types of programs, are needed, and who could be helping such programs grow.
I encourage people from other places to use my maps and blog articles as a starting point for creating a similar collection, focused on their own city/state. Then share your maps in blog articles and on social media like I do.
Together we might draw more attention to this information than each of us can by ourselves.
That leads me to this post on the Tutor/Mentor blog. It features an article by Vu Le, titled "Funders, here's the blueprint for saving democracy."
I urge you to read it. Then, you could create a concept map that visualizes the steps he writes about, and share this in your own blog article with philanthropic and business leaders in your own area.
Share your articles on social media and I'll boost them as I see them.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to connecting with you.
I started the Tutor/Mentor blog in April 2005, almost 20 years ago. This Mapping blog was started in 2008 and I've been posting articles on it since 2011.
In late February a few of my #clmooc friends created posts showing why they blog and invited me to add my own history. I invite you to read posts by Kevin, Sarah and Sheri to see where I'm getting my inspiration.
I created this image, showing me in 1997 with former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, for my "Reflections on Why I Blog" articles. You can find the first one here. I hope you'll take a look.
