Using On-Line Platforms to Support Planning - Helping Kids in Poverty

8/3/2019 Using On-Line Platforms to Support Planning - Helping Kids in Poverty

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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC http://www.tutormentorexchange.net Page 1

In order to reach increasing numbers of people with limited dollars for advertising andcommunications it is essential that others write about the work you are doing from their ownplatforms. This article was first posted on the Debategraph.org blog in October 2011.

http://debategraph.us/2011/10/14/helping-kids-in-poverty-find-work/

Helping Kids in Poverty Find Work

Debategraph connected recently with Dan Bassill , founder and president of

the Tutor/Mentor Institute LLC and the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Dan has been working with inner-city youth in Chicago for more than 36 years

and also had a 17 year career in corporate advertising with the

historic Montgomery Ward Corporation .

Drawing on his advertising experience, Dan began to address the challenge

of helping kids in poverty from a business innovation and marketing

perspective, rather than social work or youth education perspective.

In the guest blog below, Dan reflects on some of the lessons learned and

challenges ahead, and invites you add your voice to the conversation on

the Helping kids born in poverty start jobs and careers Debategraph (See

http://debategraph.org/tutormentor ):

I believe that there are four concurrent strategies that could be applied in

every major city in the world as part of a set of collective on-going actions to

help reduce the costs of poverty in each city.

(1) Knowledge aggregation and visualization: The Tutor/Mentor Institute

has been collecting information since 1993, showing where volunteer-based

tutor/mentor programs are needed, why they are needed, what different

programs do, and why business, philanthropy and others should support the

growth of such programs as a strategy for expanding social capital

surrounding youth in high poverty neighbourhoods of large cities like Chicago,New York, and London. Aggregating and sharing the accumulated knowledge

and insights can help the whole community to make faster and more effective

progress – and save people from having to “reinvent the wheel” each time a

new initiative starts. Using interactive sites like Debategraph, new ideas can

be added to the library on an on-going basis, and embedded on the websites

of any stakeholder organization around the world – allowing others to discover



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and build on innovative local solutions to poverty, poorly performing schools,

drop out programs and workforce development that have already been

implemented elsewhere.

The Tutor/Mentor Institute has also been experimenting with interactive

geographical maps (http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/InteractiveMap.aspx) that can be

used to locate tutor/mentor programs in specific parts of Chicago, and to

determine the level of program availability in all parts of the city; making it

easy for parents, volunteers and donors, as well as corporate leaders, city

planners, marketers and policy makers to connect with the programs.

(2) Increasing public awareness: getting information is just the first

challenge, getting millions of people to look at this information and use it in

their own actions, is a bigger challenge. While I was working at Montgomery

Ward our weekly ads drew shoppers to more than 400 stores, across 40 USstates. Since no non-profit has the type of advertising budgets that large

corporations have, we have to find creative and engaging ways to draw

attention to tutoring/mentoring and the information hosted by the Tutor/Mentor

Institute and others. One strategy for creating public awareness has been to

organize events such as Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking

Conferences (www.tutormentorconference.org) , held every May and



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November since 1994. Such events draw 100-150 leaders and stakeholders

together in Chicago but create much larger visibility during the months

building up to the event. Forums like Debategraph enable the Tutor/Mentor

Connection to connect its ideas to people in cities all over the world and to

build on the contacts and dialogue between the conferences.

(3) Creating learning circles. Facilitating understanding: The amount of

information is overwhelming. That’s an obstacle that can be overcome if

volunteers are recruited to help others navigate and learn to use the

resources of the library. The Tutor/Mentor Institute focuses on structured,

volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs as a core part of its strategy because

of the way such programs connect volunteers from the business community

and who live beyond poverty with youth who do live in poverty. An organized

tutor/mentor program can be a collective effort of many extra people working

to help kids grow up. As volunteers stay with youth for one or more years

many begin to bond and take on roles similar to “surrogate parents”. Such

people become advocates and do much more to help the kids, and the

tutor/mentor programs they are part of. Over time such people can become

full-time advocates for expanded strategies to help poor kids to careers.

As we aggregate more and more information and increase the number of

people who engage with the Tutor/Mentor Institute web sites, there also

needs to be a process of facilitation, where people who know more about the

information available in the knowledge base help others find and understand

the information. In Chicago Interns have been writing blog articles and

creating visualizations (http://michaelcnt.blogspot.com/ ) to help build

understanding of this information. If you would be interested in volunteering as

intern or discussion leader online, please let me know.



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(4) Accelerating the flow of resources: The first three steps create a

positive feedback loop as more people begin to use their time, talent and

resources to support one or more tutor/mentor programs and, in turn, draw

more people and resources into the movement in cities around the world. The

information we share can be used by anyone, and the way we innovate public

awareness strategies to motivate people to look at this information regularly,

and to motivate people to act as volunteers and donors, can sustain this effort

for many years into the future.

This not something that was created by the Mayor, the President or funded by

a massive government or private foundation grant. The ideas in

the Tutor/Mentor Institute were developed over a period of 35 years in

response to what we learned as we struggled each year to find resources to

operate one single small tutor/mentor program in Chicago. We have

demonstrated the potential of the Internet, where people who “don’t have

power, don’t have celebrity standing, and are not the elected leaders of a

region can put their own ideas for building a better world on the Internet and

invite others to join with them in making those ideas a reality.

It’s an idea in tune with our times: and if the idea of helping kids in poverty find

work appeals to you, you are welcome to join us.

See more examples of stories written about Tutor/Mentor Connection and

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC - http://tinyurl.com/TMC-articles

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Using On-Line Platforms to Support Planning - Helping Kids in Poverty