Check out this 3-D map of the USA

In this post on LinkedIn I was introduced to a 3-D map showing poverty/risks by county throughout the USA.  A view of the map is shown below. click here to open

One of the ways I've used this blog since 2011 is to show data mapping platforms created by other people and organizations.  Anyone can zoom into their own city/county and create a view that they use in a story intended to mobilize attention and resources to support problem-solving in the area shown on the map.

Below is a concept map that I created to share some of these platforms.  It has links to sections of my library that show even more uses of GIS maps, concept maps and visualization. 

Do you host a platform like one of these? Do you create blog articles using these data maps?  Please share links with me on LinkedIn or in the comment section of this blog.

Thanks for reading. Go forth and multiply.

I started using maps in 1993.

This blog was created in 2008 by Mike Trakan, a newly hired map maker, to show the work he was doing for the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago.  I've been the one posting here since mid 2011.

A few years ago I posted an article on the Tutor/Mentor blog that featured the concept map shown below. 

Please take time to read the article, and dig through the many other articles I point to.   

If it makes sense to you, help me find benefactors who will establish a Tutor/Mentor Connection study/action program on one or more college campuses, where student/faculty/alumni manpower will re-build the mapping capacity and apply all of the strategies I've piloted for the past 30 years, to reach more k-12 kids in high poverty areas with support that helps them move safely through school and into adult lives with jobs that enable them to raise their own kids free of the challenges of intense, segregated, poverty.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn (see links here). 

Help me keep this strategy on-line. Visit my "fund T/MI" page at this link. 

Mapping Philanthropy in USA

Below is a view of an interactive map that can be found on the Smart Charity website.  This shows the amount of philanthropic grants received, per person, in 2021 for each county in the USA. 

Below is another view from the same dashboard.  This one shows counties with high poverty but lowest philanthropic support per person.  You can click on the map, or the table at the right, to find data for each county.

I introduced the Smart Charity website in this January 2026 article on the Tutor/Mentor blog. It's part of a Project 990 program at the University of Indiana and one of a growing number of sites that I'm seeing that are using IRS 990 data to create interactive maps like this. 

Below is an image from another story on the Tutor/Mentor blog. 

This is the first page of a visual essay where I show the number of youth, age 6-17, who are below the poverty level, in each Chicago community area.  An example is shown below.  The yellow boxes show numbers from 2011 and the blue boxes show the same information, but for 2018.

If you use the Smart Charity dashboard you can zoom in to Illinois then put your curser over Cook County. You'll see that philanthropy gave $534.43 per person.  That's for 5.177 million people.  With the growing abilities of AI I'm hoping that future dashboards will zoom to the zip code, census tract, and/or community area level, giving a much better understanding of philanthropic support in big urban areas.

If you're finding dashboards like this please share the links in the comments, or connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and/or BlueSky to share the links.

I hope you value this information and that some will visit this page and make a contribution to help me pay the bills.  Thank you.

Mapping Justice - Teaches teens to use maps to raise awareness

Today I saw a LinkedIn post from the Afterschool Alliance that announced an "EcoGIS: Mapping Environmental Justice and Beyond" program.  I followed the links and the first took me to an article with the map shown below.

The article started, by saying it is part of the Afterschool Alliance's Collective For  Youth Empowerment in STEM and Society (CYESS) Initiative. It shows work done by youth through a program of CYESS.  

Before I followed that link I read the article and saw that the EcoGIS project was part of a flagship program Mapping Justice.  That really caught my attention since the name of this blog, started in 2008, is MappingForJustice. 

I followed that link and learned that it's a program based in Florida and supported by a group called "Trubel &Co" that provides "civic tech education to turn local data into community action" through "specialized workshops that explore the intersections of justice, data storytelling, and technology, giving students, nonprofits, and advocates an opportunity to learn technical skills and engage with critical issues pertaining to their communities".  

I have links to the CYESS program on this page in the Tutor/Mentor library. 

So today I took a new look at the "Collective for Youth Empowerment in STEM and Society" program.  This is their home page.

Click on the "Projects" link in the top menu and you'll find the page shown below.

Then click on the "toolkit" button under the "Civic Engagement Resources" paragraph.  This is a huge resource. As I looked through this section I was hoping to see how the initial maps and information collected by students was part of on-going efforts to share the information and get more people involved in solving the problems highlighted by the maps.  

I found a lot more than that.  

But I'm not sure if I found maps showing organizations working to solve these problems, with an analysis of "are there enough?" "or are different types of programs also needed?"  More important, were there blog articles and public awareness campaigns trying to draw volunteers and donors directly to the programs doing the work?

I don't know if anyone on their team has ever visited this blog or my website, but that's what my maps have been used for.  Below are links to three visual essays that I hope some of the leaders of these programs will study.

- "Getting Attention for a Cause"  - click here

- "Rest of the Story" - role youth can take to draw attention to causes - click here

- "Rest of the Story - example focused on one Chicago community area" - click here

This entire blog is a resource that anyone learning to create maps might use to find ideas for how the maps can be used in on-going campaigns.  On the Tutor/Mentor blog you can find nearly 300 articles showing uses of maps in one set of articles on the blog.

Then, look at this concept map which shows the 4-part information-based problem solving strategy that I've piloted since 1993. 

Step 1 involved collecting and organizing information. Creating the maps and blog articles would be included in this step.  Step 2 focuses on increasing the number of people who look at the information.  Step 3 is where people learn to use the information collected in Step 1, to provide time, talent, dollars, votes and other resources in specific places shown by the maps (Step 4). 

Most of the problems that GIS maps highlight are complex and will take many people, and many years, to solve. Without people focusing on all four of these steps, from year-to-year, most of these problems will still be with us many years from now.

Thank you to the Afterschool Alliance for launching the CYESS program and for sharing it on LinkedIn. I hope anyone reading this will take time to dig through all the articles on their site. It's a great resource. 

Furthermore, I hope you'll add a link from your resource page to my blogs, concept maps and visual essays.  

On these sites I show a 30 year history of collecting and sharing information. In 20 or 30 years I hope that some of the projects created through CYESS in 2026 will have websites and blogs showing their own long-term efforts at bringing people together to try to solve some of these complex problems.

Thanks for reading. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. Find links on this page.

I depend on contributions from a small group of people to continue this work. Visit this page if you'd like to help.

Have you visited the ESRI GIS site?

I was able to obtain donated ESRI GIS software each year from 1995 to 2011.  Many of the maps that I show on this blog from 2008-2011 and earlier were created using that donation. 

ESRI maintains a huge on-line library of resources.  In this blog article ESRI introduces the most recent U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS) which is available in the ArcGIS Living Atlas.

The direct link to the ACS Atlas Collection is here. 

I started using ESRI software in 1995 (When I say "I", I really mean volunteers and part-time staff made the maps under my direction.) Below is an example of how I shared these at every Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference.

Below is a visual essay showing how I've been using maps and why.  Click here to open.

Is someone in your community creating maps like these and sharing them in their blog articles, newsletters and social media?  If yes, send me the link.

Thanks for reading.  Please connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and/or Twitter.  Find links on this page. 

I depend on a small group of supporters for contributions that help me cover expenses.  If you'd like to help, click here.

Population & Households Data - Cook County, IL

My friend Layton Olson shared a link to the Cook County Community Data Snapshots on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning website.  Open the Dashboard and you can view the data at the county, municipality and Chicago Community Area levels.  

I open the Municipality page at this link.  You can use the drop down menu to pick a community in Cook County that you want to view.  You can also select for different types of data. I chose "Population & Households".   I'm showing three examples.

Alsip

Aurora

North Chicago

For each area selected you get a view like those I've shown.  It has a map of the community showing its location in Cook County.  And it has five visualizations of the data, showing Race & Ethnicity, Language spoken at home, if not English, Household size, Age cohorts, and Household Income.

Planners who are concerned about income inequality and the negative affects of high poverty can easily see what percent of people in each area have household income below $25,000 or ranging from $25,000 to 49,000.

These would indicate how many people in the community need extra support from public and private sector support.  I'd love to find a version of these maps, with overlays showing youth serving programs in the area, sorted by type of program, age group served, etc.

Ideally someone would create a tool to collect and sort information about non-school and school-based tutor, mentor and learning programs and show where these are located, using demographic overlays to show where they are most needed.

Oh. We did that. 

View this PDF essay to see features we built into the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator when we first put it on-line in 2004, then when we updated it in 2008. 

Then view this "everyone's a map-maker" essay to see how maps could be created and integrated into public education campaigns. 

Unfortunately, I was not able to keep the Program Locator updated after 2011 and on-line after 2018.  It's now only available as and archive that anyone can use in building their own version.

In one section of the Tutor/Mentor library I point to on-line directories that I've learned about.  One project any university might adopt would be to build a program locator for their city, then have students keep it updated and leading public awareness campaigns that draw parents, volunteers, donors, media, policy-makers, and other users, with the goal of helping existing programs support long-term involvement of youth and volunteers, while helping new programs form were more are needed.

Another project would be to build a library with links to Program Locator type directories in every city in the USA and the world. That would be an extensive resource!

I'd be happy to help any university that wants to take this role.

Thanks for reading. Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon and/or Twitter - see links on this page.

 And, if you want to help me keep hosting and sharing this information, visit this page and make a contribution.