Where Tutor/Mentor Orgs Needed-based on indicators

This map is a screen shot from the Community Commons resource center. The map shows census tracts where a high number of Hispanic residents have not received a high school diploma.  The areas with the darkest red are tracts with 200 or more people without a diploma.

If you click this link,  you'll find another map, this one showing 'racial/ethnic diversity. 

On this map I've also turned on Illinois state senate district boundaries, which can be used to hold elected people accountable for what they do to help the people in their district. I've a feature like this built into the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, but the technology on this site is much more sophisticated than on my site. 

I encourage you to browse around the Community Commons map. You can look at other cities. You can zoom in. You can turn on different layers of information. It's a really good data site.

Using maps like this, and maps that show services, like tutor/mentor programs, that might help young people stay in school and get their diplomas, or adult literacy/career education programs that help adults get a GED, or vocational skills training, could show where existing services are located and where more are needed.

Browse articles on this blog, and here and here on the Tutor/Mentor blog that show how I've used maps in stories that are intended to motivate leaders to provide time and resources to support existing programs and/or help new ones grow where they are needed.  Youth, volunteers, business and/or political leaders in any of these areas could be creating similar maps, for the same purpose that I do.

Resources for mapping data

This concept map includes links to some of the data-mapping portals that are described in past articles on this blog.  It will be updated from time to time to add links to new portals as they are discovered.

I seek to be part of a network of data visualization and communications talent who will use this information to create on-going stories that draw more people, dollars and resources to places where the map indicators show extra help is needed. 

If you'd like to sponsor this work, or be part of  it, introduce yourself with a comment, or connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIN or Facebook.

Chicago Most Segregated City in US - Brooking.edu

I included this map from a Brookings.edu article in a story I posted here in May 2015. 

Today I received another article from Brookings,edu, under the headline "The Most American City: Chicago, race and inequality". 

I have started using an annotation tool to highlight and comment on articles like this. Here's the link to the annotated version.  

The writer finises with a comment saying, "The broader tragedy of Baltimore, of Ferguson, of Chicago, is that black and Hispanic Americans in the poorest areas of our cities have such bleak prospects. The danger is that once the media bandwagon has moved on, these structural inequalities will remain."  

The strategies I've launched since 1993, through the Tutor/Mentor Connection, have aimed to keep attention focused on issues like this, even when the media are not paying attention.  Read stories on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog, to see how I've been doing that for the past 10 years. 

Map of high schools in Chicago - Crain's web site

Crain's  has been running a series of articles under the headline of "Five Big Ideas for Chicago's Troubled Schools". Day four article includes an interactive map showing location of different types of high schools, overlaid on poverty demographics. Click on each dot on the map to see the identity of the school, graduation rate, ACT school and number of students enrolled.

Browse the map stories I've posted since 2008 and see how I've been trying to develop an interactive mapping platform that supports leadership planning and volunteer involvement.  I keep looking for partners and volunteers to help me keep my sites working, and to  upgrade them and teach more people to use them.

Analysis of Nonprofit Technology Funding

The Foundation Center has been doing some amazing analysis of philanthropic giving. This article talks about funding of technology for non profits that focus on democracy. 

Use Interactive Map to Understand Flow of On-Line Donations to Different Zip Codes

I've just been introduced to a web page hosted by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which hosts an interactive map that you can use to look at donations made in different cities, and/or different zip codes within a city, to charities in different categories. Here is the link.

I zoomed into the Chicago region, then clicked on different zip codes. For instance, when I click on zip code 60623, the Lawndale area of Chicago, I see $500 in human services donations and $465 in youth development donations.  The map below shows that the North Lawndale area has 4717 youth between age of 6 and 17 living in high poverty.  $465 in donations do not pay for many tutor/mentor programs for that many kids. 

The 60657 zip code, located along the Chicago LakeShore, between Irving Park Ave and Diversey Ave,  shows $30,173 in donations for youth development programs and $110,105 for human services programs.  Look at the map on page 7 of this presentation.  It shows that there less than 650 youth, age 6 to 17, living in the 60657 zip code, representing a low percent of all the youth age 6-17 in the zip code. My maps plot the number of youth by community area. Thus you'd need to look at this zip code map to know which zip codes cover which community areas. 

Keep in mind, this only shows one source of donations, so I'm hopeful that there are more funds going into high poverty zip codes than this platform might show. What I'm interested in is the potential to gather information on philanthropic and government funding from many sources, and focus it on individual zip codes, and individual categories of non profits, and then teaching people to use this data to tell stories that help improve support of organizations in high poverty areas.  

Last week I posted a story on the Tutor/Mentor blog, following the high profile shootings of a 9-year-old boy and a 20-year-old girls. In that story I showed maps of political districts, illustrating that preventing youth violence was the responsibility of many layers of government. Take a look. 

My goal is to teach leaders, volunteers, youth and community activists in different neighborhoods to create their own map stories, following my examples, and using platforms like the Chronicle of Philanthropy to show how poverty neighborhoods are under funded by government and philanthropy, and to work together to try to change this over a period of years and constant story telling.

I feel that more people, with diverse talents that are  much more creative than mine, are publishing these map-stories on a regular basis, we'll begin to influence a better distribution of resources into all poverty neighborhoods, and thus the growth of more and better programs helping young people and families overcome the challenges of poverty.

If you're creating such stories, share your link. If you'd like me to give a talk or coach you to take this role, I'm available for a small fee.

2-27-2017 update - the links to the Chronicle of Philanthropy site no longer work. I'm not sure if they have discontinued the site, or not. If it's been discontinued, that would be too bad. It shows how difficult it is to build and maintain data mapping.