Learning, network building and innovation

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. 

Maps that should be part of learning in US schools

In this Vox.com article the author shares sixteen maps that most American's probably don't spend much time thinking or talking about.  I created this montage from the maps in the article.

Pain and suffering throughout the world - how do we respond?

I have been watching the daily news briefs following hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Mexico, along with daily shootings that take lives of young people in Chicago and other cities.  Yesterday I did a search to see if anyone had been mapping locations of natural disasters throughout the world.  I found the map below, showing events in 2014, on this United Nations Disaster Prevention resource page.

This map only shows natural disasters. If wars, terrorism and other man-made disasters were plotted on the map, or added as an overlay, we'd see a lot more pain in some parts of the world, but not much more than what's on the map now, in other parts of the world. If poverty overlays were added, we'd see that much of the man-made and natural disasters hit people hardest in high poverty area. These are areas where people have the fewest resources to rebuild their own lives and communities.

With so many bad things happening, how can anyone find a meaningful way to respond?  I encourage you to visit this article, which I posted over the weekend on the Tutor/Mentor blog. It includes the graphic shown below.

Look at the slanted white line in the middle of this figure-8 graphic.  This represents information, such as the UN Disaster Prevention site, or the Tutor/Mentor web library, which people can use to learn more about any of these problems, learn what some people are doing in different places to solve the problem, and find places where they might get involved with time, talent and dollars.  It also represents the role of intermediaries, who help people connect with this information and  help them  understand how to apply it.

I first used this ENOUGH list in 2007 after seeing a newspaper headline following a shooting in Chicago, where a talking head said "Enough is Enough".  This is a list of steps anyone can follow to become involved.

A couple of months ago I updated it in a video that you can find here.  The first step is educate yourself, and the second is educate your network. Use the information made available by myself an others to know more about some of these problems and to find ways to use your time, talent and dollars to become part of the solution.

Related article: "I'm up to my neck in alligators. How do I drain the swamp"  click here

I've never claimed to have the solution to any of these problems. I only offer a learning path that might lead to solutions if more people begin to use it.  Want to connect with me? Visit this page to see social media pages where you can find me.

Update 7-4- 2018 - network analysis showing migration patterns around the world. click here

Update 2-20-2019 - Migration Policy Institute site is an in-depth resource for information about this crisis. Click here

Update 3-4-2018 - "The 10 shocking humanitarian crises you probably haven't heard of" - plenty of pain throughout the world. click here

Update 3-13/2019 - Visit this #investinhumanity page on Twitter and be reminded of the many places in the world where there is daily pain and suffering.

Update 12-11/2021 - Global Conflicts in 2021 - click here

Building a "Fellowship" on the Web.

Last week I posted this article, with a TED talk presented by Steve Whitla, based in the UK.  Today Steve sent me a Tweet, pointing me to a thoughtful article he'd written, in response to my article. He focused on the three challenges I'd offered in my article, and expanded on them from his own perspective.

I  hope you'll take time to read it.

1)  Challenges of Making Maps - Steve recognizes a truth that I've understood for many years.  In the past I've had people question the value of the maps I've created, saying people in poor areas don't have access to the technology to view the maps. I said, "I know.  I'm trying to reach the people who don't live in poor areas who have the resources to make technology and access to my maps available to people in poor neighborhoods, and who will help me collect the data, build the maps, and train people to use them."  In Steve's article these would be the "Gentry" who supported map-making in the middle ages.

2) The Challenge of Motivating Growing Numbers of People to look at the maps.  I love the reference to Bilbo, from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I've read the series several times.  My graphic above draws from another fantasy series, the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. In both books a small group of people band together to save the world.  In both books the 'hero' was a reluctant 'hero'.  I never sought the role I'm in. It grew on me over many years.   In Steve's article, he focuses on the 5% of people in an organization who might already be interested in an idea.  My efforts have focused on the same 5%, or even 1%, of people in the world who might be interested in the work I'm doing. That's like looking for a needle in the universe!  Yet, that's how I connected with Steve.

I created this concept map to show the different skills and networks I'm trying to bring into my fellowship.  I first used the Wheel of Time graphic in 2011, in this article.

3) The Role of Network Builder, Facilitator and Teacher.  In Steve's article he writes "If we're all looking a the same map, then we have a much more meaningful conversation."  That's what I think, too, but it takes us back to Challenge 1 and Challenge 2.

I've used this pyramid graphic often since the mid 1990s, such as in this article.  I've created a library of concept maps, that support the GIS maps. Steve's blog is full of visualizations.  If more people spend time trying to understand these, when we get together we are closer to a common frame of reference.

In my case, I feel that we all want kids to go safely through school and enter jobs and careers as contributing members of society. However, if someone is not doing the work at the bottom of the pyramid, of creating a map-based information system, it's hard to have a 'meaningful conversation' about actions each of us needs to take to make that support system available in all places where kids need extra help.

If people are not motivated to spend time looking at these articles, and our maps, our meetings lack the common understanding and frame of reference needed. Back to Challenge 2.

Final Challenge - Remaining Neutral - Steve added this since I did not mention it in my original article.  I think that if the data on the maps is accurate, anyone can use the map to develop strategies that support a common vision.  In articles on this blog I point to many data platforms, not just the interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and maps the Tutor/Mentor Connection has created. Keeping the maps updated and accurate goes back to Challenge 1, which is finding the talent and resources to do this.

Another Challenge - Overcoming "Not Invented Here".  Over the 24 years that I've been doing this work, too many have started their own "fellowships", drawing support from political, business and civic leaders. Too few, like almost none, have reached out to say "What can I learn from your experiences? Or, "How can I help you?"   Here's one of several articles that focus on this challenge.

One more. It seems to me that Steve is writing about challenges within organizations, where there are many different power bases and hidden agendas. I'm writing about the challenge of mobilizing people from many different organizations and sectors of society - the village of people who need to take roles in raising kids and helping them move to productive adult lives.  They also have power bases and hidden agendas. They don't have the structure, and pay check, provided by corporations, which offer some motivation for people to work together.

That makes this even more difficult.

I can't express how pleased I was that Steve took time to read my original article and reflect on it on his blog. I've encouraged others to do the same, and created this concept map as a way to connect those people and their articles with each other.  I added a link to Steve's blog today.   In some ways, the people I point to are "companions" who I've been able to attract and connect in my own on-going efforts to have a positive impact on the world I live in.

I invite other readers to join us.

Building Youth Support System - Role of Libraries, Hospitals

If you browse articles posted on this blog since 2008, and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog since 2005,  you'll see maps used to show areas of Chicago and other cities where youth and families need a wide range of extra support to help young people move through school and into adult lives free of poverty.

In many of these articles I focus on the proactive role that business, philanthropy, hospitals and other anchor organizations can take. In this article I'm going to illustrate this strategy, focusing on libraries and hospitals.

I'm using the New York City Public Library system as my example.

The map at the right shows locations of New York City Public Libraries. Click here to visit the site and zoom in on the map.  As with most cities, libraries are spread throughout the city.

This summer I connected with a New York City organization called IntegrateNYC4me, which engages young people in communication information about school segregation in New York City Public Schools. Here's the Research Page of their web site.  Below is a copy of their map, showing segregated schools in NYC.

This map showing segregated schools in NYC is no longer on the original web site

I zoomed in on both maps, focusing on an area where there are a large number of segregated schools. Below are two maps showing the area between 125th St and 175th Street.  The map on the left s hows libraries in the area and the map on the right shows highly segregated public schools in the same area.

Segregated schools map no longer available

Students at each school in this map area could be building map views like this. They could do neighborhood research to learn about non school tutor/mentor programs located within a 1 mile (or half mile) radius of each library, then adding that information to the map, as I do with the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator Interactive map.  Such maps could also show other assets in the area, such as businesses, banks, faith groups, hospitals, colleges, etc., as well as political leaders who represent the area. This Asset Map section of the Program Locator enables users to build map views showing indicators of need, locations of existing tutor/mentor programs, and assets within the same map-area. (note - the Program Locator has not been funded since 2010, thus serves as a model for this example).

Each library could be partnering with youth groups, and volunteers from area businesses and/or colleges, to create maps and share this information, and to host meetings, to discuss the availability of non-school learning supports, or other resources, that would help kids in neighboring schools have better learning opportunities.   Such meetings can focus on information in the library, that shows the impact of poverty and segregation on the neighborhood and the wider NYC region, as well as information in web libraries like the one created by the T/MC since the early 1990s.  

ICONS placed on the library map and on the schools map could show which libraries have such a program in place. I put circles on the map above, to illustrate this.

Over a two to three period each library should have a program in place to fill the library neighborhood with rich learning resources. Foundations and government offices should have maps on their own web sites, showing where they are funding and supporting such efforts!  Maps in local media should be showing the growth of these efforts in high poverty areas, just as frequently as they show maps with the number of homicides in a city.

Students working with this project could also learn to do evaluation and recognition mapping. 
The map at the right shows people who attended a Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago, with different icons showing the affiliation of the participant. The goal is that such events bring all of the stake-holders from the map area into on-going efforts that lead to more and better youth serving organizations in the area around every public library that operates in a poverty areas, or one with highly segregated and poorly resourced schools.

Putting participation information on the map is one task. Creating blog articles, media stories, podcasts and videos to give positive recognition to those who are involved in this effort is a second set of necessary actions.

Students, at the high school or college level, even Jr. High School level, could even be writing up process and "how we did it" reports, as part of on-going learning, and could be sharing strategies from one library-neighborhood with others, in NYC and in other cities, via cMOOCs organized around the Connected Learning (#clmooc) format. 

Here are a few more maps that illustrate this thinking: First is a map showing Brooklyn, NY public libraries and segregated schools. The map of all Brooklyn, NYC libraries can be found here.

This map shows locations of Chicago Public Libraries, with insets showing libraries on the South Side of Chicago.   The same process I describe for NYC could be taking place in Chicago and every other city with areas of highly concentrated, segregated poverty.  

The map below shows the location of Sinai Hospital, on Chicago's West side, within the 9th Illinois State Representative District. It's from a series of stories written in 2009 to show the role this hospital, or others in the map-area, could take to help mentor-rich programs grow in the areas surrounding it.

Another article showing Sinai Hospital, and a strategy that can fill the surrounding neighborhood with mentor-rich programs, can be found here.  An article showing how youth could use maps in stories following media coverage of violence in a neighborhood, can be found here.

Anyone can duplicate the stories I write. Most can do it better! Do it!

Teams of youth and volunteers, working with modern GIS technologies, can create similar map collections, showing indicators of need for extra help, and showing organizations already operating in the map-area, offering various forms of  help, and showing assets who could be providing more consistent help, since they also are part of the map-area.  This presentation shows how to use platforms like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, to create  your own map stories.

Maps created by the Tutor/Mentor Connection from 1994-2011, do not focus on libraries, police stations, fire stations or other anchor organizations, but these are all institutions spread throughout a city, which could be leading community mapping and mobilization efforts intending to make their district the safest and best place to live, work and raise families.

If you'd like to explore these ideas further, let's connect. If you're already doing this, share your blog or web site address in the comment section below or on Twitter or Facebook.

If you'd like to sponsor the Program Locator and help the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC rebuild it's mapping capacity, visit this page.

March 2017 update - this web site includes maps showing segregated schools in NYC

Feb. 2019 update - this site in NY Times enables you to look at segregation for NYC and other cities

Feb. 2019 update - this Center for NYC Affairs site has maps showing segregation in NYC and can be used to do the analysis shown above. click here

Holding Systems Accountable for Violence Prevention - Use of Maps

I attended the quarterly meeting of Strengthening Chicago's Youth today at Lurie Hospital in Chicago, along with about 100 other people. The focus of the event was on "Holding Systems Accountable for Violence Prevention".  Following a panel discussion breakout sessions looked for ideas about holding systems accountable. Part of that included defining what we mean by "systems" and "accountability".  SCY is compiling the notes from the event and will post them on their web site. When that is available I'll update this link.

To me "systems" are the various institutions who occupy space in a geographic area, such as the Chicago region, or smaller segments, such as community areas on the West or South side of Chicago, where high poverty contributes to greater levels of violence.

Accountability, is what institutions and individuals do to "look in their own mirror" and say, "What have I done today with my time, talent, wealth, status, etc. to bring needed violence prevention services to the neighborhoods where I have a reason to be involved?"

Holding political leaders accountable means, there is some way of knowing what they do to help their district overcome violence, and there is a voter turnout to elect, or re-elect, representatives who actually demonstrate consistent actions intended to reduce violence in their district.

A while back I created the presentation shown below, and posted it in this article on the Tutor/Mentor blog. I hope you'll look at it. I hope that people in different sections of Chicago, and in other cities, will create their own versions of this, share it on their blogs, and then encourage others who should be involved, to share the presentation so it reaches a larger percent of people in the region.

Violence in Chicago: Where Will We Be in 10 Years? by Daniel F. Bassill

This is one of many strategy presentations I've posted on my web sites, blogs and platforms like Scribd. Below is an image from another presentation, which describes four concurrent strategies that I feel must be happening in order to create the change we want to see in our communities.

The articles on my website, the SCY-Chicago web site, and on sites I point to from my web library, represent ideas people can use to build collaborations and solve complex problems. However, if we don't find ways to tell millions of people these ideas are available to them, too few will find them,  understand them, and act upon them. Since the social sector and individual citizens don't have the millions of dollars that corporate advertisers use to draw customers to their products, services and stores, or the billions that political campaigns spend in every election cycle, we need to find other ways to draw daily attention to these ideas.

That means you need to share this and other articles I and others are writing, on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and in your weekly Sunday School meeting.  It means you need to create similar presentations, showing your own "theory of change" and "problem solving strategy" and post it on your own blog or web site.

You need to follow me and each other. We need to create attention even when the story is not on the front page of the local newspaper.

At the end of each day, look in your mirror, and check off the things you did to make change happen.

NOTE: On Feb. 4. I posted an update to this on the Tutor/Mentor blog.

Poverty growing in cities. New report.

My Twitter feed brought this article to my attention. It's titled "More People Living in High-Poverty Neighborhoods, Researcher Says" Open this link to find the full report, by by Paul Jargowsky, a fellow at the nonprofit Century Foundation.

I share this with the goal that people who find this blog will forward the articles to people in their own networks, and will lead on-going discussions of the information, so more people become informed and involved in reducing poverty and inequality in the US and around the world.

Big City Poverty - Baltimore not Alone.

This image is from this Brookings report article, titled "Good fortune, dire poverty, and inequality in Baltimore: An American story".

It shows that the conditions of inequality and concentrated poverty that contributed to the Baltimore riots this spring are present in many major US cities. To me, this means each city should have a Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy, which is outlined in the concept maps shared in articles on this blog, and on pages of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.

This map shows a long-term commitment every leader in a city needs to adopt, and demonstrate in their actions. If you follow the lines on the concept map, the line in the center points to this four-part strategy, which supports the involvement of leaders with information they can use to reach youth and families in all high poverty areas of any city.

High Profile Killings since 1984. Civic Institutions Structural Failure.

Today's Chicago Tribune included a perspective written by Dan Profit, a talk show host on WLS 890. It started with listing the high profile deaths of Chicago youth like Ben Wilson (1984) then jumped to Derrion Albert (2009), Hadiya Pendleton (2013) and Demario Bailey (2014), then said "These are children in Chicago whose gruesome deaths give life to the dreary body-count headlines that bleed over from one day to the next."

The article focused on how media attention is short-lived, and concluded with "In short, Chicago's civic institutions are structural failures. City government has failed. CPS has failed. The Police Department has failed. Nearly everything we have tried has failed." He writes, " We need to contemplate and debate deep, transformative, difficult changes."

I've highlighted these same stories since the early 1990s. There were quite a few high profile stories between Ben Wilson in 1984 and Derrion Albert in 2009.

Since 1993 I've offered a strategy, that if it had been embraced and followed over the past 20 years, would have resulted in a stronger network of tutoring, mentoring, learning and career development programs in all high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago, engaging people from all parts of the region in an on-going effort to make such programs available and help them each become the best at transforming lives of youth and adult participants. This story in the 1995 Chicago Tribune is one of many that give evidence that such a plan existed.

As the Internet has become a tool I've moved my ideas and resources to web sites. Since late October 2014 I've shown concept maps that visualize the strategy and point to the information available in the library.

In 2011 I set up a conversation thread on Debategraph where we start with the topic "Helping kids in poverty move to jobs and careers". This is a platform where the conversation is broken down into sub topics, and then sub-sub topics and is intended to engage large numbers of people. In blog articles on the Tutor/Mentor Institute site I've pointed to additional tools that can support community-based problem solving.

The central tenets of the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy are outline here and here and here.
Better information, including maps showing locations of existing programs needed to help youth move from one grade to the next, is essential. There's a cost to collecting, maintaining and constantly updating this information. However, without more people looking at the information it has little value. Since non-profits don't have advertising dollars to reach out every day to millions of people, other strategies need to do this work. I've collected news clips of hundreds of media stories. Few, if any, point readers to resource directories where they can find organizations where they can get involved with their time or talent.

More frequent "call to involvement" messages, in traditional, non tradition, business and religious media will bring more people to the type of information I and others share in on-line libraries. However, there also needs to be a process of facilitation, helping people find information they are looking for, understand existing information, and ways to become strategically involved on a personal or organizational level. Church groups have weekly discussions of scripture. The Tribune has a weekly feature highlighting "book clubs". A strategy that encourages people to learn more about poverty, violence, jobs, education, etc. and about places where they can get involved, would result more people building a growing sophistication of where and how they could give time, talent and dollars to help youth move safely through school and into jobs.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to attract consistent support from city leaders to this strategy. Not that I've not shared these ideas in a variety of formats since 1993.

I'll share this article on Twitter, Facebook and other media over the weekend. Hopefully people like Dan Profit will take a look and become an advocate and champion for this strategy. I encourage you to browse this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog, to find more stories like this that you and people in your own network can use to support your own planning and growing involvement.

Mapping Community Health Assessment and Mobilizing Resources

This graphic is a screen shot from the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA)Health Indicators Map Gallery. When you open the site the maps show Atlanta. Just type in Chicago, or your own city, and new maps are created for your city.

With this type of information anyone can be creating stories showing the public where people need extra help, and could also be using resources like the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, to overlay information showing existing service providers in each part of the community.

Throughtout this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog, stories include maps and graphics. These are intended to provide a better understanding of where and why volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed, while motivating people in business, hospitals, universities, faith groups, media and politics to provide the time, talent, dollars and other resources needed by youth serving organizations in these neighborhoods.

In this page I show how interns are integrating our maps and graphics into new media, that reach people in their own networks. Similar visualizations could be created using the maps from this Community Health Needs Assessment web site.

If we teach young people to create these presentations, we teach them to think of all the actions needed to make a social service available in a neighborhood with indicators of high need for services. If they learn to use video, blogs, public presentations and music to attract attention and motivate people to become involved, they learn skills of problem solving and leadership that they can apply for the rest of their lives.

Youth don't need to create the original data and map platforms. They need to be able to tell stories using these data resources.

No General Goes to War Without a Map

I just uploaded this presentation. It's one that I created more than a dozen years ago to illustrate way political, business, faith and community leaders could use maps to build a distribution of k-12 tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities.
 

Place Matters - read the report. View the maps.

This is one page of maps from a report titled: "Place Matters for Health in Cook County."  I wrote about this on the Tutor/Mentor Blog.

In many maps posted on this site in the past few years we've shown how where you live influences what your opportunities are. This report further reinforces this.

This is an issue that should concern everyone in the Chicago region and in other metropolitan areas. Not just from a moral perspective, but from an economic one.

In the Executive Summary of the Place Matters report is this message: "A study released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in 2009 found that direct medical costs associated with health inequities among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans

approached $230 billion between 2003 and 2006. When

indirect costs, such as lowered productivity and lost tax revenue resulting from illness and premature death, were included, the total cost of health inequities exceeded $1.24 trillion".  

If this concerns you form a learning circle in your faith group, college, business and read and discuss the report. No matter where you live on this map you have a role in changing what the map will show in the future.