Invest In Mentoring, Not Guns! For a Safer Tomorrow.

The violence seems to be getting worse this year. This past weekend a jogger was stabbed, young ladies were blindsided by baseball bats for their purses, and more gang violence was reported by Chicago's media. Summer and its annual spike in street violence looms. Everyone is uptight.

Motivated by fear and helplessness, some Chicagoans insist that the city lifts its ban on concealed weapons so we can protect ourselves. The state itself is now considering sending in the national guard.

But before we turn Chicago into a scene from the wild, wild west... shouldn't there be more investment by more leaders in more places, using volunteers and service-minded resources – many of which are already in place - to address the root of this complex problem?

I realize there is potentially no short term relief or solution in sight at this point... this is a mess. But imagine if there had been more investment in, say, mentoring programs for at-risk youth 20 years ago, the parents of kids wielding baseball bats and guns today might have been in a position to make better parenting and life decisions... and they might have had a broader academic skill-set that might have opened new doors for them and their kids. Maybe there would be fewer in poverty today, fewer in jails, and a dent in the number of kids that we taxpayers are now responsible for, as a new generation takes to the streets and starts their own families.

We owe it to ourselves, as part of any comprehensive solution, to start investing a little more in preventative maintenance now, so that our kids have a safer and more tax-friendly Chicago in 20 years.

Start by investing as a sponsor for Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), the hundreds of programs they help support, and the T/MC maps featured on this blog.

(If nothing else, at least invest a few minutes thinking about your network... to help us dig up new friends with access to grants, foundations, or others that take interest in education, community, workforce development, and the wars on poverty, crime, and taxes.)


WHY T/MC? HERE'S WHAT WE DO

At T/MC we continue to build our mapping capacity and look for new innovative ways to explore patterns in data that will be used in long-term strategies to address issues related to education, community, workforce development, and the wars on poverty, crime, and taxes - all through tutoring/mentoring.

Many politicians and business leaders are currently advocating mentoring programs because they show promise in relieving overburdened schools and under-equiped parents in high-poverty neighborhoods... improving the chances that kids will choose college over guns.

While some groups make maps that simply show location and address data for crimes or programs, our system focuses on our in-house database of existing/known mentoring programs, and is able to show relationships alongside poverty, school, crime, business, and other community asset data.

By taking a birds-eye look at a T/MC map, we can expose gaps where new programs are needed, in “high poverty” “at risk” neighborhoods.

We can also show many of the resources in those neighborhoods (places of worship, hospitals, universities, and of course businesses) that are, or might be able to support existing or new non-school programs... to help kids make better life decisions (mentoring) while acquiring new academic skills to better prepare them on their journey toward higher education versus the streets (tutoring).

We can then zoom into a political district or ward, and show business or faith leader where potential allies might exist, providing a wealth of strategy documents (accumulated from over 30 years of T/MC experience) that suit each alliance's specific mentor-program-building strengths.


MENTORING, NOT GUNS

Our maps can make better sense of the violence as well, by supplementing the reporting we get from media outlets.

See, while the media simply reports the crimes, with very little discussion of the core of the problem, or those working hard for long-term solutions to this complex drain on our economy and emotions... we provide maps in static and online/interactive formats (beta version), to analyze and address patterns of poverty, stressed schools, and crime.

In my new series of maps, I provide an example of how we supplement the media's effort to “track” homicides in Chicago this year.

The first map way up at the top of this article, essentially mirrors the “homicide tracker” that the Chicago Red Eye is currently featuring. However my map breaks the homicides into “type,” provides much more location detail, and shows the crimes in relation to poverty data. You might conclude that most of the crimes occur in pockets of extreme poverty and despair...


The second map (just above) addresses potential confusion and misconception that might exist when the public reads, ad nauseam, about teen violence, Chicago Public Schools violence, and gang violence, and then sees a "homicide tracker" that includes all homicides in a city of millions.

When I take the homicide data and select only those murders committed by kids under the age of 21, we see a cleaner picture of where the "at-risk" kids are being lost to the lure of the street. (Click on any of these maps to take a look at a bigger version of each map, by the way). So, what can be done?

We can now look at a map like the third one above which hits our T/MC database and finds all known mentoring programs in proximity to crimes commited by youth. These are programs where you can get involved as volunteer and/or donor, to help meet the needs of all the kids in nearby schools who are seeking help to escape poverty conditions as adults.

We can also look at maps that show younger elementary aged students who will soon be deciding between homework and guns.

And please do not buy into the myths. There are thousands of kids in these neighborhoods that don't shoot people, hate the violence themselves, have huge potential, and have the ambition and work ethic to invest in themselves and their communities if given the chance. RSVP to meet the Cabrini Connections program and its recent college bound graduates if you want to see a few for yourself.

HERE'S WHAT WE NEED

We need a consistent flow of investment in our maps.

We operate on a limited (i.e. no) marketing budget. Most people that need to know we exist still don't know we exist.

We need you to help us fill this marketing and staffing need so we can spread our mapping technology to all the volunteers, donors, and political/business/faith/community leaders who have the power to really make a difference...

For the economic and social well-being of your family and mine...

Please consider a donation, sponsorship, or referral to someone with similar interests and a philanthropic budget.

Ten More Shot Last Night. More Warm Weather Predicted.

I overheard a conversation this morning while taking the Metra, a commuter train I ride daily. Usually the train is full of quiet business men and women, faces buried in laptops and newspapers. But today, two downtown-bound young men were among the hoards of weekend riders coming in from the affluent North Shore to take advantage of an unseasonably warm Friday afternoon in Chicago.

As we approached downtown, one guy surveyed the urban landscape and was reminded of what he saw on the "6 o'clock news." He turned to his pal (with an enthusiasm typically reserved for sharing really great gossip), "Did you hear about that shooting in Chicago this morning?!"

(This map shows the locations of 10 shootings that occurred in three separate high-poverty neighborhoods in the 24 hours between April 1st and 2nd, 2010. The darker shades of red and blue show the highest poverty rates. The green stars show known mixes tutor/mentor programs, in the Tutor/Mentor Connection's database.)

The other man hadn't heard the news, so his buddy continued to fill him with his recollection of the details, "Yeah... someone got shot on 60th and then some more people got shot while the police were there!"

I bit my lip. I knew the story and I knew the neighborhood. And I just want so badly to one day hear strangers discussing a shooting in Chicago within a framework of "my god that's horrible," or even better, "what can we do to help make sure no one else gets killed?"

Should I have intervened at this point, and tried to instigate a discussion about our work here at Tutor/Mentor Connections (T/MC) ... about our strategies and tools, which help build more and better mentor programs for at-risk youth, in hopes that young kids in poor neighborhoods get the decision-making and academic skills needed to sidestep the violence of gangs (whose members are eager to provide alternative forms of "mentorship" to new recruits)?

Should I have noted the research we continuously cite that lays out how the cost of poverty and the escalating crime will continue to affect taxpayers, residents, and tourists everywhere (including the places these guys were coming from), if we don't do something together as a whole?

Maybe I should have. If for no other reason than to make sure they had the numbers right. 6 shot in Englewood near 66th and Ashland. 1 shot near 64th and Ashland, in a separate shooting two blocks away. 1 shot in Bronzeville just to the northeast, in a drive-by. And 2 more shot within a stones throw of the Oak Park Green Line in the Austin area on the West Side.

Ten shootings in the first 24 hours of "nice weather" (quoting the "meteorologist" I saw on the news this morning myself).

But erring on the side of not being counterproductive and freaking out a couple of vacationing strangers, who were otherwise minding their business, I just headed off to work to make that map above. With a hole in my lip.

I mean, I really can't blame people for looking at these crimes as some sort of twisted form of entertainment. With the way most news outlets deliver the information... flashing graphics and dramatic theme music... some hyped-up on-the-scene reporter in front of a parade of police cars, providing almost no detail. It's all presented like a circus.

To be fair, sometimes print publications like The Red Eye actually do dedicate resources to details, tracking and mapping the crimes, like we do at TMC.

However, no one I know maps the crime data in relation to indicators of "at-risk" behavior, like poverty and poorly-performing schools... potential predictors of anger, gangs, and future violence.

It also seems that few news sources direct concerned residents to groups and community assets near the crime... places that are specifically working to make sure kids who see this violence from their front window today become future leaders, instead of new tax-payer burdens on our economy later.

T/MC does this with our maps and strategies.

This distinction is why I hope you click on the map above to get a general sense of where the ten shootings occurred over the past 24 hours, in relation to poverty and known mentor programs. And then share our map technologies with people in your network.

By the way, while you're looking at the map, note there are virtually no mentor programs near the shootings. Navigate my blog, or go to Dan Bassill's blog (a 30-year expert on mentoring) to learn more about why this is a problem.

Then go to Tutor/Mentor Exchange to see reports, strategies, and other links to information you can use to make sense of this and lead others in your network on behalf of mentoring kids.

That last part is vital. Spend a few minutes thinking of people in your network who might want to get involved. We at T/MC in particular, desperately need talent and money to take our not-for-profit technologies to new levels of usefulness in the battle against poverty and crime.

Use the form below to jar your memory and shake out those in your network who might want to help. Email me or Dan with questions or leads.


And be safe this weekend! It's supposed to remain unseasonably "nice."

Three More "Breaking News" Crime Reports - The Rest of the Story

It's been hard to keep up with all the crime on the West Side today, as reported by the Chicago Breaking News Center. I quickly made a map using the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) Online Program Locator. It's interactive and free - and helps me visualize resources and programs that work to mentor "at-risk" youth now, so that in a few years, when the kids are old enough to potentially mug someone on the Green Line to Oak Park, or faced with gang members that offer to put guns in their hands, more of them might have better career prospects and decision-making skills... and opt against crime and murder. Once again, the news shocks us with the problem today. At T/MC, we're creating tools that work for the solutions.



Feel free to click and expand the map I made in minutes this afternoon, using the Online Program Locator (although, admittedly, I did use Photoshop to put the numbers on the map... we're looking for sponsorship and donations to improve functionality of this free, not-for-profit community tool. Email me with leads.).

Those numbers on the map represent the three West Side crimes, as reported by The Chicago Breaking News Center earlier today:

1. Kevin Simms, 18 "found shot several times on a West Side sidewalk Friday evening," in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago's West Side.
   
2. A 13-year-old was shot in the knee, and 18-year-old Daniel Crockett was shot dead in Lawndale/Garfield Park. The "teens were walking on the sidewalk when a dark-colored vehicle drove up, a person got out and fired shots at them."
   
3. "A 22-year-old male was shot in the leg" and 19-year-old Timothy McCampbell was found dead when "police responded to shots fired" in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Each tragic. But the "rest of the story" has hope. See, others like YOU and me are volunteering and donating to mentor programs (represented by those green stars on the map). These programs work with young kids in high-poverty/high-crime neighborhoods, and prepare them to choose a path toward a healthy future - school, career, responsibility, self advocacy, and participation in community... versus the streets, gangs, and violence.

I know what some of you are thinking... "There aren't enough programs to serve all the young kids," and "even if I give a few bucks and a few hours, how can I, alone, put a dent in crime- and social-related tax burdens? How can I contribute to workforce development? How can I help reduce the drop-out rate? How can I make sure all our neighbors in the future are equipped to be hard-working responsible parents that demand safe and productive local communities?"...

... and "Isn't this their parents' jobs!?"

Well, a lot of kids clearly don't have adults in their lives putting them on a path to a safe and secure future, like you may have had. It's your community, your safety, and your economy/taxes. The reality is that you can do something proactive instead of waiting for the school system, "their parents," or someone else to suddenly "do a better job" taking care of you.

Yet I agree - it is nearly impossible for you or I to make a difference alone. Fortunately we all know people who care!

Use the worksheet above to organize your network and find people who also understand this dilemma, and want to do something proactive about it. Direct them to the Tutor/Mentor Connections to learn more!

Together, we can create a movement of caring people with the resources to volunteer, sponsor, nurture youth through mentorship today, so that we all live in safer and more prosperous times together, down the road.

The Rest Of The Story: "Girl, 7, critically injured in Southeast Side shooting"

This evening at 5:02pm, I saw a "Sun-Times Media Wire" report: "Girl, 7, critically injured in Southeast Side shooting."

They could only provide a few initial details, of course:

The girl was shot at 4:13 p.m. at East 80th Street and South Manistee Avenue, according to police News Affairs Officer Veejay Zala.

The 7-year-old girl was taken to University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition, Fire Media Affairs Dir. Larry Langford said.

The girl was reportedly shot in the head, according to a source.

Calumet Area detectives are investigating.

I decided to see how long it would take me to map the crime location... with a dream in my head about a day in the future where The Sun-Times or another media outlet would want to include a map that showed which resources and which mentor programs were available near a crime scene... revealing those working to SOLVE crime in the high-poverty neighborhoods they routinely feature.

Here's the map I was able to produce in under an hour:


Click on it to expand it if you want.

Now I understand that "the news is there to report facts, not editorialize," as I've been reminded by several journalists. (Even though the website immediately opens the "Reader Comments" Forum on a story with no details, to potential editorializing, misinformation, and hate from the faceless masses.)

But there have to be people like me and you who simply want to know how we can get involved and help solve a problem when we see one. That's not editorializing. That's providing information.

With sponsorship and collaboration, we here at Tutor/Mentor Connection could further develop our infrastructure and show an even clearer, mappable, picture of community resources available to people working (or needed) in these neighborhoods, and to those of us who want to help.

We already have the foundation in place (in fact, go to the interactive version of our map data, to make a map similar to the one I made above in half the time!)

We just need you to get involved and use it.

And please do not kid yourself by thinking you live far away from "that sort of thing," and that "those people" are not your concern. Find a few minutes to read about how violence and other "costs of poverty" affect you, the taxpayer.

It's no wonder politicians on both sides of the aisle, alongside business leaders like State Farm Chairman and CEO Ed Rust have done their research and are convinced that mentoring is something that needs to be in the middle of any plan of attack against senseless crime... and the suffering that continues to bleed down to us all.

High School Students Need Mentoring Too

Last week, I showed a new map that features "failing" elementary schools in the Chicago area.

Of course, "failing" elementary students eventually graduate to high school. If they are still living with challenges related to poverty and struggling schools, they might still be lagging behind academically, unprepared to find jobs, and "at risk."

Some high school students however (like several who attend Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program every week), have sought out an extra edge from an experienced mentor, and will be going on to college next year. (Congrats, Brittany D.!)

Unfortunately, many others will be looking to the streets or to you and me as they enter adulthood.


Click on this map above to expand it and see newly-released "failing school" data from 2009, poverty data from the last census, and the known locations of currently-operating Tutor/Mentor Programs in Chicagoland (data that the T/MC hosts and offers to the public for free on its website).

The focus is on high schools in this map - specifically, high schools that aren't "making adequate yearly progress" according to state and federal testing standards. The map above also shows known locations of tutor/mentor programs that are equipped to help high school kids who want an extra edge to compete for a better life for themselves, their families, and our communities.

Like last week, I ask you to expand the map and explore patterns between poverty and high schools. Where is the high poverty? Where, in relation, are clusters of poorly performing schools? How many (or few) programs are available in the neighborhoods where these conditions exist?

Keep in mind that you aren't looking for a one-to-one relationship of schools to programs here. Each high school has hundreds if not thousands of students. Each mentor program, in contrast, likely serves only a fraction of that total.

You can support individual not-for-profit programs on this map by volunteering, or by making a small donation that allows others to volunteer. (Use the online searchable program locator to find a program near your home, job, or commuter line... to find a good fit for your time and your routine.)

You can also take a few minutes and let business leaders, faith leaders, and political leaders in your network know about these maps and the strategies at Tutor/Mentor Exchange. Together, community leaders and Tutor/Mentor Connection can collaborate on building new programs, while helping existing programs thrive.

To learn more about volunteering, collaborating, or making a donation to this cause, please take a look at the Tutor/Mentor Exchange website.

You can't solve a problem at the same level of mind that created it - Einstein

Terry Edlin of the New Community Vision Cooperative quoted Einstein in her piece on Education in in The Chicago Examiner yesterday, arguing that "you can't solve a problem at the same level of mind that created it." In other words, we can't count on the government to fix our education crisis in America. After years and years of failed policy like "No Child Left Behind," they just seem to make things worse. We also shouldn't "expect schools to pick up the slack for parents who are stretched very thin." Pointing fingers at both of them, as so many like to do, has not been effective either. Terry proposes that we need to "begin to think of creative ways to support our communities."

Edlin cites education historian Diane Ravitch, who theorizes that "Poor children… simply face too many problems outside the classroom. If you don’t buttress whatever happens in school with social and economic changes that give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing, then schools alone are not going to solve the problems of poor student performance. There has to be a range of social and economic strategies to support and enhance whatever happens in school."

(Expand Map To See Greater Detail)

Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) promotes tutoring/mentoring programs as one such "creative buttress," and Mapping For Justice makes maps that help identify where T/MC mentoring strategies might need to be further explored by community leaders... to build new and better Tutor/Mentor Programs, and help "give kids a better chance in life and put their families on a more stable footing."

Coincidentally, I've been working on some new maps, using newly-released "failing school" data from 2009, poverty data from the last census, and the known locations of currently-operating Tutor/Mentor Programs in Chicagoland (data that the T/MC hosts and offers to the public for free on its website).

Look at the map above to explore patterns between poverty and elementary schools where students are not making "adequate yearly progress" according to government testing policy.

Where is the high poverty? Where, in relation, are clusters of poorly performing schools? How many (or few) programs are available in the neighborhoods where these conditions exist?

We can easily assume that the total number of students attending the number of public elementary schools in this map far exceeds the capacity of the mentoring programs known to be currently pairing volunteer mentors with elementary school aged students.

If you are open to the possibility that mentoring might be a valuable component to any comprehensive plan of action to increase student learning... and that mentoring can help ease the cost of poverty to tax payers... and that the future of our city's economic and social health need creative and fresh solutions to these problems... then it should be a no-brainer! Head to the Tutor/Mentor Exchange website and learn how you can get involved or donate to this cause.