A little luck could go a long way

In 1997 I had to strokes of good luck. HSBC Worldwide selected my organization to share in its year-end holiday gift, which amounted to nearly $60,000. At the same time, an anonymous donor gave $50,000 to rebuild the GIS mapping capacity of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. As a result, this blog and all of the map stories created since 2008 were made available and the interactive Chicago tutor/mentor program locator was created.

Unfortunately that good luck was followed by seven years of bad luck, starting with the financial melt down that resulted in loosing HSBC support for our technology strategies, and ultimately, looking the funding to keep paying for a map maker and continued upgrades to the program locator technology, and then the 2011 decision of the Cabrini Connections Board to discontinue its support of the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy.

Despite all of this I've continued to publish map stories, build the network of support for tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities, maintain a web library that records more than 9,000 visitors a month, and host a spring and fall Tutor/Mentor Leadership & Networking Conference in Chicago.

It's about time for some good fortune to come this way and maybe today will be the beginning.

Yet, while I seek financial and talent support for my own efforts, I know nearly 70% of the other tutoring and/or mentoring programs in Illinois are also seeking the same support. Thus, I keep pointing to the program locator, and this list of Chicago youth organizations, hoping they all have the luck of the Irish and receive the financial and talent support they need.

Sponsoring Dragons To Assist Youth Programs

Occasionally, Mapping for Justice gets a chance to get out of the cubicle and work with kids in the tutor/mentor programs I write about.

This month, Mapping For Justice has decided to support a team of students in the Cabrini Madness tournament – a yearly fundraising “tourney” that brings together "teams" of students, volunteers, program staffers, and outside leadership like you.

The tournament helps teach students to advocate/compete for themselves, while helping the Cabrini Connections program raise a few bucks (which is vital for a non-profit to continue pairing adult mentors with youth from all over Chicago) - all while having a little fun. Check out the tourney website.

So this Cabrini Madness season, Mapping For Justice has decided to support and help promote... drum roll...

Team 5Ds (aka The 5 Dragons), captained by an amazingly talented young man, Charles Hill, with lots of help from other bright Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students, Sean Mayfield and Erin Smith.

Every small donation you make with me, and every time you pass this article to friends and colleagues, we help support student efforts to support themselves, while raising awareness about the virtues of these programs - programs that not only help each student, but in turn help society, and help you and me as taxpayers.

Additionally, 10% of your donation will go to Cabrini Connections Tech Club, a weekly club that teaches tech-related volcational skills to a group of students who want a little extra help on their way from the CPS to college and career.

Meet the students captaining this effort:
Charles Hill
Sean Mayfield
Erin Smith (profile coming soon)

Please consider helping Mapping For Justice help Team 5Ds by making a small tax-deductible donation here.

Wish us luck, and please check in occasionally to find continued tourney updates here.

Christmas Week! Charity, Kindness, and Love... with Maps!

Doing Unto Others this Christmas Season with Maps.
"And now faith, hope, and charity abide, these three; and the greatest of these is charity." - Corinthians 13:13
(Part 9 of T/MC's 2010 "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)
Earlier this month, our Jewish friends celebrated Hannukah. This week, we're rolling quickly into Christmas.

I am not a spiritual leader by any means, but it's hard to not find a common message, shared across faiths during the holidays: People of faith are encouraged to give as well as receive.

I have been helping Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) make maps since 2007, as part of a mission - and often at great personal sacrifice - to help maximize the number of at-risk youth making the best decisions they can.

Through mentoring and tutoring, we volunteers, staff, and donors at T/MC give to those in need every day...

Our efforts supplement the barrage of negative news we get about economy and crime - with solutions - working to guide at-risk and marginalized, yet able and willing students (some of whom may be otherwise lured to the streets, and many of whom simply need a little extra attention) so that they aren't everyone's problem later.

Our maps are designed to help politicians, faith-based, and other community leaders locate areas where these students live, and then build tutor/mentor facilities to help the kids onto paths that lead to college and career, versus welfare and crime.

As an added bonus to you, through our community service, T/MC maps support strategies that can work toward improving everyone's general safety, while fighting the cost of unemployment and poverty to taxpayers of all backgrounds everywhere.

Like all Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), we rely on continued support and contribution from the community. Thanks to everyone who has supported these efforts in the past. I hate to have to continually raise funds, but with NPO donations at a 20-year low, many services like ours are threatened to disappear now more than ever. And I think you'll agree, especially after reading those links above, if we aren't making an effort to uplift children from families in poverty, who will? And what will be the cost to us all if we fail?

Please click on the links above again to see what's at stake, and feel free to take a look at the overview/history of these maps if interested, and then...

Please consider a small tax-deductible donation to this important charity this holiday season, to help this work continue into 2011.

===============================

We at Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) have spent the past several years using maps to identify and analyze areas of our city where support for at-risk youth needs to grow, in order to make our students brighter, our workforce stronger, and our streets safer.

We operate on a non-profit budget and rely on donations and charity to continue our work, using state-of-the-art GIS technologies in support of our community-based mission.

Note: since 2011 the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been operated by Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. While this is not a tax exempt organization, it still depends on contributions to continue this work. Please consider a small donation this holiday season.

5 minutes to a "Transformative Impact" on students' lives - and your community

Apologies that it's been a couple weeks since I've checked in. So many exciting things happening. I spoke at a national gathering of tutor/mentor thinkers... I continue to produce the 2010 Tutor/Mentor Jam - a music benefit this August at Darkroom (details coming very soon)... I demoed the video game kids made with me at Cabrini Connections Tech Club, where I volunteer each week... and I'm pumping out maps as fast as I can, to help our local leaders and thinkers visualize the data they need to continue building support for our students... all with a backdrop of escalating crime and a suffering economy. Click on the map below to see for yourself.


As the school year ends, I bask in the good vibes received at the Tutor/Mentor Conference from all the people there who told me they use my maps to help their programs fight crime, workforce woes, underprepared students, and other social side-effects of poverty... each of which eventually trickle into tax-payers' laps.

And I reflect back on the strides I've made this year building quality maps like the ones here - all on a non-profit budget and 20-hr week. (Don't forget - we can produce maps like these for you and your strategic needs. Contact me for pricing!)


The celebration ends there. As the blue map above shows, there simply are not enough programs in Chicagoland to help prepare the thousands of at-risk soon-to-be-adults that attend our overwhelmed school system.

And while we at Tutor/Mentor Connection struggle to scratch the surface of this problem, it's becoming more and more disheartening that the people I talk to - people who share these concerns and cheer us on, patting us on the back every day... just as quickly disappear back into their daily grind - ending their commitment to this shared cause with a high five, a handshake, and a "good luck!"

We need to do this together if we have any chance of success. Each of you who shudder at crime, graduation stats, and our growing taxes... each of you can help fight with us by spending a mere 5 minutes - either to cut a tax-deductible check yourself, or to shoot a quick email to those in your networks with the ability to put us in the ear of someone who can cut that check.

If you don't want to take Tangela Smith Marlow's word for it (a highly successful professional, mother, and alumnus of Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Program, who proclaimed that the program had a "transformative impact" on her life just last week)...

You only have to look backward through this Mapping For Justice blog, Dan's blog, Nicole, El, and Bradley's blogs to find other case-studies and reports that explain why you and your overworked, overstressed, and overtaxed friends should care about mentoring at-risk youth - and how you can mobilize your network in support of our students and our collective future via tutor/mentor programs.