Does Your Elected Representative Have a Map Gallery on Her Web Site?

Yesterday I received an email newsletter from Spotlight on Poverty that featured an interview with Dwight Evans of the 2nd Pennsylvania Congressional District. It mentioned that he hosts maps on his web site and I did some digging and interaction with Rep. Evans on Twitter, to find the link.

Below is a screen shot of his map gallery page, with a screen shot of the ESRI map that you get when you click on one of the map icons in his gallery.  (2-3-2020 Note: the link to the Map Gallery now is here)

If you spend some time on this blog you can read articles posted since 2008 encouraging Chicago and Illinois politicians to  use maps strategically to show where non-school, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed in their district, who is already there providing these services (and who often need help themselves), and places where the incumbent has delivered needed support. That could be dollars, volunteers, attention, partners, or all of these.

My past articles and the maps the Tutor/Mentor Connection created are intended to inspire and serve as templates for work others could be doing in many other places.  Click here, here, and here to see a collection of articles.

While I focus on helping youth tutor/mentor programs grow, the map platforms and articles that I point to show many indicators of need and could be used to help a wide range of service providers....a comprehensive system of support....be available in different map areas.

My father's family is from Philadelphia and I've many siblings, nieces and nephews living there, so I hope Rep. Evans and others will take a look at what I've suggested, and that they will send me links to pages on their web sites where they host map galleries and blog articles showing their use of maps.

At the same time, this use of maps should be happening in Chicago, Illinois, every US state and in every big city in the world.

However, I can't influence what happens in most of these places because I don't live there. However, there's a strategy that you can follow.

Last Tuesday the weekly ChiHackNight featured Judy Hertz, Executive Director of Midwest Academy She gave an introduction a power analysis, planning and community organizing strategy that I think many could benefit from using.

Browse the #ChiHackNight tweets from Tuesday, April 17, and you can see photos and comments from here presentation. Here's the video from Tuesday's session.


If you do the research and follow her recommendations, you can help people in every district figure out ways to influence people in power. It's a process. It takes work. The maps can help.

If your elected representative is using maps the way I'm suggesting and hosts a map gallery on his/her web site, send me your examples and I'll add them as updates to this article.

2/25/2019 update - Crime in the 25th Ward - this analysis was produced buy Troy Hernandez, a candidate for Alderman in the 25th Ward of Chicago.  Not every politician is a data scientist, but each should have someone working with them who can provide this type of analysis to inform the voters in their district and to guide public policy decisions.

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

Mapping Philanthropy - Combining data

For the past few years I've been using this blog to highlight mapping platforms hosted by others, in addition to showing how GIS maps and concept maps can be used to communicate ideas and mobilize resources.

Today I read an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that used two different data sources to create a map showing different levels of philanthropic giving in every county in the USA. One set of data came from a How America Gives map, created by The Chronicle. The second map, was created by the Opportunity Index. By combining data from both maps, a more comprehensive picture of giving was created. Visit the site and read the full story. Share with your friends on social media so more people take a look at this.

As you look at these maps, look for ways to recruit teams of students, volunteers and professionals who will create map stories that focus attention on specific neighborhoods of where the need for philanthropic support is greatest. In the Tutor/Mentor Connection Map Gallery, we've posted some map-stories created in past years, as examples of the type of stories that need to be written over, and over, by many different people, but for the common purpose of generating more consistent, on-going and flexible support for volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and learning programs operating in different neighborhoods of Chicago and other cities around the country (world).

Community Mapping Benefits

"Community mapping can be an extremely useful tool to build the capacity of nonprofits to effectively engage in policy advocacy. Mapping holds vast potential for advocacy because of the power of maps to both analyze and communicate complex information and relationships." That's a quote from this Policy Link report titled "Community Mapping for Health Equity Advocacy".

I've been trying to build this type of mapping capacity for nearly 20 years. This map shows how we can create maps showing political districts and share them as part of advocacy and capacity building. It's one of many maps that you can see in this blog and in many articles on the Tutor/Mentor Institute Blog, PDF Essays I've created, and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site. I encourage you to read through the Policy Link report and browse this site to learn more about ways maps and visualizations can be used.

Map Gallery: Congressman Gutierrez Endorses Gery Chico for Chicago Mayor

Gery Chico - Running For Mayor

“Each community provides unique opportunities for partnerships that can enhance our children’s education..” - Gery Chico

(Part 12 of T/MC's "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

This past week, influential Chicago politician Luis Gutierrez, a US Representative whose district is featured on this first map (click to enlarge) came forward and endorsed Gery Chico in the race for Chicago’s next mayor.

Lately, I’ve been publishing an series of maps that we at Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) made, featuring political boundaries in Chicago.

Of course, we at T/MC do not endorse specific candidates. We simply wish to showcase how T/MC can customize a map to analyze the distribution of tutor/mentor services in any given region (in this case, a political district), and how we can also provide a birds-eye view of neighboring community assets for local leaders (in this case, for the next mayor of Chicago).

We will also suggest, looking at each candidate’s personal platform and concerns (so far we have also looked at Carol Moseley Braun), that each candidate should have an interest in either supporting mentoring through direct action, or at the very least should be using their influence to tell their constituents how mentoring can supplement their efforts to address the issues they promise to tackle. This leadership might then steer other community leaders, volunteers, donors, and parents to these vital non-profit services in an economy where such services are at more risk than ever of disappearing.

It's not hard to find examples of how mentoring supplements the work an elected leader needs to do. For instance, Gery Chico tells us that, “residents with jobs means safer and more prosperous neighborhoods, tax dollars saved from less social services and additional city revenue as more people spend money, buy homes and earn income. The impact of each new job ripples outward through the economy, creating secondary and additional benefits.” To this end, Chico desires to “work with business partners to build technical and career programs that prepare students with the technical and occupational skills they need to find good employment.”

We have a database of over 200 tutor/mentor facilities that are already in place, working toward this same goal, and I have written on this blog about how mentoring can bolster our workforce by helping students choose books and careers over less desirable paths.

On education, Chico states that, “without an effective school system we cannot prepare kids to compete in the global economy, or provide the labor force that will attract good companies to locate in our great city.” His “Ready by Five” initiative seeks to ensure that “every child is prepared to learn and succeed by the time he or she reaches kindergarten.” He also wants to “create a Parent Academy for every school” that will help parents who “lack the resources and knowledge to effectively help their children succeed” learn those skils.

These are great ideas that can be supplemented by mentor-student relationships that help kids who are "ready by five" stay the course toward globally competitive careers, while helping these same young adults achieve the academic and vocational success that will support their ability as the next generation of parents to effectively help their children succeed as well.

On the issue of crime and safety, Chico lists several ways he might make schools themselves safer, but I suspect he might also be interested in learning how a mentoring program in a high-crime neighborhood like Englewood could help its young men stay out of trouble, graduate, and enroll in four-year colleges at an unprecedented rate. He might then explore how similar mentoring programs might improve the well-being of students (and adults) in every neighborhood.

Chico is an advocate of community-level “partnerships that can enhance our children’s education” and promises to "partner with foundations, community groups, museums, government institutions, etc. to bring innovative and diverse programs and learning opportunities to our schools."

Perhaps he and the other candidates - whether they become mayor or not - are already exploring how partnerships with established mentoring programs can supplement their efforts to achieve their vision of a prosperous, safe, and educated Chicago.

Map Gallery: Danny Davis drops out of Chicago mayor’s race, endorses Braun

Carol Moseley Braun - Running For Mayor

“We can’t have a city divided or a people divided...We must make sure Chicago’s future is brighter.” - Carol Moseley Braun

(Part 11 of T/MC's "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

U.S. Congressman Danny Davis and Reverend Senator James Meeks have pulled out of Chicago’s mayor’s race, and are now endorsing Carol Moseley Braun, in the upcoming battle for Chicago’s top boss. Their collective battle cry revolves around “unity.” I can only hope "unity" is a policy-related concept, as much as it may be useful in consolidating votes.

At our map gallery in November, we featured maps that provide birds-eye views of Congressman Davis’s district, as well as Senator Meeks’s district, in an attempt to show how Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) maps could help Chicago’s next mayor -whomever it may be - become better equipped to address voter concerns such as education, crime, and economic challenges.

(These gallery maps are only samples by the way, and similar maps showing relationships among community resources - or lack thereof - could be easily be customized to the specific needs of any elected official or community leader. )

Carol Moseley Braun, as Chicago’s next mayor, would obviously face the same challenges as Davis and Meeks. Using a map similar to the Davis map above (click to enlarge), she too might visualize where businesses and other community resources such as hospitals and colleges are operating, in relation to poverty and existing support systems for at-risk youth (such as tutor/mentor facilities). She could then allocate resources, or facilitate unity among community leaders, as she sees necessary.

She might also notice where highways cut through the city, in relation to poverty and poorly-performing schools, and perhaps encourage commuters interested in "service" to become active in student-focused programs, thereby uniting volunteers from relative wealth and success with intercity youth who might not otherwise have mentors in their lives that can provide strong career paths.

Like Meeks, Braun might use maps to visualize and unite our faith community, in areas where students live, and then build tutor/mentor facilities to help local youth onto paths that lead to college and career, versus welfare and crime.

Maps can show relationships among school performance, crime, and all of the aforementioned resources as well. Braun’s platform and political track record show that education and public safety are serious concerns of hers, recognizing that “kids should be able to expect a quality education in their own neighborhood... [which] will take involvement from parents, teachers, our community and our government,” that the “best way to stimulate economic and educational development is to keep people safe," and that "it will take a mayor with diplomatic, coalition building expertise to bring together the resources Chicago needs to protect its neighborhoods.”

As a long-time resident of Hyde Park, an island of academic and business wealth in an area of the south side of Chicago that is relatively impoverished and crime-ridden, she has first-hand concerns that the recently reported drop in violence might be misleading, and reminds us that crime is still a serious problem, before offering a message of hope, that violent crime “is not insurmountable. This is something we can do something about."

She cites mentoring programs as part of the solution.

Perhaps she is using maps to help her visualize where these mentoring programs might be needed most. And then uniting resources the maps show are available to help build great programs all over the city.

(I should mention that these maps are not intended to show where service work is, or is not occurring. They are also not meant to endorse, or criticize elected leaders. The voters should make those decisions.)

Running For Mayor: State Senator James Meeks

Helping Local Politicians Support Tutor/Mentor Programs

"Our goal is to make sure every third-grader is reading at a third-grade level." - State Sen. James Meeks

(Part 5 of T/MC's 2010 "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

Maps can be used by elected leaders to help quality youth programs grow in all parts of their districts. My last blog showed an overview of Chicago's wards and incumbant aldermen. More on city council later.

Today, I would like to zoom in on a particular district, Illinois Senate 15th, currently represented by Reverend James Meeks, who just happens to be running for Chicago Mayor in the coming election.

When Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) makes maps that zoom into a neighborhood or district, we can reveal points of interest - community assets - that can be used to support or build tutor/mentor programs, in an effort to ensure that the third graders to whom senator Meeks refers in the quote above, do in fact receive the scholastic and decision-making foundation needed to remain interested and successful in school and beyond.

Today, I am featuring a map (click to enlarge) from our recent map gallery that shows a thematic overlap between our politicial strategies, and our faith-based strategies featured in Part 2 of this "map gallery" series.

As always, in today's map I show areas of high poverty and schools that are not meeting state and CPS standards, in relation to known tutor/mentor programs. Remember, the capacity of each of these programs on the map is far less than the enrollment of each of the overwhelmed and underachieving schools shown. With this in mind, ask yourself whether we need to build more programs to supplement the efforts of schools and parents, to make sure at-risk students stay on track for long-term academic and vocational success. Then ask yourself where these might be needed.

This particular map reveals a selection of Christian faith-based assets that might take the lead in making this growth happen. Since we are featuring Mayoral candidate Meeks, the map features Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, which Reverend Meeks founded, where he worked as pastor, and where he remains a spiritual leader - not only for Salem Baptist's 24,000 followers, but also for the dozens of other Baptist congregations in his political district, represented here by dark blue crosses.

Tutor/Mentor Exchange has a document called How Faith Communities Can Lead Volunteer Mobilization For Tutor/Mentor Programs, detailing how a spiritual leader like Meeks "can be delivering sermons on a regular basis, that tie scripture and service, and point members to tutor/mentor programs that already exist, or to neighborhoods, where new programs need to be created."

Perhaps Senator Meeks can use his influence (spiritual and political) to lead other denominations in his district as well. Non-Baptist Christians on this map are represented by light red crosses. Each of these locations represent additional sites where congregations can meet to learn about tutoring and mentoring, and where church leaders can evangelize to get donors to contribute to the growth of programs.

Reverend and Senator (and perhaps Mayor) Meeks is no stranger to the wisdom of mentoring. While he is probably more famous for speaking out on the problems created by inequalities in the education of our students, he has also taken action, having initiated a mentoring program called “It Takes a Village,” to provide support and assistance to pregnant youth and young mothers. We still do not have this program in our Program Locator, and would love to work with Senator Meeks to build new programs for the students in his district where our maps suggest a need.

(I should mention that these maps are not intended to show where service work is, or is not occurring. They are also not meant to endorse, or criticize elected leaders. The voters should make those decisions.)

If you feel T/MC technologies are important...

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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.

Please consider a small tax-deductible donation to this important charity this holiday season.

Maps Make Elected Leaders More Effective

Helping Local Politicians Support Tutor/Mentor Programs

"All adults share this responsibility, whether it's teaching...lessons to their own children or someone else's. It starts with parents but it continues with others: teachers, coaches, mentors and friends." - Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education

(Part 4 of T/MC's 2010 "Mapping Solutions" online gallery)

The last couple blogs in this series have focused on how faith-based leaders can point members of their congregations to programs that supplement the work parents and schools do to help students make better life decisions, get better grades, and ultimately contribute to our economy and society in positive ways.

Maps can also be used by elected leaders to help quality youth programs grow in all parts of their districts. Today's map shows an overview of Chicago's wards and incumbant aldermen. (Click on the map to find your ward and the alderman that represents you!)

Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) has the mapping technology to zoom in on any of these districts, to provide a detailed birds-eye view of business, faith, and other community resources like colleges and hospitals, that can rally together to provide a little extra help for local students.

With a T/MC map in hand (we can customize map views for any political district, zip code, neighborhood, etc.) and ready-to-use T/MC strategies to serve as a starting point, political leaders with a vested interest in building new support for our kids can take a more focused and organized lead in supporting tutor/mentor programs in their districts.

Check back tomorrow to see an example of how T/MC maps can zoom into political districts to reveal what's inside!

And if you feel this technology is important...

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

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.

Please consider a small tax-deductible donation to this important charity this holiday season.