There are many reasons to like the selection of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as the Vice President candidate of the Democratic Party. One that's close to my heart is shown in this ESRI 2024 blog article, titled "Why Governor Tim Walz is a 'GIS Nerd' and What that Means for the US".
I encourage you to read the ESRI article, then go to the Minnesota Executive Map Portfolio and view each collection. Open the collection under "Minnesota Children, Youth and Families" and you'll see the page I show below.
Click on any of the maps and it opens to an interactive map where you can enlarge and look closely at any part of the state. The example I show below is from the "Children in Poverty" map. I've zoomed into the Minneapolis - St. Paul area.
The more you enlarge the map, or zoom into a specific area, the greater the level of detail you'll see. Notice that if you click on the map a pop up will show the number of children under age 18 that live below the poverty line and what percent of children this represents for that census tract.
I've added a link to the ESRI article and the Minnesota Executive Map Portfolio in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.
In my April 2024 article I shared this page from a 1997 Tutor/Mentor newsletter and asked "What if Leaders had used maps like this?"
Maybe they are. I can't tell from the maps I'm viewing on the Minnesota site. The maps are great, as far as they go.
What I don't see (maybe it is someplace else) is a set of maps answering the questions of "How many tutor/mentor programs are needed?" and "What programs already exist?", sorted by type of program, age group served and location".
Nor do I see a section of blogs where writers have created images like I show above, and embedded them in articles, like I'm doing here. As a teacher, maybe Governor Walz was teaching youth to create map stories. Does anyone have a link to a collection of blogs that show this?
Nor do I see a section of blogs where writers have created images like I show above, and embedded them in articles, like I'm doing here. As a teacher, maybe Governor Walz was teaching youth to create map stories. Does anyone have a link to a collection of blogs that show this?
Browse past articles on this blog, and the Tutor/Mentor blog and you can see how I've been trying to use maps. If you're familiar with the Minnesota maps, of similar collections from other states, do you see information showing maps being used for the same purposes that I've been trying to use them?
Below is an example. This is a page from a PDF essay that I first created in 2011, then updated in 2018.
It shows community areas of Chicago, and the number of high poverty youth, age 6-17, in that area. It also shows what percent this represents. The green stars on the map are known volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in this area. The platform I used to create this was the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, launched in 2004 and updated in 2008, which was also interactive.
As you can see from this image, you could sort my maps for programs in specific zip codes, and that provide different forms of volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring services to different age groups.
If you look at the Minnesota map above, it shows this information in a much better format. It just does not include information about service providers. Thus, it cannot be used by the Governor or any other group to draw attention, volunteers and donors to the providers, or to determine where more programs are needed.
I wish I'd connected with Governor Walz in the late 2000s when I first launched the Program Locator and in the 2015-17 period when i ran out of money to keep it active. Now it's an archive, which you can read about on this page.
This is the type of image I'd like to find on the website of political and business leaders in every state. It's me, in the mid 1990s, with a Chicago Tribune article on the screen behind me saying "City Kids at Risk".
Kids in every city and state have been at risk for more than 30 years but I've not found any leader who has the same history as I have, trying to create an information base people could use, then trying to build on-going visibility so more people use the information to help programs grow that help kids in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs and adult lives free of poverty.
It sounds like Governor Tim Walz may have been doing much of this. Too bad we've never met.
Until now. I know he's busy with the election, but if you know him, share this article and my blogs. Hopefully we'll connect after he's elected Vice President of the United States and he can champion this strategy in every city and state.
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