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Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLChttp://www.tutormentorexchange.netPage 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 inevery major city in the world as part of a set of collective on-going actions tohelp 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-basedtutor/mentor programs are needed, why they are needed, what differentprograms do, and why business, philanthropy and others should support thegrowth of such programs as a strategy for expanding social capitalsurrounding youth in high poverty neighbourhoods of large cities like Chicago,New York, and London. Aggregating and sharing the accumulated knowledgeand insights can help the whole community to make faster and more effectiveprogress – and save people from having to “reinvent the wheel” each time anew initiative starts. Using interactive sites likeDebategraph, new ideas canbe added to the library on an on-going basis, and embedded on the websitesof 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 beenimplemented elsewhere.The Tutor/Mentor Institute has also been experimenting withinteractivegeographical maps (http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/InteractiveMap.aspx) that can be
 
used to locate tutor/mentor programs in specific parts of Chicago, and todetermine the level of program availability in all parts of the city; making iteasy for parents, volunteers and donors, as well as corporate leaders, cityplanners, marketers and policy makers to connect with the programs.
(2) Increasing public awareness
: getting information is just the firstchallenge, getting millions of people to look at this information and use it intheir own actions, is a bigger challenge. While I was working at MontgomeryWard our weekly ads drew shoppers to more than 400 stores, across 40 USstates. Since no non-profit has the type of advertising budgets that largecorporations have, we have to find creative and engaging ways to drawattention to tutoring/mentoring and the information hosted by the Tutor/MentorInstitute and others. One strategy for creating public awareness has been toorganize events such asTutor/Mentor Leadership and NetworkingConferences(www.tutormentorconference.org) , held every May and
 
 
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November since 1994. Such events draw 100-150 leaders and stakeholderstogether in Chicago but create much larger visibility during the monthsbuilding up to the event. Forums like Debategraph enable the Tutor/MentorConnection toconnect its ideas to people in cities all over the world and tobuild 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 ifvolunteers are recruited to help others navigate and learn to use theresources of the library. The Tutor/Mentor Institute focuses on structured,volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs as a core part of its strategy becauseof the way such programs connect volunteers from the business communityand who live beyond poverty with youth who do live in poverty. An organizedtutor/mentor program can be a collective effort of many extra people workingto help kids grow up. As volunteers stay with youth for one or more yearsmany begin to bond and take on roles similar to “surrogate parents”. Suchpeople become advocates and do much more to help the kids, and thetutor/mentor programs they are part of. Over time such people can becomefull-time advocates for expanded strategies to help poor kids to careers.As we aggregate more and more information and increase the number ofpeople who engage with the Tutor/Mentor Institute web sites, there alsoneeds to be a process of facilitation, where people who know more about theinformation available in the knowledge base help others find and understandthe information. In Chicago Interns have beenwriting blog articles andcreating visualizations(http://michaelcnt.blogspot.com/ ) to help build
 
understanding of this information. If you would be interested in volunteering asintern or discussion leader online, please let me know.
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