PIPblog: Cabrini Connections- Tutor/Mentor Connections

NU tutor/mentor connection

2010-12-10T10:50:00.001-08:00

GO CATS GO! (Let's make a Wildcat difference!)

2010-12-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

I wrote this email recently and sent it out to my NU networks to show all the great work that Northwestern Alumni are doing to help kids around the city in hopes that some folks will decide to help us out this holiday season. Can you take a few minutes to send a similar note around to your friends, family or colleagues to let them know about why you care about helping at-risk kids through tutoring/mentoring? OR if you happen to be a Northwestern alum like me, go ahead and copy my message verbatim if you'd like and send it around. You'll be surprised how many people will listen.

Happy Holidays!

Chris
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Hello Wildcat!
My name is Christopher Warren and I'm a recent Northwestern grad--class of 2008. Being the world-class institution it is, NU has a lot to be proud of: a tradition of academic excellence, top-notch faculty, 3 beautiful campuses, an undefeated basketball team and a bowl-bound football squad to boot! GO CATS! However, what I'm most proud of is the difference it's young alumni are making in the lives of young people right here in Chicago.

Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection is a Chicago nonprofit organization that connects at-risk youth growing up in poverty with networks of caring adults that are committed to their success. They are a particularly effective organization due to their unique global/local strategy, which operates a single, model program in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood while strategically supporting the growth and operation of similar programs throughout the city, from the far south-side all the way up to Evanston. Despite recent challenges presented by the economy they have a proven record of success over the past 18 years, which owes much to the consistent support of generous individuals in the Northwestern University community like yourself. In fact, a whopping 3/4 of their full-time staff is comprised of Northwestern alumni, who recently brought a group of promising high-school students from Cabrini-Green to visit our campus!

The strength of our Northwestern education and the networks of people that we've met there have put us on the path to success. As a student leader at Northwestern and beyond, you are in an enviable position, surrounded by people and resources that kids growing up in the isolation of urban poverty can only dream of. Can you join me this holiday season in sharing some of that with a donation to help us continue building networks of support for inner-city kids? If you cannot give now, please consider forwarding this email along to 5 people in your NU network so that together we can continue to make a positive Wildcat impact on lives all around the city.

Happy holidays and GO CATS!

Chris Warren

Former Northwestern University Public Interest Program Fellowand Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection Volunteer

25 of our students on a Campus

Visit at NU this past October

Former NU running back

and all-star Cabrini Connections

supporter Tyrell Sutton

Recent Northwestern graduate and Video Club

Coordinator Shu Ling Yong teaches digital

film editing techniques to our students

Keeping the PIPblog magic alive

2009-07-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Hello! So as you've hopefully realized from my past few posts, I'm officially finished with my PIP fellowship. Though I'll be continuing to contribute (albeit less frequently) both here on this blog and in other places, Bradley Troast, the new 2009-2010 PIP fellow at CC/TMC has already begun blogging about his experiences on the new PIP blog. So I would strongly recommend checking out Bradley's blog, since it will be updated a heck of a lot more often than mine, now that I'm no longer an official employee. In his first couple weeks on the job, Bradley has already blogged about our recent Golf Benefit and Edgewood College Visit as well as our brand-spankin' new and improved Video Club and his thoughts on his new work. It's clear he is getting off to a great start so be sure to add http://cabrinipip.blogspot.com/ to your RSS feed reader of choice and stay tuned!

Concept Mapping my blog

2009-07-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today marks my blog's 145th post! Who'd have thought that I'd have stuck with it, especially considering my only previous foray into the blogging ended after a mere 11 grueling posts. However, the blog continues to go strong. If you're interested, my most popular article has been the one I wrote summarizing some research about Racism in the Job Market. Anyway, since my year is up and I'm going to be leaving my full-time position at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection, I thought it would be prudent to offer a new and exciting way to relive the magic...A CONCEPT MAP!

Anyway, you may have seen my map of Northwestern University's assets a couple days ago, well in a similar vein, I've mapped the various articles in my blog according to some general themes. Interestingly, since I've blogged about much of the work I've done here, the concept map can also read as a job description or summary of some of the projects I've embroiled myself in during my time here. Hopefully Bradley Troast, my NUPIP successor and others will not start from scratch, but rather build from some of the knowledge and expertise I've accumulated and shared in these articles and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the work we're doing and how to constantly expand and improve our social impact! So, without further ado, here's the official Chrispip concept map (be sure to click each node to find the relevant articles).

One year later, what have I learned?

2009-07-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday I've officially been working at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection for a full year. As you may or may not know, this is my last week here as an official staff member. Thinking back to where I was at this time last year, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In fact, I was still wondering whether I had made the right choice in choosing not to pursue graduate work in neuroscience immediately after my graduation. Though I knew I needed to do something disorienting (in a good way) in order to put myself in a situation where I could grow as a person and develop my social and political consciousness outside of NU, I never could have predicted how profoundly a year of non-profit work would change my personal perspective on work, life and my own future.

One huge surprise was how easy, natural and engaging the work seemed after 4 years of grinding through research papers, oral presentations and other thesis related mumbo-jumbo with varying degrees of interest and enthusiasm. Knowing that the work I do is contributing to the well-being of 70+ kids in whom I'm now personally invested, makes me a lot more inclined to put in the necessary time and effort, than when I was at Northwestern writing papers for an audience of one and giving presentations to a dozen or so disinterested students.

Another is that the social reward of knowing that my work is helping disadvantaged youth succeed so far outweighs the relative lack of financial compensation that I'm taking a completely unpaid position at a radical Guatemalan non-profit school next year to further hone the skills and knowledge I've developed through my year here as a PIP fellow. Perhaps I'll reconsider down the road, but for the time being, living in relative poverty and loving my work is far preferable to any number of potentially more financially lucrative alternatives.

One other big one, and perhaps the most important is that connecting a youth with a caring adult volunteer through a tutoring/mentoring relationship is really one of the most powerful ways to help a disadvantaged youth succeed. Just spending a year here and coordinating our Cabrini Connections program exposed me to dozens of case studies that make a strong case for the value of programs like ours. Given the obvious benefit of our work in the areas of: academic achievement, employment gang-prevention, drug-prevention and violence-prevention, it is shameful that organizations like ours are constantly scrambling for the necessary operating dollars because government, business and other sectors with a stake in the future of youth growing up in poverty haven't taken a more active role in supporting programs like ours. Though much lip service continues to be paid to programs like ours, from our nation's capital all the way down to conversations at the nearest bus stop (I can't tell you how many times people have told me "oh that's so great" when I explain what we do), the fact is that programs like ours can't continue to do this necessary work without the necessary human and financial resources, which are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Therefore, now more than ever, we need to bring more leaders and other motivated folks into the fold to advocate for our youth, our programs and our future.

Personally, I'm becoming more and more convinced that I am and will continue to be one of these people. For this, I have to thank Dan and EL Da'sheon, who have gone to great lengths to get me to understand the ins and outs of running a successful non-profit, been incredible mentors and true sources of wisdom and inspiration to me throughout this past year. Thank you for your guidance, thank you for your willingness to collaborate and most of all thank you for the difference that you're so committed to making in the lives of youth all over the city.

TWITTER

2009-07-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

So, in case you haven't heard, Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection have hopped aboard the TWITTER bandwagon and are now tweeting updates and links with the best of them. We're hoping to use this resource to keep people abreast of our activities and potential supporters in the loop with constant updates. With the ability for people to follow our activities and subscribe to our feeds, TWITTER is another way to direct traffic to relevant content on our blogs and websites (such as this blog). So, stay connected to us wherever you are with TWITTER by following us at: tutormentorteam

Mapping Northwestern University for Tutoring/Mentoring Programs

2009-07-06T12:49:00.001-07:00

So as I've mentioned in previous posts, Colleges and Universities are full of valuable assets for Tutor/Mentor Programs like ours. They are chock full of smart and engaged people who want to make a difference. However, for better or for worse, universities are multifaceted communities, with a wide variety of buildings, departments, offices...etc. They also have an unfortunate tendency to be composed of various organizational silos that inhibit communication between different parts of the university. In fact many a program coordinator has been frustrated by the seemingly endless amounts of emails and phone calls necessary to reach the right administrator who can actually begin to help forge a mutually beneficial relationship.

Therefore, after facilitating a workshop about ways to constructively engage Northwestern University at our May Conference, I decided it would be beneficial to put together a concept map of all of the different parts of NU that could help a tutor/mentor program like ours. From the various service learning, work-study, internship and practicum opportunities available for non-profits to secure skilled and committed volunteers to the various philanthropic wings of the university, consider this map a guide to the assets of Northwestern University. Don't forget to click through to the links embedded on each item to find out more. The JPEG above is just a static graphic, click here to access the map complete with all its links. Hope you like it and pass it on to people and organizations you think it could benefit.

According to our tutor/mentor program locator there are 8 programs currently operating in the 60201 area code and about 10 more close by in Rogers Park. Programs like these could greatly benefit from knowing what parts of the university to build relatoinships with, I know Cabrini Connections certainly can, and is benefiting from our connection to Northwestern. Anyway, stay tuned for more useful concept maps in the near future!

Find the map at: www.tinyurl.com/northwesternmap

A few of the many uses of the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator

2009-07-02T09:53:00.001-07:00

If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to visit our interactive tutor/mentor program locator and take a look around. Whatever your aims, it's a powerful tool that allows you to visualize complex sets of information and draw new and exciting inferences about. Though we created it as a tool to help potential leaders in youth tutoring/mentoring build capacity and relationships with other non-profits and community assets, you can just as easily use it to look at your neighborhood and see who your neighbors are, or learn about neighborhoods that you've heard mentioned in the news but never actually bothered to look up. There are as many potential uses for the interactive maps as there are potential users, the key is taking the plunge and visiting www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and taking a look around. For inspiration, check out the following case studies, which provide some examples of potential uses of the interactive maps.

Telling the Tutor/Mentor Connection Story

2009-06-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the most difficult parts of my job is to explain the Tutor/Mentor Connection quickly and effectively, while not misleading people into thinking of it as something it's not, such as a simple membership organization. For this reason, we have been working with a number of interns from IIT who are helping us to animate some of our concept maps and links libraries in order to make the information more engaging and straightforward. Check out this animated resource map that our interns Sungjoong and Gunwoong have been working on! I'm currently recording some audio voiceovers that will come up when you first load the page as well as when you scroll over the various page elements.

They're also doing this for our homework help links and Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy map. So check out their progress and be sure to stay tuned for the finished product in a week or so!

This type of project is an example of something that tech savvy volunteers like Sungjoong and Gunwoong can do from a distance. Since we are sharing strategic planning information via our wiki's, anyone, from Seoul to San Fransisco to the South Side can be helping us to build and share knowledge about what we and others are doing to help at-risk kids. What role can you play?

Tutor/Mentor Exchange

2009-06-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

As someone who spends more than half of his waking hours working in some capacity to connect at-risk youth with the resources they need to graduate high school, enter college and embark upon meaningful postgraduate careers, I've spent a lot of time researching successful strategies. In all my time here, I'm yet to find a more comprehensive source for information about these topics than www.tutormentorexchange.net With our abundance of websites and other online content such as our blogs, twitter and tutor/mentor program locator, it's easy to overlook www.tutormentorexchange.net. However, to miss out on the valuable tips and strategies here would be to do yourself a disservice, particularly if you're already involved with a youth tutor/mentor program or have been thinking about constructive ways to engage with programs near you.

On this site you can find everything from an extensive How to start a tutor/mentor program tutorial, to strategies for engaging faith communities, hospitals, students, lawyers and business to build resources for your program. Much of the content is informed by our own personal experiences and history running Cabrini Connections as well as our constant networking and information sharing with other programs around the city. There are links to our GIS maps and essays about the many ways that the Tutor/Mentor Connection is trying to build a network of effective, well-distributed and resourced programs in every high-poverty area of the city. Just when you think you've reached a dead end, you realize that an entirely new level of information is just a mouseclick or scroll away.

Therefore, for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge about tangible ways to help kids who could use a hand, please check out http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/ I guarantee you'll stumble upon an idea you've never considered before.

United We Serve

2009-06-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday President Obama kicked off his new summer volunteerism campaign, United We Serve, which aims to motivate Americans of all stripes to volunteer their time and talents through an online clearinghouse of volunteer opportunties, www.serve.gov. As a volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring organization, we depend on mobilizing passionate volunteers to achieve our mission of helping at-risk Chicagoland youth enter college and careers by the age of 25. However, few of our potential volunteers comprehend the wealth of potential volunteer opportunities at our organization. Beyond mentoring a youth one-on-one or in enrichment activities such as Tech, Writing, or Art Clubs through our Cabrini Connections program, volunteers can help The Tutor/Mentor Connection accomplish it's important aims by serving in the following roles.
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Information Management

Web Researcher and Links Manager —Collect and maintain the information and links on the T/MC Web site. Volunteers search the internet for new links, check existing links and organize online discussions to help people find and use this information.

Event Organization

Chicagoland Tutor/Mentor Volunteer Recruitment Campaign—Work on a year-round basis to develop and implement strategies that recruit volunteers for tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago region. Raise funds to support the campaign. Time commitment: approx. 4-6 hours per month

Tutor/Mentor Leadership Conference and Volunteer Training—Organize the May and November leadership conferences and eConferences. Provide training, education and support to volunteers, leaders, and business, media and philanthropic partners. Time commitment: approx. 3-6 hours per month

Public Relations

Here are links to some articles about the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
Help us increase the number of people who visit this web site and use this information, and you play a valuable role in helping us connect inner city kids in long-term volunteer-based programs.

Communications—Prepare publications, brochures and other media used to connect youths, volunteers, parents, donors and other stakeholders with each other and the tutor/mentor community. Volunteer roles can be ongoing or project-based. Time commitment varies.

Net-Worker—Actively spread the word about tutoring/mentoring to others through church sermons, Web site links, email, letters, or word-of-mouth. This is the easiest and possibly most important role anyone can take. Just by encouraging someone to visit this Web site you enlarge the army of tutors/mentors and resource builders in Chicago. Time commitment varies.

Blogger—Write about tutoring and mentoring in blogs and forums. Time commitment varies.

Fundraising

Fund raising—Raise funds to support T/MC or other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago. Become a champion of tutoring/mentoring in your company, church or civic organization. Help organize fundraising events, write grant proposals and recruit a network of potential donors. Time commitment varies.

Technology

Technology Planning—Develop and implement the TM/C technology plan. Determine necessary technologies, acquire technologies through a variety of fundraising efforts, and work with Technology Coordinator and volunteers to maximize use of technologies. Time commitment: approx. 4-8 hours per month.

Database and Information Management—Develop and maintain interactive databases used to collect and share information. Volunteers should have extensive experience in database design. Time commitment varies.

GIS Mapping and Training—Build the GIS mapping capacity of T/MC and create a youth apprentice program that teaches teens to create map views and Web pages that show where tutor/mentor programs are needed and where they are located. This is a career development activity. Time commitment: approx. 4-6 hours per month.

Call (312-492-9614) or contact us if you're interested in volunteering. Volunteers can serve more than one role and can also be one-on-one tutor/mentors if they wish.

Anyone can make maps! (That means you!)

2009-06-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

For those interested in learning more about the many applications of our free online, tutor/mentor program locator, check out Tutor/Mentor Connection's President/CEO Dan Bassill's blog, where he demonstrates how you can use it to create your own maps that help you better understand the news, the geography of Chicago's many unique neighborhoods and ways to get involved in improving opportunities for the youth of these neighborhoods. In his post, Dan explains how he used the interactive maps to create a map showing the location of failing schools and tutoring/mentoring programs in relation to census data about the amount of poverty in these neighborhoods. This helps him and others make sense of the recent ranking of Washington Park's intersection of State St and 55th as the 2nd most dangerous neighborhood in America. His map shows a clear relationship between increasing amounts of poverty and increasing numbers of underperforming and underresourced schools, while highlighting the few programs that are present in these areas where people like you and I can get involved.

Instead of encouraging people to avoid the neighborhood for fear of being victims of crime, an act that only serves to further isolate and deprive its residents of vital commercial activity and positive media attention, mapping the news in this way helps us to understand what positive steps we can take to help the neighborhood's residents change the violent face of their neighborhood through engaging its youth in constructive tutoring/mentoring activities. Though we may not live in these neighborhoods, we can play a role in helping foster their future success by informing our US and IL state representatives as well as aldermen of the positive benefit of tutor/mentor programs that youth tutoring/mentoring programs are already having in these communities. For example, using the interactive tutor/mentor program locator, you can easily look up your congressional district, see what high poverty neighborhoods fall within its borders and identify programs that are already making a difference there. As a constituent, you can contact your rep and encourage them to support these programs.

For example, residents of some of Chicago's most affluent communities, including: Lincoln Park, The Loop and Oak Park share the same 7th district representative, Danny Davis, as residents of some of Chicago's poorest communities: Austin, Washington Park, Garfield Park and North Lawndale (see map above). As Rep Davis' constituents, residents of these affluent neighborhoods have a uniquely powerful voice that can be used to encourage Rep Davis to support programs like ours. I encourage you to go to www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net and map your congressional district to see who your political neighbors are. You might be surprised!

campusCATALYST and the future of our GIS mapping

2009-06-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

So as I've offhandedly mentioned in this blog, over the past dozen or so weeks, a campusCATALYST team of 5 Northwestern students have been working with us to develop a marketing strategy for our GIS mapping capacity. For more information about our use of GIS mapping see my rockstar friend and coworker, Mike Trakan's "Mapping for Justice" blog. Over the past year he has been creating static maps using his GIS skills that help us "tell the rest of the story". That is, in the wake of a tragic shooting or a piece of investigative journalism that highlights high-poverty neighborhoods, Trakan creates maps that can be used to help show leadership strategies that can help individuals and organizations improve their strategy, fundraising and knowledge.

Since the budget for continuing this mapping project has run out and we are struggling to secure funding to keep him on, we had this team of undergraduate consultants, working in tandem with a Kellogg Graduate student, Diego Ibanez, develop an earned income strategy for our use of GIS technology to create a sustainable income that would permit us to contine and hopefully expand our mapping capacity. After a number of meetings with us they decided that the best course of action would be to survey a variety of people affiliated with our organization to see if they would find any value in our mapping were we to offer it via a fee-based service. So they sent out a survey to our databases and received just shy of 100 responses. From these responses and their own marketing coursework and experience, the team concluded that the best course of action would be for us to serve in a consulting role to provide GIS mapping services at a cost of $250/map. They suggested that we market these maps to other non-profit organizations through one-on-one conversations with potential customers.

In order to successfully market these services, they recommended that we create a webpage on www.tutormentorconnection.org dedicated to selling our mapping services that clearly lays out our services and their cost. One major finding of their survey was that many potential customers are unclear about the benefits of using this mapping technology to their organization. For this reason, we should include testimonials and examples of how this analysis can be utilized to benefit their organization. This site should also have examples of ways that organizations can benefit by utilizing our maps to help us make our case. They also advocate clearly connecting these mapping services to the underlying mission of the T/MC in order to justify to potential clients why we're offering this service. Since we are going to be marketing these maps primarily via one-on-one conversations with potential client organizations, I think this is particularly important, particularly given that it's rarely clear at first glance how exactly GIS mapping relates to our underlying mission. I for one constantly find myself explaining the many ways that GIS mapping helps our organization try to more effectively tell our story and develop leadership strategies that bring in volunteers, dollars, policy change and media awareness. For more info, stay tuned, or check out Mike Trakan's blog at http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/

Fundraising: Cause Marketing 3

2009-06-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

So in my quest to find out more about cause marketing, I've found a plethora of resources on a website called...big surprise here... www.causemarketingforum.com This is an excellent resources for folks like me who want to find out more without having to wade through tons of MBA marketing jargon. I've found their best practices section particularly interesting. With articles such as "The Ten Commandments of Cause-Related Marketing", case studies and conversations with cause marketers on both the nonprofit and corporate sides of these partnerships, this site is a great resource.

As someone with little business or marketing background at all, poking around on this site was a fairly eye-opening experience. For instance in The Ten Commandments of Cause-Related Marketing the author, Kurt Aschermann, Chief Marketing Officer and Managing Director of Corporate Opportunities Group at the Boys & Girls Club of America, emphasizes the mutual benefit of cause-marketing. He points out that, though there may be some money to be had through traditional philanthropic requests such as foundation grants and workplace giving campaigns, the real money in a corporation is in their sales and marketing departments. Thus, if a non-profit can make the case that a cause-based partnership is good for business and not just pure charity, a whole new world of resources opens up. For Aschermann, who has had incredible success securing over $100 million worth of resources from a wide variety of companies, cause-related marketing is a simple partnership. Successful partnerships occur when both sides understand what they have to bring to the table. Knowing the unique value of our brand as a nonprofit and our ability to execute and our ability to articulate this to the corporation is what makes partnering with us worthwhile to a corporation.

For us, we bring 30+ years of experience in the youth tutoring/mentoring community and our position as a convener of leaders of over 150 tutoring/mentoring programs around the city. Given our leadership role in the Chicagoland tutor/mentor community, and our organizational history, corporations looking to maximize their impact through a city-wide strategy would benefit from engaging with our organization rather than any individual standalone program. We also have tools such as our Interactive Tutor/Mentor Program Locator that make it easy for companies to visualize potential leadership strategies using GIS mapping and determine the most effective course of action. Our focus on providing easily accessible, useful and constantly updated online resources via our numerous websites, means that we have a much higher level of visibility than other programs as can be seen by our high levels of web traffic and the fact that our websites and blogs are among the first hits that come up when you google keywords such as "tutor", "mentor", "golf benefit" and many many more. Plus our reputation as an organization dedicated to building not only our own organization but ensuring that comprehensive youth programs like ours across the city have the resources they need means that we have the kind of reputation that corporations looking to improve their image would want to associate with. Finally, our particular cause, helping inner-city kids succeed, is one that needs little justfication or explanation to most people. The grand majority of people understand the need for programs like ours and perceive them as necessary and beneficial without further explanation. For all these reasons and more, it seems that Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection would be the ideal partner for corporations looking to form cause-marketing partnerships. Now we just need to get on their radar. Any ideas?

NYC Mayor supports youth mentoring...why not Chicago?

2009-06-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

During a recent visit to mentoring.org I came upon a press release announcing that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just appointed the nation's first municipal Chief Service Officer to lead volunteer recruitment efforts across the city. During the official announcement, Bloomberg and Diahann Billings-Burford called on New Yorkers to volunteer to mentor at-risk middle schoolers through their first NYC Service initiative, which aims to connect 2000 mentors with inner-city students across the city. Read more details here. In this historic initiative, the Department of Education partnered with a variety of high-profile mentoring organizations and funders to train these new mentors and connect them with children in need. The NYC Service program has three main goals:

::Channel the power of volunteers to address the impacts of the current economic downturn
::Make New York City the easiest city in America in which to serve, and to
::Ensure every young person in New York City is taught about civic engagement and has an opportunity to serve

This large-scale public/private partnership is using the Mayor's office to connect nonprofit tutoring/mentoring organizations with the resources they need to increase their impact. These resources include volunteers, publicity and dollars. At a fundamental level, this is what the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been doing since 1993, albeit without the abundant resources of the Mayor's office.

Given that in his press release, Mayor Bloomberg sets out a major goal of this initiative to be making New York the easiest city in America in which to get involved in mentoring at-risk youth, why hasn't the leader of America's Second City, Mayor Daley, stepped up to the plate and taken him up on his challenge?

Given that Chicago already has an infrastructure in place that is designed to connect tutor/mentor programs city-wide with volunteers, which includes an easy to navigate tutor/mentor program locator that helps potential volunteers find the perfect program for them, it's not like Daley would have to start at square one. He could very easily use the bully pulpit of the mayor's office to inform people about what we're already doing, directing people to our myriad online resources and connect us with funders who could help us dramatically increase our impact on the city. Considering the flak Daley has been getting for his recent parking meter deal and promise to the IOC to take full financial responsibility for the Olympics (a potentially disastrous deal for Chicago taxpayers) this could provide Daley with some sorely-needed political capital and a great opportunity to help make a difference in the lives of thousands of at-risk youth citywide. Thoughts?

Fundraising: Cause Marketing Part 2

2009-06-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

So, as promised, here's round 2 of my fundraising series. In this post I want to talk about one way in which we're starting to utilize cause marketing concepts and professionals to benefit our organization. I want to start with the person who introduced me to the term "cause marketing" in the first place, Alla Ioffe, recent DePaul University graduate and founder of the socially conscious Chicago-based events company Pallandrome. We connected through Meagan , our Media Outreach intern who recommended that I chat with Alla about getting Cabrini Connections onboard a potential fundraising event, which has now materialized into a Sunday Funday Party that will take place on Sunday, Sept 20th from 11am to 2pm.

The event, which is completely organized by Alla's firm, will take place at the Windy City Fieldhouse (2367 W Logan Blvd) and will bring together approximately 500 children and their parents for a day of fun, games, snacks and marketing opportunities for companies looking to showcase their back-to-school related goods and services in front of affluent parents and their kids. Like past events, such as her Just Be Cause green business showcase, which took place at the Funky Buddah Lounge not too long ago, her fundraising model is ingenious. She comes up with an idea of an event that will be attractive enough to people to pay to attend and then charges sponsors for tables at the event so that they can promote their products in front of this large, engaged pool of potential customers. Then she donates a chunk of the proceeds to a good cause, like Cabrini Connections.

So at this upcoming event, young families will be lured by the prospect of relay races, food, bounce houses, games and prizes and will pay to come to the Windy City Field House. At the same time, sponsors eager to market their products to parents whose children are running, bouncing, eating, playing...etc will pay for tables in the Field House, providing an additional income stream, plus some added draw for the parents since there will be informative presentations about how to pack healthy lunches, sustainable living, how to encourage kids to live healthily...etc. Plus we, as the showcase organization, will have an opportunity to tell our story and connect with all the attendees, not just the affluent parents who might support our cause, but the socially conscious businesses who may be interested in partnering with us to provide volunteers, publicity, dollars or other types of support.

Therefore Alla, as a cause-based marketer/events planner, serves as the lliason between our non-profit, and the corporate world, connecting us in a mutually beneficial way that provides us with both dollars and positive public relations opportunties while providing the same for the sponsoring organizations, who pay for the opportunity. Since in this current economic climate many nonprofits like ours are trying to sustain our programming with contracting donor bases, dwindling foundation funding and cutbacks in government grants, we should be looking out for opportunities like these to provide much needed general operating funds. For this reason it's particularly important to understand the growing trend of cause marketing which is not only supplementing traditional corporate philanthropy but in increasing cases, replacing it. Stay tuned for part 3.

Fundraising: Cause Marketing

2009-06-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday faithful readers! I apologize for the radio silence, I've been dedicating all my time recently to fundraising in order to try to keep our program afloat during this difficult time. However during this time I've found out about a couple things that are worth sharing that both have something to do with...surprise...FUNDRAISING!

So, in my quest to encourage people who support our program to reach into their personal networks and tell the story about what we do to potential donors, I've found that people rarely understand the true ability of their networks to help organizations such as ours. So many times, I find myself explaining that being a mentor is not the only way to help our program make a difference in the lives of inner-city kids and that especially at this juncture, securing the financial resources we need to sustain our program in the short term is perhaps more important. One way I've been trying to get people to support our program is through identifying fundraising opportunities at their workplaces, either through corporate foundations, employee-matching funds or internal giving campaigns. Since the decision to give or not to give is so-often dependent upon personal relationships between the grantor and the grantee, which unfortunately I often find myself lacking, we have had some success using our volunteers and others as middlemen/representatives of our cause to approach their superiors and put a familiar face on our requests for financial support. However, though we try our best to impart on our volunteers a through understanding of their ability to help fundraise and build other resources for our organization, we understand that as volunteer mentors, they are already giving their time and that not everyone is willing to go the extra mile and become an evangelist for our cause at work and in their day-to-day lives. For this reason I was extremely excited to discover that there exists a whole job field dedicated to bridging this gap between non-profit organizations and for-profit companies for their mutual benefit. These people are called cause marketers and according to the journal On Philanthropy, cause marketing sponsorship by American companies is growing at a rapid rate. For example last year 1.52 billion dollars was spent by American companies on cause marketing campaigns.

To make this more concrete, a 2006 study demonstrated that 89% of young American consumers would switch brands of a similar product if a different brand was identified as supporting a "good cause". Additionally this same study found that a majority of people would prefer to work for a company that is considered to be "socially responsible". Based on this and other research with similar findings, companies have been expanding workplace giving programs and "cause-based marketing" in order to retain employees and build market share, while also supporting non-profit organizations that are doing good. One example of a cause-based marketing campaign would be our ongoing "One Dime At A Time" campaign at Chicago-Area Whole Foods stores where if customers bring their own bags, Whole Foods will donate 10 cents to our organization.

Campaigns like these are designed to not only bring valuable dollars to non-profits like ours, but to increase awareness about our program, while at the same time providing Whole Foods with positive public relations, improved customer relations and additional marketing opportunities (because we are also publicizing the campaign). I'll be expanding on this idea throughout the week discussing cause-based marketing more in depth, and our past, present and future experiences with it. Stay Tuned!

Engaging Universities Workshop

2009-06-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

So fresh off the heels of our 31st Tutor/Mentor Conference, which we hosted on May 27th and 28th, I feel invigorated. I attended the November Tutor/Mentor Conference but was able to take a more proactive role at this conference due to the fact I already had one under my belt, and was more familiar with the organizational aims of the conference. One highlight was having the opportunity to present my own workshop about Engaging University Communities to help non-profit tutor/mentor programs find many of the resources that they need to sustain and grow themselves.

To help me I brought in a number of friends and colleagues to share their perspectives. First was Molly Day, co-founder and executive director of CampusCATALYST, an organization that engages college and business school students in high-impact, pro-bono consulting projects with local nonprofits. She graduated from NU last year and is currently a PIP fellow. We're actually working currently with a team of campusCATALYST students who are helping us to monetize our static and interactive GIS mapping capacity, found on www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net.

Another friend and PIP fellow who joined us was Ryan Pederson, who currently serves as the Campus Director for the Center for Global Engagement (CGE) at Northwestern University. He graduated from Northwestern University last year where he was heavily involved with the campus chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He discussed some ways that programs can effectively engage faith communities on campus as well as shared some insights he gleaned from working with student leaders through the Center for Global Engagement. He also spoke to the advantages and disadvantages of engaging Greek communities on campus.

We were also lucky enough to be joined by Sue Sowle, who coordinates Project SOAR, a remarkable mentoring program at the McGaw YMCA in Evanston. At McGaw, NU students play integral roles in nearly every aspect of their youth programming, particularly their mentoring program, which is comprised of both paid and volunteer staff recruited from NU via work-study positions that are paid by the university. This provides the YMCA with a reliable source of motivated, intelligent and passionate students who can mentor area youth. Sue spoke about the benefits of their relationship with NU as well as details about how exactly she went about setting it up.

Finally, future Cabrini Connections fellow Bradley Troast and co-chair of the Northwestern Community Development Corps joined us to share his successes with engaging students as volunteers at dozens of non-profit sites around Evanston and Chicago. As a current NU Senior who has headed up a major student-led community service organization he lent a very interesting perspective to the workshop.

As facilitator, I also shared my thoughts about how Cabrini Connections has benefited from intentionally engaging university communties, particulaly Northwestern as half of our full time staff are NU alumni. Through making a point to reach out to the NU community via our ning group: http://nututormentor.ning.com/ and personal networks, we have been able to host our spring Tutor/Mentor Conference at the NU school of law downtown and will be hosting our upcoming November conference at the NU Evanston campus. We've benefited from having a full-time intern in Diana Castaneda via her SESP practicum and a part-time intern Jessica Rockswold who is currently analyzing our students grade cards in order to quantify the impact that our program has had on our students' grades. Besides NU, our Media Outreach intern Meagan Hermanowicz from DePaul has played an essential role in our Public Relations and helping to draw resources to our organization and our steady flow of interns from IIT are constantly helping us to improve our online T/MC content.

All in all, I think this 90 min workshop offered a plethora of resources to its attendees and should be repeated in the coming years. In our struggle to stay afloat in this economy, it's important for tutor/mentor programs like ours to reach out to University communities who often have the human, financial and organizational resources that we need to maximize our impact. Hopefully future workshops can continue to make this case in new ways and taking into account emerging university institutions that hold promise for non-profits such as the Northwestern University Center for Civic Engagment.

Perhaps you'd be interested in sharing your own knowledge/experiences in engaging universities like Northwestern?

Year End Dinner 2009

2009-06-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday marked a very special anniversary for me. Having attended the Cabrini Connections 2008 Year-End Dinner, which was my first official event as a future Cabrini Connections employee, the coming and going of this year's Year-End Dinner meant that I've been involved with this remarkable organization for over 1 year! As inspired as I was last year, attending the dinner with my girlfriend, Alyssa, and meeting many of the students, volunteers, board members and their families for the first time, I left this year's dinner with an even greater sense of the importance of our program. Though last year's event was moving, bringing together over 100 people in one room, public housing residents, fortune 500 company executives, students and their families who would never otherwise shared a meal together, this year's event drew well over 200 folks and left everyone who attended with a true appreciation of the importance of our program on not only the kids we serve, but the entire Cabrini-Green community.

We began the evening with a delicious meal of chicken, salad, pasta, rolls, cookies...etc which got everyone talking at the 20+ full tables we had set up for the event. Next the Youth Leadership Council and I premiered our new documentary, simply entitled "Cabrini Connections", which you can stream in its entirety here. If you haven't already checked it out, I would strongly encourage you to follow the link because this movie, which I produced with help from 2 very generous volunteers Matt Lauterbach and Dinesh Sabu as well as Sean, Savon and DeSean of the Youth Leadership Council, features current students interviewing 30 year veteran volunteers, program alumni and concerned community members about the role of our program in the lives of the people we touch.

Next we heard from 3 parents who spoke about the impact that our program has had on their children. DeSean's mother Ms. Norrine Rhodes, Arden's mother Ms. Rhonda Wright and Savon's father Mr. Rodney Clark all gave moving testimony to the effectiveness and importance of our program, which was great to hear directly from the parents. Following the parents' remarks, a couple of our recent graduates, Jonathan Summers and Kenneth Chapman, spoke about the impact their involvement with our program continues to have on them and how much the program means to them. This was one of my highlights of the night because, though it was clear that they weren't 100% comfortable addressing a crowd of 200+ folks (which is completely understandable for young college students), their commitment to our program allowed them to overcome their anxiety and speak from the heart. Similarly, our Administrative coordinator El Da'Sheon Nix, went without a preprepared speech and wrapped the evening up beautifully with a touching play-by-play of some of his personal highlights from the year.

Some other highlights from the night were a dance performance from Yolanda, Breonca, Cierria and Shante, a hilarious play with a positive message performed by the Cabrini Connections Writing Club, a brave & honest poetry reading by 8th grader Ashaunti Roby, an incredible musical performance by 6th grader Ana Tate and a great keynote speech by Dan. Also, I don't want to forget to mention the wonderful job that our student emcees, Raheem, Vontesha and Victoria, did hosting the event.

All in all, last Thursday was truly a night to remember. This year's Dinner served its job of sending us into the summer months with the momentum we need to keep drawing more and more passionate individuals into our organization that will both sustain us and catalyze our constant quest to offer the best, most comprehensive tutoring/mentoring program possible to the kids we serve. They deserve it.

Youth Leadership Council Video!

2009-06-01T13:06:00.000-07:00

Hello! I know at least some of you were lucky enough to spend Thursday and Friday at our 31st Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference at the NU School of Law. Hopefully those who attended left on Friday afternoon feeling as energized and hopeful as I did, knowing that all 100+ of us who attended are slowly but surely building a tutoring/mentoring movement that will eventually ensure that every child growing up in poverty has access to high quality tutor/mentor programs in their neighborhood. Anyway, today I wanted to share something very meaningful with you all. It's a video that I produced with the help of Matt Lauterbach, Dinesh Sabu and the Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council, Savon Clark, Sean Mayfield and DeSean Hale in particular. Check it out here on youtube.

The goal of this project was to give the Youth Leadership Council one last opportunity to work on a project with lasting impact for the program that would inspire others to get involved over the summer. In order of appearance the video features:
--Cabrini Connections Founder/CEO, Dan Bassill
--Skinner Elementary 8th grader Savon Clark, who interviews his mother Shavonne, a participant of the program back in the 80s.
--Sean Mayfield an 8th grader at Newberry Academy who interviews his mentor, veteran volunteer Allen Tyson, who has been with the program since the 1960s.
--DeSean Hale, a Wells High School Junior, who interviews his mother, longtime Cabrini-Green resident Norrine Rhodes
--LaMonica Garth, Cabrini Connections alumnus and nursing student at Chicago State University. Her sister is Cabrini Connections Senior, Posse and Gates Millenium Scholar, LaFaye Garth

Please let us know what you think about the movie! If you like it, share it with people in your network so that they might find out a little more about the difference we've been making in the lives of students for the last few decades. Hopefully some will be inspired to help support us in this difficult time. See you at the Year end dinner this Thursday where we will be premiering the movie in front of 175+ participants and friends of Cabrini Connections!

Year End Dinner

2009-05-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

Next Thursday, June 4th, marks a very important event at Cabrini Connections. It's our annual year end dinner celebration, which brings together students, alumni, potential students, mentors, staff and donors together along with their friends and family, for an evening of free food, entertainment and celebration! Longtime volunteer Courtland Madock along with her Year-End Dinner Committee have put together another great night for everyone and I wanted to make sure that you knew that you are personally invited to attend. This event is open to the public and is a great opportunity to connect with everyone whose involvement makes our program possible. Last year I attended the year-end dinner before I started working here and was very impressed by the diverse mix of attendees and presenters. Alumni and current students alike spoke to the value of our program and how it has positively influenced their lives, parents of students and alumni gave testimony to the effectiveness of the mentoring relationships that we facilitate between their children and our volunteer mentors and

This year current students Victoria Rivera, Raheem Muhammed and Ashaunti Roby will serve as the evening's MCs, again introducing inspirational alumni and parent speakers. The writing club will be debuting a short play that they have been working on and our Youth Leadership Council will premiere a short documentary about the history of Cabrini Connections, shot with the assistence of professional videographers Matt Lauterbach and Dinesh Sabu. The theme of this year's dinner is "Hope, Build, Believe, and Achieve" and you can easily RSVP online here, so please join us. The dinner will be taking place at the Cornerstone Academy banquet facility, which is located at 1111 N Wells. Dinner will last from 5:30-8 and those over 21 will continue the night at Spoon, located across the street at 1240 N Wells St. Hope to see you there!

Bikes!!!!

2009-05-26T16:36:00.001-07:00

Last Wednesday and Thursday, dozens of our students cruised out of our last night of tutoring in style, with their very own bikes, locks and helmets. In an effort to get our students more engaged in our various enrichment curricula and to help us determine the impact of our program on our students' academic performance, we offered to give a free bike to each and every student who earned more than 400 points last quarter. Students earn points through their attendence at our weekly tutoring sessions and attending our clubs, which meet 3 nights a week: Art club on Monday, Tech club on Tuesday and Writing club on Wednesday. Students also receive points every time they enter data in our "Student and Volunteer History and Tracking System" (more popularly known as SVHATS) which helps EL Da'Sheon and I to keep tabs on all of our mentor/mentee matches. Most importantly, students also earn points for bringing their report cards to tutoring and earn additional points for every A, B and C on their report cards. One of the primary goals of this bike promotion was to get more data about our students' grades so we can determine the impact that their involvement in our program has had on their academic performance.

We received donated bikes from two non-profit bike cooperatives, Evanston's "Recyclery" and The Working Bikes Cooperative. Both organizations utilize volunteer bike mechanics to assemble bikes from spare and discarded parts. They then donate large quantities of these bikes to organizations in countries with high rates of poverty, such as Angola, Guatemala and Cuba, that use the bikes to empower local communities. Some of their bikes make it to local organziations such as Cabrini Connections and we are very thankful for the generosity of both organizations. In addition to donating a large number of bikes, Working Bikes also donated a dozen or so helmets to ensure our kids keep their brains safe while riding their new bikes! Through some independent fundraising, I have been able to secure some donations for additional helmets and locks so that every kid received a lock, however, any additional financial contributions would be much appreciated to help offset the cost of these pricy (but essential) accessories.

So, I just wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Sharlyn at The Recyclery and Raul at Working Bikes for all the time and effort they spent ensuring that our kids received the quality bikes that they deserve for all their hard work and dedication to our program and their own futures. Thanks again!

2009 May Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference

2009-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to remind you that our Annual May Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference will be taking place this upcoming Thursday and Friday at The Northwestern University School of Law from 9-4:30 both days. Registration will begin at 8:00am both days and I strongly encourage all of you who have any interest in what I've been writing about over the past year to come out and meet/learn from others who are exceedingly passionate about helping at-risk youth succeed through involvement with constantly improving tutoring/mentoring programs. Though the majority of attendees are involved with leading or supporting Chicagoland tutor/mentor programs, year after year folks come from far and wide to connect with others and learn ways to become more effective advocates for youth tutoring/mentoring initiatives of all stripes. From learning strategies to engage the resources of university communities to build your program to sharing effective fundraising strategies to weather the current financial storm, there are workshops and speakers that will interest anyone looking to make a difference in a child's life. So, I encourage all of you to please check out our conference website at www.tutormentorconference.org
and register. If the $100 2 day advance registration fee would otherwise prevent you from attending, give Nicole White, who coordinates both our conference and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, a call at 312-492-9614 to discuss some scholarship options.

Even if you can only make it for one day, the conference is all about connecting people with the resources they need to run and support constantly improving youth tutor/mentor programs everywhere where there is need. So please join us! We want to hear your experiences, your ideas and your perspective.

See you then!

Student Spotlight: Gregory Hatchett

2009-05-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Gregory Hatchett, a Junior at Rauner College Prep, has been with Cabrini Connections since the 7^th grade. He’s currently paired up with longtime volunteer Mike Jozwik. Gregory is certain that he wants to go to college after he graduates and even knows where: Mississippi State University. He is very excited at the prospect of attending a historically black college, and not only because he won’t have to deal with the Chicago winters anymore! He’s learned a lot about the University from his cousin who is currently a student there and knows that it will be a great place to prepare for his two potential career paths: graphic design or law (at this point he’s undecided). Gregory has loved to draw for as long as he can remember and continues to fill notebook after notebook with his signature mix of graffiti and Japanese anime stylings. He’s been actively involved with the art club over the past few years, which has helped him to hone his craft outside of the countless hours he spends on his own working on his art. In fact his artwork has graced the walls of numerous Chicago-area galleries through his participation in our Annual Cabrini Connections Art and Film Festival. Eventually, he hopes to use his talents to make his own series of comic books, inspired by some of his favorites such as classic DC comics such as spiderman and superman.

On the other hand, if Gregory decides to commit himself to studying law, he hopes to eventually be able to help people coming from low-income neighborhoods like Cabrini Green navigate the IRS’ complex webs of tax code. He realizes that these individuals often don’t have the resources to hire accountants to help them identify the various tax breaks and loopholes that that may qualify for and that consequently, these individuals often are shouldered with unfair tax burdens. He is also considering injury law because he has experienced firsthand the need for lawyers in low-income communities to help people with injuries and disabilities fight for their rights to fair compensation and not be intimidated, like his father was, into working while injured. Cabrini Connections salutes Gregory and his desire to help others! Hopefully his desires will become a reality and we can stay in contact throughout his college years and as he enters the working world!

Volunteer Spotlight: Courtland Madock

2009-05-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

This week we’d like to bring one of our “behind the scenes” volunteers to the fore, and give her the recognition she deserves for all her hard work and commitment to our program. In her 5 years volunteering at Cabrini Connections, Courtland Madock has mentored 3 students, including Diara Fleming, who will be graduating from Northern Illinois University this year with a degree in Family and Child Nutrition Services and aspirations to attend nursing school in the fall. After working together at Cabrini Connections during Diara’s Junior year, they developed a strong enough mentoring relationship so that when Diara couldn’t attend the program her senior year because she got a job working for Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, they still stayed connected and were able to work together to guarantee Diara’s admission to college. Courtland describes her relationship with Diara as “super close, she’s like family”. Even today, they still talk a half dozen or so times a week!

Courtland is no stranger to reaching out to others in need, in fact she grew up surrounded by foster children in her own house growing up. During her college years at the University of Iowa she mentored 3 kids through Big Brothers Big Sisters. However, these days her biggest contribution to our youth is the role she plays as the coordinator of our Annual Year-End Dinner. She started helping to organize the event 5 years ago and has been the primary coordinator for the last 3. For Courtland the year-end dinner is one of the highlights of her year. In her view it’s a great event because it “brings a very unique group together who wouldn’t otherwise come together”. She’s always happy to see the way students, volunteers, staff, donors, family and friends can mingle at the year-end dinner, connected by their participation in Cabrini Connections. Unlike some of our other events, Courtland prides herself on the fact that the focus is on the kids, not wooing corporate sponsors or big donors. Despite this, last year’s event managed to raise $13,000 for our program, something she’s working hard to repeat this year! We agree with Courtland when she says that the event is getting better and better each year and that this is in large part due to the fact that she gains more and more knowledge and expertise each year, so that she is able to focus on the little things that make the event great rather than worrying about basics such as getting food or searching for a suitable space to hold the event. Additionally, due to the marketing savvy she’s gained at her job managing product strategy for US Cellular and the Kellogg MBA coursework that fills her nights, Courtland clearly has what it takes to pull off a big event like our Year-End Dinner. We’re so happy that she’s taken such a leadership role and has been able to put her unique talents to use. Now come see all her hard work in person by attending our Year-End Dinner, which will take place from 5:30-8 on June 4^th at 1111 N Wells. See you there!

PIP and P55 Seminar at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection

2009-05-12T16:03:00.001-07:00

This Wednesday, PIP and P55 fellows from Princeton, Northwestern, University of Chicago and Colorado College will be taking a break from the daily grind at their respective non-profits/community organizations to find out a bit about what we do here at Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection. So, I thought that I would provide a road map to our discussion here on my blog with the links that we plan on referring to during our presentation, so that interested fellows can easily find and share the information we present with others or return to articles/web sites that they find particularly interesting.

I kick things off by talking about a bit of our history which can be found on the www.cabriniconnections.net website if you click on the "about us" tab on the left side of the page.

A detailed organizational history can be found here.

I continue on to discuss our strategy for making a life-changing difference in the lives of youth living all across the city and how that manifests itself at both a local and a global level, making use of some graphics found on our www.tutormentorexchange.net site, which is an information hub that helps build a convergence of ideas and strategies, resulting in constantly improving tutor/mentor programs being available to more youth in high-poverty neighborhoods.

This pdf essay explains the logic of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Next, former PIP fellow and Tutor/Mentor Connection Coordinator, Nicole White discusses our four-part strategy for accomplishing this mission.

1) Collect knowledge from key stakeholders about volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs: how programs succeed, where programs are located, and where more programs and resources are needed.

2) Aggressively share this knowledge through marketing and public awareness campaigns, capitalizing on the Internet as a chief vehicle of communication.

3) Strengthen involvement of community and industry leaders to increase essential resources to tutor/mentor programs.

4) Facilitate understanding and collaboration among stakeholders to develop the long-term, integrated actions needed to help youths move from birth in poverty to a job or career by age 25.

Mike Trakan explains our innovative use of GIS mapping: http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net/

Mike's Mapping for Justice Blog: http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/

I discuss our utilization of "social media" and how we create evangelists for our cause:

Chris’ PIP blog

Nicole’s Tutor/Mentor Connection blog

Dan Bassill’s Tutor/Mentor Leadership blog

EL Da’Sheon’s Cabrini Connections blog

Vjeko's eLearning and Technology blog

Engaging Northwestern Students via: http://nututormentor.ning.com/

Sharing tutoring/mentoring leadership strategies via: http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com/

http://www.classroom20.com/profile/tutormentor/

http://www.socialedge.org/ (just search “tutor mentor”)

Forces For Good: Building and Nurturing Nonprofit Networks

2009-05-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

Tutor/Mentor Connection Founder and CEO Dan Bassill (aka my boss) recently shared some interesting research findings in his blog:

About a decade ago, researchers from The University of Chicago's Chapin Hall Center for Children analyzed the Tutor/Mentor Connection and concluded:

"The Tutor/Mentor Connection may be particularly difficult to understand because it does not easily fit within known categories of organizations. It provides some of the supports that a membership organization or association would -- such as its newsletter, conference, and public relations efforts-- but it doesn't charge a membership fee or offer a membership identity. It also provides some of the matching services that volunteer associations provide and some of the technical assistance provided by organizations that do training and management consulting but without the fee sometimes charged by such consultants. Moreover, T/MC's citywide mission to not only support programs, but to increase their numbers, sets it apart from other types of programs."

Having recently read Forces For Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, I noticed that the 4th practice that they identify as being essential for non-profits to achieve "extraordinary impact" is that they "build and nurture nonprofit networks, treating other groups as allies". The organizations that the authors determined to be "high-impact" non-profits through their research, organizations such as Youthbuild USA, The Heritage Foundation, The Exploratorium and Teach for America, were found to have a "network mind-set", rather than the more common "organization orientation". In other words, successful organizations in the social sector collaborate rather than compete with their peers. They see other organizations as allies rather than competition for scarce resources and that only through working collaboratively can they achieve maximum impact. The authors identified the following 4 common practices of "high impact" nonprofits, which I think can be identified in our own organization, The Tutor/Mentor Connection as well. Though it may be a bit presumptuous to say so, I do feel that some of the difficulty that people have in adequately understanding The Tutor/Mentor Connection stems from the fact that we do operate differently from most other non-profits, but this is a good thing, something that distinguishes us from other non-profits because of the systemic impact we are trying to achieve. So here are the 4 tactics that high-impact nonprofits utilize to maximize their impact through their networks, according to "Forces for Good".

-Growing the pie: Successful organizations focus on channeling valuable resources to fellow organizations and expanding resources for all programs rather than hording them just to grow their own organization. They want to grow resources for all programs because it increases their overall impact. We have done this through our role in developing the Lawyers Lend a Hand program which funds dozens of programs around the city.

-Share Knowledge: High-Impact nonprofits "actively share their knowledge and expertise with other organizations". We do this through our biannual conferences and our numerous websites, most importantly www.tutormentorexchange.net and www.tutormentorconnection.org We also make ourselves available, as the Chapin Hall researchers mentioned, for technical assistance and managerial consulting work.

-Develop Leadership: "These organizations develop leadership for the larger network, field, or movement, nurturing talented employees and developing the next generation of leadership. They magnify their impact indirectly, increasing both the personnel capacity of other organizations and their own social connections within their network." I think that the PIP fellowship clearly falls within this category. My supervisors Dan Bassill, EL Da'Sheon Nix and Nicole White have done much to develop my skills, knowledge and capacity to serve as a leader and advocate for youth tutoring/mentoring wherever my career might take me. This investment in a fellow like myself who will only stay with the organization for a year is clearly a forward-thinking investment in me as a lifelong potential change-agent, and not simply as an employee of The Tutor/Mentor Connection. In addition, The T/MC is constantly publishing material on our websites, sharing leadership strategies online and at our biannual conferences.

-Work in Coalitions: "Once these groups have built formal or informal networks, they go beyond their inner circle to form larger coalitions and mobilize their network for collective aims. They work in coalition with others, playing both lead and secondary roles, and they share the credit for their successes." This tendency to build coalitions is a definite character trait of Tutor/Mentor Connection Founder Dan Bassill and the organization as a whole. In my experience with our organization, everything from our conference planning, to volunteer recruitment to training volunteer tutors is seen as an opportunity for massive collaboration between every tutor/mentor program in the city, not just something for us to do well on our own.

As you can see, The Tutor/Mentor Connection does indeed have a network orientation as an organization and this is a good thing, despite the fact that it makes our organization a bit more difficult to explain to your average joe on the street/potential funder. For more info about our ideas about collaboration check out www.tutormentorexchange.net and here in particular. Also, check out these past blog posts that relate to the idea of collaboration

-Organizational Silos and effective collaboration

-Collaboration between Tutor/Mentor Programs

Volunteer Spotlight: Autumn Sharp

2009-05-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

First year mentor Autumn Sharp has worked diligently with not one, but two students this year. She started the year with Senior, Terrisha Brownlow and after she left the program, she kindly stuck around as a substitute mentor until she was finally paired up a few months ago with Kanah Bradley, a sophomore at Von Steuben High School. Though she now works as a lawyer at Much Shelist, immediately after graduating from Ohio University she worked as a junior high and high school teacher. Her time spent in Columbus, OH classrooms teaching students with developmental handicaps and learning disabilities served to further develop her passion for helping youth succeed. About her current student Kanah, she says “I’m so happy to be working with someone who definitely has a bright future. We’re working to make it even brighter!”

Autumn is in a great position to do this as an attorney working for Much Shelist since her student Kanah is also interested in becoming a lawyer. In fact, Autumn has known that she wanted to go to law school since she was 11 years old! She attributes her early interest in the law to the amount of Cagney and Lacey she watched when she was a girl. Not wanting her daughter to be shot on the job working as a private investigator, Autumn’s mother strongly encouraged her to consider seeking justice in the courtroom as a lawyer rather than in the streets as a police detective like her childhood television heroes, detectives Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey.

Now intimately familiar with the day to day life as an attorney, Autumn is eager to share her knowledge and experiences with Kanah, so that she’ll be in a better position to make an informed decision about her own career. However, Autumn is careful not to push her too hard in one direction or the other since she realizes that Kanah may very well take a different path than the one that she herself took. For this reason, Autumn is already thinking about setting up some job shadowing opportunities for Kanah, who is also entertaining thoughts of practicing medicine, this summer with an Ob/Gyn and a family practice doctor that she knows.

After mentoring at Cabrini Connections for less than a year, Autumn is already committed to helping to sustain our program into the future by assisting with fundraising. Now that she has a good grasp on the life-changing difference our program can make in the lives of kids and adults alike, she wants to take the next step and try to bring us some much-needed resources by fundraising through her personal and professional networks. We very much appreciate efforts like these and for your continued dedication to our program. Congratulations Autumn, you certainly deserve the volunteer spotlight!

Student Spotlight: Marquita Fisher

2009-05-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Chicago Hope Academy 9th grader Marquita Fisher has been in our program since she graduated from her YMCA mentoring program and started here as a 7th grader back in 2006. At her YMCA program, she was paired up with Kiera Kelly. Referring to their first few mentoring sessions, Marquita explains “we clicked right away—she understood me”. Luckily their relationship grew strong enough that when Marquita’s K-6 program at the YMCA ended, Kiera agreed to stay with her and work together at Cabrini Connections where they continue to build their mentoring relationship to this day. In Marquita’s 8th grade year, she and Kiera discussed what high school she should attend. After attending LaFayette Elementary School on the west side it would have been easy for her to attend her neighborhood school, Manley. However, Kiera encouraged her to strive to attend the best possible high school she could, so she ended up applying and gaining admission to Chicago Hope Academy, a private college prep school blocks from where she stays on the West side.

The shift to the more rigorous workload of a college prep school like Chicago Hope Academy was difficult at first, particularly in math, but with Kiera’s encouragement, Marquita has been staying after school and working with her teachers to ensure she understands all the material and gets all her work done on time.

However, Marquita realizes that all this hard work is for a purpose. After graduating High School she intends to enroll in an out-of-state university and study psychology or social work. She has known for a while that she wants to do some sort of counseling for a career since she often finds herself counseling her friends and family through difficult times. Through relating other people’s struggles with her own, Marquita finds that she can relate with people well, both youth and adults. She hopes that eventually she can use this gift to help others cope with difficult situations as a professional counselor. Just this past week in the Cabrini Connections College Zone, Marquita and Kiera met with our own college zone advisors Carla and Stephanie to discuss the wide variety of careers that she could explore that involve counseling others through difficult times.

When not exploring careers or working on school projects, Marquita and Kiera enjoy spending time together outside of our Wed night tutoring sessions. For example, they always celebrate their birthdays, which are only 2 days apart, June 21st and June 19th respectively, by going out on the town together. In the past they’ve gone to Dave and Busters, Six Flags, Safari Land, and all sorts of other fun places where they can enjoy each others company. Since Marquita describes herself as a “cool, outgoing person that likes to have fun”, they surely have a great time. Once again, congratulations Marquita on earning the student spotlight. Keep up the great work!

Student Spotlight: Josue Roque

2009-05-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

Salazar Elementary seventh-grader Josue Roque has been with our program for just a couple months but he has already distinguished himself by his respectful demeanor and perfect attendance. Upon joining the program, he has met with his mentor, Rajul Shah, every single week, bringing homework and working productively each and every time. Lately they’ve been working on a debate project and studying for his constitution test, which he must pass to graduate. Though he acknowledges that he will have to study a lot more, he’s been feeling much more confident recently after working through it with Rajul. Speaking about his mentor, Josue states “I think he’s helped me a lot, he’s a great mentor and he makes sure that everything he does, I’m sure about. He doesn’t just give me the answers, he makes sure that I get everything and don’t miss anything.”

Josue is a very well-rounded student. Though his favorite class at school is language arts and social studies, mainly because he likes his teacher’s style of relating to the students, his real passions lie in math and science. In fact, Josue was selected by his math and science teachers as one of 3 7th graders in the entire school that will have the opportunity to attend a 2 week long math and science summer camp at Northern Illinois University. There, they will be working on experiments in real research laboratories at NIU, which he is very excited about.

When he’s not studying, Josue enjoys playing football and soccer in his neighborhood park down in Little Village, which he plans to do a lot of this summer. He also plans to help out at his school to see if they need his help cleaning or with odds and ends this summer. However, his highlight of the year is always when his family travels down to Ciudad Juarez on the US-Mexico border to visit his extended family who still live in Mexico. After his 8th grade year, he hopes to attend either Whitney Young, or Cristo Rey high schools. He’s particularly interested in Cristo Rey because there, he believes he will “learn how to be responsible, get jobs at real companies and work off the tuition”, through their innovative Corporate Internship Program. This program allows low-income students to earn 65% of the cost of their education by working five full days each month in entry-level positions at corporations in downtown Chicago such as Deloitte & Touche, JP Morgan Chase and Loyola University Health System. Even as a seventh-grader, it’s clear that Josue is thinking about his future in a very real and engaged way. We’re looking forward to working with him and Rajul to help his dreams become a reality. Congratulations Josue!

Volunteer Spotlight: Mike Kolberg

2009-05-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

Though Mike Kolberg has only been with our program for a year, he’s been one of our most committed mentors. In fact, he was the only mentor to meet with his student, Savon Clark, regularly all summer long in our center. They met weekly to ensure that Savon entered his 8th grade year well-prepared for his challenging math coursework. Thanks to their dedication, Savon is now aiming for an A in math this quarter, which Mike is doing his best to help him achieve.

Over the past year, Mike has found working with Savon very rewarding. He’s glad that, thanks to the work they put in over the summer and their shared commitment to the mentoring relationship, they’ve been able to jump to addressing “higher level stuff” and don't have to worry about attendance or staying focused during their time together. Their usual coursework still includes a lot of math, but they also spend time working on Savon’s science homework. Luckily, Mike’s engineering degree from University of Illinois imparted him with all the knowledge he needs to be an excellent math and science tutor for Savon. However, despite his degree, Mike is not working as an engineer, but rather as a consultant for Zurich where he enjoys working with people, helping them manage risk at their companies, which he much prefers to sitting in front of a computer designing things as he would have done if he followed a more traditional engineering career path. When he’s not working, his favorite pastimes include watersports up at his favorite Wisconsin getaway, Pleasant Lake, where he boats and water skis.

We are so glad that Mike is happy with his involvement here at Cabrini Connections with Savon. In fact, Mike recently expressed how pleased he his to be volunteering someplace where “everyone is so involved and consistently dedicated to the program”. Additionally, in an effort to be a more effective mentor, Mike has reached out to Savon’s family and makes an effort to keep in contact with his father at least once a week after their tutoring sessions. He recently attended a dinner at Savon’s house where his father assembled all of the caring adults in Savon’s life and introduced them to one-another, so that they might be a more effective network of support for Savon as he enters high school next year. With Savon’s exceptional grades and dedication to the program so far as proof, it’s clear that Mike is doing an excellent job. Congratulations Mike and keep up the great work!

Social Networking for Nonprofits 101

2009-04-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

In the past I've posted about the importance of social networks in youth development and explained what we do at Cabrini Connections in terms of bridging social capital. Today I want to discuss another very important aspect of social networks, how to utilize them to bring much needed resources to non-profits like Cabrini Connections. As I've said in previous posts, we all have social networks, whether we like it or not. We have people in our lives who care about us and what we do, as a result of the personal relationships we maintain, the groups we choose to affiliate ourselves with or merely by the virtue of us having met them in the past.

As someone who helps coordinate a volunteer-based non-profit, I am constantly working through my social networks to channel resources to our organization. In fact, I'm coming to understand that access to a large, resource-rich personal network is incredibly beneficial to non-profits like Cabrini Connections, whose business model depends on engaging individuals and encouraging them to support us with their time, talents and funds. Beyond the folks I know personally however, lies an even more vast, comparatively untapped network of resource-rich potential supporters. These are the people in my friends networks whom I don't know personally, but am connected to via this mutual friend. Social capital and networking theory state that due to the fact that we share a mutual friend, we are more subject to reciprocity norms that would lead us to support each other to a greater degree than we would if we weren't connected via a mutual friend. When utilized systematically and intentionally, these reciprocity norms can be utilized to the benefit of an organization to draw a variety of resources to them.
For example, I have been working with the Youth Leadership Council to determine a constructive capstone project for them to engage in that will build their leadership skills and self-esteem while also accomplishing an organizational objective of Cabrini Connections. After some discussion, the students decided that it would be good to film a short documentary about the long history of our program. Once that was decided, the next step was for me to find volunteers to assist the 6 students with completing their project.

Not knowing anybody in my immediate network who would have either the time or the skills to volunteer for this task, I thought about the people in my network who might know someone who would be willing to take on this project. So, I ended up reaching out to a woman, Rebecca Parrish, whom I met at the Cabrini Connections Art and Film Festival through her prior involvement with youth filmmakers. Therefore I asked her if anyone in her network might be interested in such a project. She immediately connected me with her friend Matt, who based on nothing except our mutual relationship with Rebecca, trusted me enough to volunteer his skills, time and eqipment to help our youth leadership council film this documentary in time to premiere it at the June 4th Year end Dinner. Check out the above graphic to see a visual representation of how this process played out.

Stories like this unfold every day at Cabrini Connections and effective organizations around the globe as we intentionally utilize our social networks to pull necessary resources towards our non-profits and the causes that we care so passionately about. That's why we try to turn everyone involved with our program, from our interns to our mentors, volunteers and students, into evangelists for our organization. The book "Forces for Good: The 6 Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits" argues that successful organizations "create ways for many people to engage with their organization...and convert them into evangelists who will spread the word among their social networks." Moreover, they argue that the very best non-profits "are particularly strategic about indentifying, converting and cultivating powerful individuals, or super-evangelists." They argue, as we do, that over time this process of identifying and intentionally engaging an ever growing community of potential supporters through social network analysis "can create a powerful community of individual supporters that is ever expanding."

Luckily, social networking tools such as facebook and LinkedIn make identifying and engaging these individuals as easy as typing their names into a search bar or perusing lists of individuals aligned with a given cause and finding mutual friends who can serve as a bridge to connect you. Therefore we encourage everyone interested in helping to pull at-risk youth off the streets and into college and careers to think critically about not only how they can support tutor/mentor programs addressing these issues, but how the people in their networks can help as well using their unique talents and resources.

Engaging Faith Communites

2009-04-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

So this post comes fresh on the heels of a very enlightening PIP seminar at Interfaith Youth Core. For those unfamiliar with the PIP program, each Wednesday a couple dozen of us PIP fellows from Northwestern, University of Chicago, Princeton and Colorado College convene at some remarkable organizations office to learn more about what is being done to address issues of social justice around Chicago. This morning we had the unique opportunity to meet with Eboo Patel who has built an organization around the idea of interfaith service--that is, bringing together young leaders of different faith backgrounds to work together, develop skills and mutual understanding through common social justice projects. They work to spread ideas of religious pluralism in the public sphere while at the same time equipping future interfaith leaders to build a movement that promotes mutual respect and understanding on matters of faith while empowering youth to serve others.

For us here at the Tutor/Mentor Connection, we are also concerned with mobilizing people of faith to give back to their communities through structured programs that bring together people of different backgrounds, promoting mutual respect and understanding. Though our primary focus is developing at-risk youth through connecting them with a caring mentor, our pairs do come from unique backgrounds, be they socioeconomic, racial or faith, and through building a relationship, mentors and mentees do often come to understand and respect the other person's background. In fact, when interviewing our volunteers to write my volunteer spotlight articles, they often claim that they get as much or more out of the relationship than the kid due to the fact that through our program, and the structured relationships we facilitate, the volunteers come to understand the unique struggles their students face growing up in a public housing development like Cabrini-Green, in a different socio-economic situation and with a different history and perspective due to their status as young African-Americans in the inner-city. So, it's clear that volunteers value this cultural exchange and that this is a motivating factor for their involvement.

Given that the 4 religions with the most adherents in the US: Christianity, Judiasm, Buddhism and Islam all have strong social justice components, it would make sense for communities of faith to rally around a cause like tutoring/mentoring at-risk youth. In fact, many have already done so, for example, youth programs operate out of churches and synagoges across the city. However, given the strength, resources and organization of these faith communities, many of them are equipped to be doing much more to increase their impact and strenghthen their communities. This short document, hashes out a strategy for faith communities to lead volunteer mobilization for tutor/mentor programs. Yet this is but one way that faith communities can get involved. They can host their own community mentoring programs, welcoming youth from the community into their space and connecting them with caring volunteers through structured tutoring/mentoring programs, they can also use their significant human and financial resources to support and build capacity for pre-existing programs. So if you are a member of a faith community, please think about what you and your church/synagoge/mosque/temple...etc can be doing to support efforts around the city to give at-risk youth a chance to succeed. Find programs at www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net or call us at 312-492-9614.

Student Spotlight: Arden Harris

2009-04-28T14:33:00.001-07:00

Don't be surprised if you start hearing a lot more about seventh grader Arden Harris in the coming years. She's got the talent, the passion and the dedication to make it big in whatever she applies herself to accomplish. She's friendly, mature and not afraid to put herself in unfamiliar situations so she can grow as a person. For instance, for the past 2 years she has attended a three week long sleep-away camp in Carthage, Wisconsin. Kids of all ages come to this camp to work on developing their theater skills with other students. At the end, they put on elaborate productions such as "You Can't Take It With You" starring Arden herself.

Arden also attends Camp Pinewood, which is a little more rustic. At Camp Pinewood, Arden and a group of other kids rough it in the middle of the woods, building their own fires, practicing their archery and rock climbing while also working on their dance skills and other talents.

As you can probably tell, Arden has a passion for the arts. In fact, she has her own hip hop group, where she sings and dances with 2 friends. Inspired by her favorite artist Ciara, she wants to make it as a performer. To accomplish this goal she practices singing and dancing every single day as well as practices the piano multiple times a week!

Arden also works on her dance skills on the Cheerleading team, which is a lot of work, particularly when they are preparing for competitions as they are now. She'll stay in performing shape this spring by playing soccer for her school team for the second year in a row!

Arden and her mentor Fran Fritzmann work together to ensure Arden's grades stay high and never go below the A's and B's she knows she can work to achieve. She and Fran have been working together for years. They were paired up at Cabrini Green Tutoring Program and have been working together ever since. This stability has permitted Fran to get to know Arden's family and work with her mom to ensure Arden's success in the coming years

Discussing her drive to succeed Arden says: "I've seen what happens when you don't push yourself to success, and if I don't push myself, who's gonna push me? I wanna have a great future and it's never too early to worry about your future.” Congratulations Arden, your student spotlight feature is long overdue!

Volunteer Spotlight: Allen Tyson

2009-04-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

This week’s volunteer in the spotlight is long overdue for the honor, in fact, he’s been mentoring youth since the early 1970’s, before most of our mentors were born! Allen (AJ) Tyson first started mentoring youth, when Cabrini Connections was just a gleam in Montgomery Wards’ young advertising director, Dan Bassill’s eye. At the time Dan was a volunteer at the Montgomery Ward Tutor/Mentor Program which served 2nd through 6th grade youth in the Cabrini-Green neighbourhood, which he took over as a full-time coordinator in 1975. They hit it off instantly and Mr. Tyson knew that this was somewhere where he could make a real difference without volunteering full-time and sacrificing his promising business career. Since that day, 29 years ago, he has mentored 13 youth, including his current mentee, Sean Mayfield, whom he describes as one of the most promising students he’s mentored.

During these past 29 years, Allen has done much to sustain and grow our organization beyond his role as a mentor, he continue to support the program financially as can be seen by his current 1st place status in our Fundraising for Quarters volunteer fundraising campaign. If he is able to retain his position on top, he will receive 2 free round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the United States! In that case, perhaps he’ll decide to fly to one of the coasts with his wife to pursue their shared love of sailing or maybe back to Philadelphia to visit his alma mater, Philadelphia University, where through his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, he cultivated the “volunteer gene” that he got from his mother early in life by, volunteering at orphanages, baseball games, and coordinating reading seminars to promote literacy among underprivileged youth.

Through his extensive mentoring experience he’s picked up a few simple but effective mentoring techniques, one important one being that: “you always have to put demands on your student, they gotta bring their homework, if not, I buy books for the kids I tutor, so when they don’t have homework, we can build vocabulary by reading together.” It’s obvious that Mr. Tyson takes great joy in building relationships with each and every one of his students and helping them achieve to their highest potential. In fact, he’s contemplating becoming a substitute teacher, in addition to the 2 jobs he has already, his import-export button business and his job as a realtor for Caldwell Banker (his fun job). Regardless, it’s certain that Allen is a true asset to both the students he mentors, and Cabrini Connections. Thanks and congratulations!

A Call to Action: Help Protect Our Youth!

2009-04-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Friends and youth advocates around Illinois we have a problem,

It has just been announced that Governer Quinn's Fiscal Year 2010 budget axes the state budget for necessary youth services by 15%. I, along with The Chicago Area Project (CAP) the Illinois Collaboration on Youth (ICOY), and Illinois Council of Area Projects (CAP), together representing a coalition of more than one hundred (100) community-based agencies and organizations throughout the State, believe cuts in Youth Services, as proposed in the Governor’s FY 2010 Budget, will seriously erode the ability of community-based agencies to have a meaningful impact on the lives of young people in high-risk situations. With a proposed reduction of 14.80% (higher than in other areas of DHS) the system of community-based youth services is shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden. These programs represent a coordinated continuum that intervenes in the lives of youth in high-risk situations – many of whom are involved in, or about to enter, the juvenile justice or child welfare systems – making our communities safer places in which to live.

Call your legislators attention to the budget pages and “grants” lines that are listed below and asking them to restore funding to youth services.

Youth services programs are less costly and less restrictive forms of support, and are now seriously at-risk due to chronic under-funding. In our current economic condition, budget cuts may be necessary, but disproportionate cuts targeted at youth services are unfair to vulnerable youth and more expensive to taxpayers in the long term.

Community Services: Budget Page 7-26,
Under “Grants” Line “Community Services” Proposed CUT: $893,500

The product of 70 years of cooperation between the State and Chicago Area Project, this program prevents juvenile crime and violence, and diverts youth from the criminal justice system through the development, organization, and operation of grass-roots community organizations that manage programs for youth and families, plan and implement community betterment and development programs, and allow youth to safely pursue constructive and productive activities in economically disadvantaged communities.

Comprehensive Community Services: Budget Page 7-26, Under “Grants”, Line “Comprehensive Community Services” Proposed CUT: $1,661,000

These programs provide shelter and family reunification services to runaway and homeless youth, and accepts 24 hour, seven day a week referral from police and DCFS Child Welfare and Protective staff for youth and families in crisis situations. This program focuses on youth age 10 to 17 that are in danger of entering the Child Welfare System. It seeks family reunification, or the development of independent living capacity for affected youth.

Unified Delinquency Intervention Services: Budget Page 7-27 Line “Unified Delinquency Intervention Services” Proposed Cut: $459,900

UDIS programs provide the last hope for youth about to be committed to the Department of Corrections. Results over the past 28 years have indicated that intensive intervention at this final state has succeeded in redirecting large numbers of youth, and saving the state huge amounts in incarceration costs.

Teen REACH: Budget page 7-27 Line “Youth Programs” Proposed CUT: $2,450,000

This program funds intensive educational assistance programs for at-risk youth in danger of failing or dropping out of school. Programs are provided after school and during other out-of-school times, thus giving youth alternatives to gangs, violence and the risk of substance abuse.

Juvenile Justice Reform: Budget Page 7-27 Line “Juvenile Justice Reform” Proposed CUT: $550,800

These programs divert youth from the Juvenile Court, and refer them to intensive counseling and other psychological services, support services, and community advocacy and basic community support activities. Juvenile Court Judges and State’s Attorneys in number counties have recognized the effectiveness of these efforts as opposed to traditional involvement of identified youth in the juvenile justice system.

Since youth cannot vote and can't afford to make generous campaign contributions to those in power to influence policy, those of us with some political power need to advocate on their behalf. Please stand up for our at-risk youth by calling or writing your Legislators in the Illinois House and Senate. Thanks for your support.

Student Spotlight: Cazimir (Cazzy) Ozuruigbo, Kaylin Patton, Donald Stewart and Elijah Wilson

2009-04-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

This year, the Cabrini Connections tech club has benefited from the influx of some young and enthusiastic students, 6th and 7th graders Cazimir (Cazzy) Ozuruigbo, Kaylin Patton, Donald Stewart and Elijah Wilson. Though Kaylin heard out about our program first, he quickly spread the word to his friends and soon all 4 had joined and have had nearly 100% attendance at Tech club ever since. Over the past few months since the boys first started here at Cabrini Connections, they have learned enough HTML, which is a language used to describe web pages that web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox can understand, to build their own personal websites from scratch. That is, through working with Steve and Vjeko they are learning to read and write this complex markup language used by web designers all around the world.

Though they have only been at it a few months, they have already used their knowledge to build functional websites, which contain everything from Cazzy’s Views and Rates, which allows users to watch and rate a wide variety of videos, to Donald’s site which contains videogame ratings and movie clips. At this point Elijah is working on a chatting website that is inspired by facebook. Kaylin on the other hand is more concerned with having a one-stop-shop for the best and most up-to-date videogame cheat codes. Regardless of the content, it’s clear that through their participation in our tech club, these youth are engaging with technology in a way that few other inner-city youth can. In tech club, students are closely advised by professional video game developer Steve Pawlick and our expert eLearning and Technology Coordinator Vjeko Hlede, who through one-on-one and group instruction, work with the youth to build their skills and familiarize them with principles of web design and content management systems, such as the ones used at colleges around the world. All the students agree that if it weren’t for their participation in tech club, they would not be designing their own websites or thinking about future careers in web design, a growing and very lucrative career field.

Now the students are putting their skills to use by creating a website to advertise our Annual Year-End Dinner, which will be held on June 4th at 1111 N Wells. This website will help us to maximize attendance at our year end culminating event that brings together past, present and future students, volunteers and staff along with their families for an evening of celebration and entertainment. Thanks Cazzy, Kaylin, Donald and Elijah for all your hard work and your help in making this year’s Year-End Dinner the best yet!

Volunteer Spotlight: Michael Abers

2009-04-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

22 year old Michael Abers is our youngest mentor at Cabrini Connections, he’s also been one of our most motivated and enthusiastic. Coming to Northwestern University from sunny Ft Lauderdale, Florida, he knew immediately that he wanted to get involved in the lives of at-risk inner city youth. He had participated in a youth tutoring program through his high school, Pinecrest School, known as Breakthrough. During his involvement with this program he tutored/mentored a middle schooler named Jessie, which turned him on to the idea of making a difference in a child’s life through youth tutoring and mentoring. Thus when he came to Chicago to study biochemistry, he also got involved in a handful of community service groups on Northwestern’s campus. In fact, upon arrival to Chicago he had the idea of starting a youth tutoring program in Cabrini-Green, which he had heard was a very high need area, and after doing a little research, Michael was pleased to discover that there were already organizations like ours putting his idea into action.

Seeking to make a difference, Michael spread the word about our organization at the fall activities fair and sought to put together a vanload of students who would volunteer weekly at Cabrini Connections. After a couple months of frustration, being matched up with a student with very erratic attendance, he was paired up with Aarion Woods, who attends Von Steuben Magnet School. They have been working together ever since, building a trusting and supportive relationship. Recently they have been focusing on ACT prep, since Aarion is a Junior and will be taking the ACT in less than a month. Michael has been making his own worksheets and creating lesson plans to work on with Aarion to introduce new concepts and review old ones, always giving Aarion something to take home and work on between sessions. Working with Michael has inspired Aarion to enroll in a free supplemental ACT prep course led by Cabrini Connections Volunteer Thomas Reuter. Michael is convinced that Aarion will be well-prepared come test-time and that his primary obstacle will be his lack of confidence, which they are working to address.

By the way Michael and Aarion have been able to get to know each other and quickly build a constructive mentoring relationship, it’s clear that Michael has a knack for working with youth. Fortunately, his postgraduate plans involve going to medical school to study pediatric neurology. In the meantime we’re glad that he’s decided to share his talents with Cabrini Connections, which he calls “is a great program with great facilities, good resources, good mentors and tutors, good people running the program and good students.” Thanks Michael for all you do and keep up the great work!

Cabrini Connections Career Week

2009-04-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

As you may have realized by the number of school-age kids running around the city last week, it was Chicago Public Schools' spring break. Coinciding with this was a week of career oriented activities focused on getting our students thinking critically about their futures and what they need to be doing now to make sure they are on track for postgraduate success! The first half of career week was focused on getting kids out in workplaces around the city, exploring careers and learning more about the day to day work of some of our generous and thoughtful volunteers. To accomplish this, we set up three job visit experiences around the city:
1) A non-profit law firm "Business and Professional People for the Public Interest" that works on affordable and public housing as well as education reform
2) A "Global Experiential Marketing Agency", Jack Morton Worldwide, which aims to create brand awareness through creating interactive marketing experiences
3) A graduate student in school psychology at DePaul University who also coordinates a student tutoring program on campus

Through these three experiences, students had the chance to find out more about what these jobs entail as well as the unique career paths of these 3 volunteers, Kate Pomper, Shannon Murphey and Brea Adams and how they ended up in their current careers.

On Monday I took a group of students to visit Kate Pomper's workplace, which was conveniently located right in the middle of the loop on the 15th floor of a very nice office building steps away from Millenium Park. We were seated in their conference room with a great view of the north loop and began to discuss various careers in Law. After finding that most of our youth had a very narrow conception of what lawyers do (i.e. trial lawyers who argue cases before a jury) Kate made sure our students understood the wide variety of things that lawyers can do on a daily basis and the 3 main sectors of law: private practice, government and non-profit.

Since Kate works for a non-profit public interest law and policy center that addresses issues of social justice and quality of life in the Chicago region, she discussed the nature of her public housing work and how she ended up in the non-profit sector working to promote fair policies for residents during the Chicago Housing Authority's "revitalization" of public housing communities. Throughout Kate's presentation it was clear that she is passionate about her work and happy with the impact she is able to have thanks to her law degree. Though perhaps none of the students will end up studying law, at least now they are more knowledgeable about the process of becoming a lawyer and the unique impact lawyers can have on helping defend both individuals and communities from injustice, however it might manifest itself. We are so happy to have such engaged and excited volunteers like Kate who are willing to go the extra mile to help our kids explore potential careers during Cabrini Connections Career Week. Thanks again!

Student Spotlight: Dominique Dobbs

2009-04-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dominique is a Senior at Lincoln Park High School and is in her third year with Cabrini Connections. For as long as she can remember, people have been coming to her seeking advice. She has always enjoyed helping her friends and acquaintances work through difficult relationships, family situations or other problems. For this reason, among others, she has known since she entered high school that she wanted to be a psychologist. Since she has a profound desire to help others, particularly those like herself who have had to deal with difficult family situations such as paternal abandonment, she wants to continue her schooling and be trained to do marriage and family counseling. This desire to work with families also stems from the fact that she grew up as the second oldest of 8 children...all of whom are girls! Therefore she has lots of experience negotiating complex family dynamics which will undoubtedly be of assistance in her future career.

Recently, she’s been working with her mentor, Christine Nielsen, to figure out her postgraduate plans. Right now she is completing her personal statements and finishing up her college applications with help from our College Assistance Program counselors, Carla and Stephanie.

This year has marked a turning point for Dominique as she’s really been buckling down and concentrating on her studies so that she’s the most attractive possible applicant for college. In fact, her last report card was the first time she’d ever received all B’s, which is a testament to how hard she and her mentor have been working lately! She also was the first student to bring in a large number of report cards for our recent effort to get all our students to bring in their grade cards so we can examine the impact that involvement with our program is having on our students’ academic performance. Bringing in a whopping 7 cumulative report cards, she earned over $60 dollars for her Cabrini Connections scholarship fund as well as a free bicycle, complete with a lock and safety helmet! Because she was the first of our students to bring in her report cards, we used her example to encourage other students to do likewise.

To cope with the struggles she faces she turns to writing poetry and song lyrics as well as art, her favorite subject at school. She also enjoys going to the movies. Dominique is definitely a ‘people-person’ and for this reason, she says “The best thing about Cabrini Connections is that it’s a place to meet new people with many different personalities. At Cabrini Connections everybody connects in their own way.” Congratulations Dominique, we are glad to see that you are so motivated to succeed and we will do our best to help ensure that you achieve your goals!

Volunteer Spotlight: Christine Nielsen

2009-04-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

This week we’d like to highlight the involvement of one of our first-year volunteers, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Illinois, Christine Nielsen. A Michigan native, Christine came to Chicago in 2005 right after finishing law school at the University of Michigan. After passing the Illinois Bar Exam, she got right to work in the consumer fraud department of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office. There, she works on identity theft and data privacy issues, which she enjoys a great deal. However, before law school, she was a professional dancer, having received her BFA in dance at Western Michigan University along with a BA in Political Science and a Minor in Journalism. She recently discussed her unique career path with students as part of our Career Week programming which coincided with CPS students’ spring break.

Christine got involved here at Cabrini Connections through her friend and fellow lawyer Susan Garver, who had done a lot of research on places to volunteer with at-risk youth. They had heard about Cabrini-Green through the media and decided they wanted to see for themselves what the situation was on the ground by getting involved in the lives of its young residents. After visiting the program, Susan was paired up with Schiller 7th grader Olivia Williams and Christine was paired up with Lincoln Park High School Senior Dominique Dobbs. Throughout the year, according to Christine they have built a “good dialogue. She feels comfortable talking to me about school stuff as well as personal stuff.” Since Dominique is a senior, they have been spending a lot of their time together researching colleges and filling out college applications. Right now, they’re working on Dominique’s personal statement essays.

Since Dominique hasn’t always put as much effort into her education as she is presently with Christine’s encouragement and support, she is frustrated that her High School grades aren’t better. However, Christine has been helping Dominique address this by working with her to figure out the most effective way to explain her recent change of attitude towards school and newfound dedication to her studies in her college application essays. Fortunately, Dominique is determined to make it to college and Christine has been working with our College Zone Counselors Carla and Stephanie to ensure that Dominique puts her best foot forward with her applications.

Another thing that Christine and Dominique have been working on is organizational skills. Being a lawyer, Christine has to constantly navigate a wide array of documents, books and other resources, while ensuring that she makes it to all of her myriad meetings and appointments. Therefore, Christine is trying to impart some of her organizational prowess on Dominique and is working with her to improve her habits. This is currently taking the form of helping Dominique organize her college applications so she knows what needs to be included and when they need to be submitted.

Since Dominique will be graduating this year and hopefully moving on to college, Christine will definitely try to stay engaged in her life however possible. If she decides to remain in Chicago for a while she is considering mentoring Olivia Williams’ little sister, who will be a 7th grader next year.

Thanks so much for all your hard work and dedication to the program Christine! We’re so glad you’re a part of Cabrini Connections!

Intern Spotlight: Meagan Hermanowicz

2009-04-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

This week I'd like to draw attention to a volunteer who's not a mentor here at Cabrini Connections. Her name is Meagan Hermanowicz and she's a DePaul University Senior who is currently serving as our Media Outreach Intern. Meagan grew up in Northbrook and ended up going to DePaul University for a number of reasons: it was close to home, her sister was a student there when she applied and it is a well-rounded school, which was particularly important since she didn't know quite what she wanted to study while she was applying. In fact, she started off as a psychology major and eventually switched to business, with a particular focus on marketing and advertising. When asked how she got into business and public relations she laughs and tells me, "I actually started off planning parties for my friends. I'm the kind of person who's very persistent with people, so that's what really got me into it." Needless to say, she threw some great parties.

She got involved here at Cabrini Connections by responding to a flyer that I put up, looking for someone to help fill the vacuum created when our former development and media outreach coordinator left. When asked what in particular piqued her interest about the position, she says "It definitely just seemed like a good thing to do. Most internships I was finding weren't anything I'd really enjoy. I like the fact that I can work on my own time, socializing and networking, meeting lots of new people. I like making connections with people and I like what Cabrini Connections is doing. It's really beneficial for the community."

Since she came on board roughly 2 months ago, Meagan has thrown herself into her role, doing everything from researching reporters and sending out press releases about our recent Art and Film Festival, to securing raffle prize donations and negotiating free poster printing at a fantastic local print shop Document Technologies (DTI). She arranged for some artists in her personal network to donate artwork to the Art Festival and has been doing everything she can to get out the word and secure sponsorship dollars for both our upcoming Year-End Dinner and Golf Benefit, which will take place on June 4th and July 16th respectively. She is also currently helping us find volunteers to work with our kids to help them prepare entertainment for the Year-End Dinner. We are so happy to have such a kind, passionate and enthusiastic youth advocate interning for us and want to make sure that all her hard work doesn't go unrecognized. So, thanks so much for all your help thus far, we wish all college students were so willing to get involved and use their talents to help bring positive social change to students and communities who need our help!

College Program Guest Blogger: Stephanie

2009-04-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

I have been working with the college zone within the last couple of months and it has been awesome. I enjoy talking with the students as well as their mentors and I am happy to be one of the individuals who assists student in their colege search. Many of these students have a lot of potential, ideas, and dreams. They want a life and they want success. Listening to these students talk about how they want to go to college to study music, become a mortician, do animation, having their own business and so many other careers just brings a smile to my face :) This shows that if you just sit down and ask questions they will be answered. Tutors and students who are here at Cabrini Connections and have any questions or would like assistance in finding information about a college please do not hesitate to ask. I am available on Wednesday nights along with Carla who is the wednesday night college coordinator and I am also available on Thursday nights as well and we will be more than happy to help you out.

College is not only about getting your education so that you can better you life in the long run it is about enjoying the experience while you have it. Choose something that you would be willing to do for the rest of your life because wouldn't you want a job that you are going to enjoy suppose to not enjoying? Imagine waking up everyday knowing you have to go to work and you know that you hate every minute of your job...not very fun!!! Yes we all want a job that is going to pay well so we can enjoy the life that we have. I know the ladies would love some extra money to go shopping and every guy could enjoy some extra cash to go to a sporting event. you see I don't think that the money we make should always be about the bills. I mean yes the bills are the first thing I will dish out money to simply because they need to be paid, but I would also like to spend my money in other ways like a nice vacation. You choose your life, the career that you want and I will be happy to help out and share my ideas as well as listen to yours.

--Stephanie

Student Spotlight: Akeim Phipps

2009-04-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

This week we’d like to draw some attention to one of our Freshmen students, Akeim Phipps, who is in his second year with the program. Akeim originally came to us last year after his friend Deral Willis recommended the program to him. Unfortunately his first two tutors, Kyle and Jeremy were forced to end their involvement with the program after moving due to their careers. This year, Akeim has been working with first year Mike Ozmeral, Vice President of Reyes Holdings. Over the past few months, Mike and Akeim (pictured above) have spent a lot of time together working on homework, usually a mix of algebra and work from his computing class. They also play Scrabble and Upwords as a vocabulary building exercise, though Akeim prefers that they play Chicago, which is the best version of monopoly ever played, using famous landmarks from his hometown.

Akeim currently attends Prosser Career Academy where his favorite class is Spanish. He chose to enroll in Spanish because he finds it to be a far more useful language for his day to day life, certainly more so than French, his other option. Since his school is a career academy, he has the option of entering one of six selective career clusters, each with numerous specialties. He chose graphic design and will soon find out whether he is accepted or not. Akeim thinks that this will be useful for his dream career of video game designer/programmer. In fact, Akeim hopes to attend a technical school such as DeVry University upon high school graduation to further pursue his studies. Since he has been passionate about video games for a while, and is constantly thinking about new games or ways to improve games that are currently on the market, Akeim is very interested in potentially exploring this passion as a career. If he were to gain some video game development skills he has been working on some ideas for potential games that he’d like to design, including some improvements on the current Dragonball Z game and a brand new game based on a Japanese Anime series called Fighting Foodons.

Despite keeping a low profile at tutoring, Akeim had over 90% attendance last quarter. Akeim’s dedication to the program week-in and week-out resulted in a free trip to Six Flags this past summer where Akeim joined other students with excellent attendance last year for a full day of roller coasters, waterslides and arcade games last July. If he keeps up his great attendance this year, he’ll be able to attend our yearly trip once again. He has also taken advantage of additional enrichment opportunities such as a recent job shadowing day with Lawyer, Kate Pomper at her non-profit firm: Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. With this type of commitment to his future, we have no doubts Akeim is destined for excellence! Congratulations!

Volunteer Spotlight: Tony Carozza

2009-04-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

Veteran volunteer Tony Carozza has been with our program for longer than 6 of our 7 staff! In fact, during the time that he’s been working with his student, CICS Northtown Academy senior Charles Thomas, Tony has both gotten married and had a child! He started way back in 2003 when another lawyer at his firm, Cabrini Connections board member and tutor Mike Hayes, sent out an email to all the young associates at Pretzel & Stouffer, the law firm where they were working at the time. In the email, Mike explained his involvement at Cabrini Connections and encouraged Tony to join him for a tutoring session so he too could get involved. When Tony eventually accompanied Mike to tutoring he liked what he saw and soon found himself matched up with Charles, then a 7th grader at CICS Washington Park. They hit it off right off the bat and got to work getting to know each other and building a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship.

In Tony’s words “It’s been awesome growing up with him for the last 6 years. Charles has gone from a kid to a man! He’s 18 years old. He has his driver’s license now!” Living out in the western suburbs, Tony isn’t able to see Charles as much as he might like to, but he treasures his time with him and has been working with Charles and his mother, with whom he stays connected, to figure out his post-high school plans.

Since Tony himself utilized community college as a stepping stone to Illinois State University, DePaul University College of Law and eventually a successful career as a defense lawyer at Bollinger, Ruberry & Garvey, he has been trying to encourage Charles to do the same in order to prepare him for a 4 year college education. Luckily, since he has been working to build good repoire and trust between him and Charles over the past 6 years, Charles knows that Tony is looking out for him. In fact, for Tony, their relationship is not just a tutor/mentor thing…they’re buddies! They’re comfortable together and can speak honestly, saying what’s on their minds without mincing words.

For Tony, who has spent most of his life in the western suburbs, volunteering at Cabrini Connections has been an eye-opening experience. Working with kids from Cabrini Green he’s been introduced to a whole new world seeing the sorts of social marginalization, gang violence and other struggles that our kids face on a daily basis. However, he’s also come away inspired by the dedication of our numerous volunteers and staff who are willing to dedicate their time and talents to address these issues and help these kids develop into successful adults. Thanks Tony for being one of these generous individuals and using your skills and passion to make a difference in a child’s life. Keep up the great work!

Student Spotlight: Melissa Young

2009-03-31T02:00:00.000-07:00

Josephinum High School Freshman Melissa Young has been with her mentor, Elena for 2 years now and things just keep getting better and better. In fact, the two of them spend quite a bit of time together outside of tutoring, often hanging out at Elena’s house or going out with friends and fellow Cabrini Connections students Jon’nita Blake and Ashanti Roby. One of their favorite things to do is just chill and watch scary movies such as the recent horror flick, Jeepers Creepers 2. Other times they’ll go out to eat or to the movies, or occasionally even go skating, which they both really enjoy.

Like many students, it took Melissa a bit of searching to find the right high school for her. However, in the end she decided on Josephinum Academy and is quite happy she did. Even though they’re fairly strict (i.e. they require uniforms, have harsh attendance and detention policies…etc.) she’s glad to be at a small, Catholic, all girls academy. Her favorite subjects there are Literature and Spanish and her most challenging course is Religion. Although she comes from a Christian upbringing, she finds religion class difficult because it requires stepping back from her own belief system and opening herself up to the huge range of religions that exist in the world. However, she has brought her grade up from an F to a C and is working with her mentor to improve her grade even more.

When not at Cabrini Connections or Josephinum, you can usually find Melissa playing basketball with the boys, which she’s done since 7th grade. She also enjoys swimming, although she doesn’t get the opportunity to do it as often now that the New City YMCA on Halsted closed down. She also enjoys writing poetry and drawing to express her feelings and emotions. She started doing this after seeing the way her friend Destiny would draw when she got angry in order to get her feelings out and calm down. Melissa has found both drawing and poetry to be great ways of dealing with her frustrations and actually plans on putting her poetry into music, since she’s an avid singer. Next year she plans on joining the choir at school and working on her voice to accomplish this goal. Since she is also a member of the Cabrini Connections tech club, perhaps she’ll find a way to use technology to combine her multiple interests into one multimedia project involving her voice, her poetry and her drawings. Either way, don’t stop dreaming Melissa, you’re destined for great things!

Volunteer Spotlight: Fran Fritzmann

2009-03-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

This week’s volunteer spotlight is on one of our mentors who has been really working hard to develop a great relationship with her student, native Chicagoan, Fran Fritzmann. Although this is their first year working together at Cabrini Connections, they actually have been together for two years, since they originally got matched up last year at Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, a Kindergarden-6th grade version of Cabrini Connections. She got involved there almost immediately upon moving into the neighborhood, seeking a way to connect with her new community and lend a hand to youth like Arden who could benefit from a caring mentor. Although this was her first time getting involved with youth tutoring/mentoring, Fran was able to quickly gain both Arden and her mother’s trust through frequent communication, dinner dates and working with her on a wide variety of subjects and projects. For example, Fran recently helped Arden prepare for her state-mandated Constitution test and the ISATs, which are a crucial component to high school admissions in Chicago Public Schools. Fran also often finds herself helping Arden with her social studies and math homework. Fran’s mentoring and homework help have helped Arden earn all As and Bs on her latest report card. Though Fran confesses that “Actually, I suck at math, I can’t do anything in my head,” this hasn’t prevented her from becoming a Certified Public Accountant and serving as the Vice President of Finance at Tighe Publishing Services (TPS), which is a full-service educational development house that partners with educational publishers to produce textbooks.

At TPS, she describes herself as a jack of all trades, due in part to her diverse background, having received a degree in Human Resource Management at Northeastern Illinois University. As you might guess, her textbook development job offers her a unique insight on the course materials that Arden’s school, Lasalle Language Academy, assigns her. Her main complaint, which is shared by many others in the textbook development community, is that textbooks are being developed almost exclusively to meet government mandated testing standards (i.e. the No Child Left Behind Act) with less and less emphasis being put on developing readable and engaging prose. This is unfortunate because it allows for less flexibility and creativity on the part of textbook developers like Fran in their important job of educating our nation’s youth.

We want to thank Fran for her involvement with Arden and our program. Keep up the great work!

Hope, Build, Believe & Achieve

2009-03-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

Change is in the air at Cabrini Connections. Starting in a few months at our Year-End Dinner, Cabrini Connections is going to undergo a slight ideological facelift. Every year the students and volunteers vote on a theme for the Year-End Dinner that captures the spirit of what we do and our goals for the future. This theme helps Courtland Madock and the rest of the year-end dinner planning committee decide on what types of programming/food/decorations they want to include at the year end dinner. Last year's theme was Coming Together, Growing Together. This year we staff, along with the student leadership council decided we wanted to up the ante a bit. So, rather than voting for a theme merely for the Year-End Dinner, we decided to use the Year-End Dinner as a kickoff for an entire year of themed programming based around a theme that was voted on by students and volunteers, eager to get more involved in determining the direction of their program.

So after receiving more than 80 suggestions by current students and volunteers, the Youth Leadership Council whittled them down to the three best which were:

--Learning & Leading
--Connecting & Advancing
--Hope, Build, Believe & Achieve

This past week, students and volunteers spoke as one, overwhelmingly selecting Hope, Build, Believe & Achieve to be our motto for both the 2009 Year End Dinner and the coming year. This means that Olivia Williams, the Schiller school 7th grader and first year mentee who suggested this theme, will be receiving a special prize. So, stay tuned for more details about how Cabrini Green youth will be Hoping, Building, Believing and Achieving in the coming year!

College Program: What is it like to attend a large, public university?

2009-03-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

The first post in my series on student experiences at different types of institutions of higher education describes the experiences of one college graduate at a large, public university.

Since graduation, this graduate featured has worked in a variety of different occupations and organizations. He currently works as a professional journalist and in non-profit communications management. This graduate experienced family challenges during his undergraduate experience, but overcame them to attain his degree in English and later, a graduate degree in journalism. I admire this graduate's ability to overcome personal challenges and I attribute it to his positive attitude and dedication to what truly matters to him. The interview follows.

What opportunities did you find at your type institution of higher learning?

The greatest opportunity, in my opinion, is the large breadth of programs available and the investment within those programs. During my tenure at my school, it embarked upon a large construction campaign that not only provided new buildings for most of the various colleges, but for some of those colleges, additional teachers and educational resources were hired or acquired to increase the value of the overall education to the student.

Within my area of study, I was able to take time to explore other programs to satisfy my own curiosity and to enrich my overall education. Certain programs received larger support, namely the business, engineering, law and medicine colleges that my school was especially renowned for, and especially proud of. The liberal arts programs did receive a far amount of attention, but being that all a philosophy or English program mostly needs is good teachers and a draft-free room, the requirements there were smaller and mostly addressed.

What challenges did you find at your type university?

Because the university was in a constant state of flux due to a several-billion dollar construction campaign, I remember feeling ungrounded to the school. Classes would move from one building to another mid-term because of the construction. Several times, a class would congregate on the first day of term only to find that we were in the wrong building -- effective administration-student communication was not a strong suit of the school at that time. Because the university was primarily a commuter school, the campus was less a center of student life outside of class than some other schools. In my last year or two of school, this was rectified to a certain extent by a greater depth of campus outreach and programming, but for my first couple of years, I remember feeling as if school was just a place that I went to a couple of hours a day -- my real life existed elsewhere.

Because of the formidable size of my school, I was one of many. Many of my intro-level classes were in gargantuan lecture halls. However, many of these classes held "lab" sessions weekly in which graduate teaching assistants would engage with us one-on-one, or at least in small groups. Some of my favorite classes ever were in these formats.

I also experienced a fair number of challenges as a student. Because of events within my life (my parents announced their intent to divorce on my first day of college), I started losing touch with my studies during my freshman and sophomore year. My attendance dropped, my grades suffered, and a few black marks made their way onto my transcript. Some other schools would have administration check-in on a student like me who would be classified as a problem, or at-risk, but I received nothing. Certainly, I never actively pursued such help, but one of the reasons why students run into problems is that they often lack an awareness of their at-risk academic behavior until it's too late. Luckily, I came around and eventually became a Dean's List student, but for a short, bleak period, I was a hair's width away from dropping out, at least temporarily.

What advice would you give to students who are interested in attending this type of institution? What kinds of students would fit in the best in that type of environment?

Pay attention, and expect few safety nets if your academic progress ever falters. There's room in a school this size for a student who relishes big classes, or small, intimate learning. Some effort on the part of the student to engage with the school beyond the purely academic aspect is required, but if taken, is rewarding. Perhaps the most helpful tip is to find your niche. Clubs, intramural teams, societies all exist for all manner of interest and by taking an active part in one of these groups, your school social network extends beyond that of the computer. Becoming friends within the people of your particular academic program is important, but so is interacting with people throughout the entire school itself.

If quiet, assert yourself and explore your interests. In schools as large as the one I went to, opportunities abound to enrich your own academic interests in addition to your personal interests.

Student Spotlight: Yolanda Hyles

2009-03-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

This week Yolanda Hyles will be gracing the page of our Student Spotlight in honor of her recent academic accomplishments and all the hard work she continues to put into her studies. At present, Yolanda, a sophomore at Manley Career Academy, is 8th out of 327 students in her class! This means that Yolanda is one of the top 10 most accomplished sophomores at Manley! Congrats!

To achieve such excellent grades, Yolanda has been hard at work with her mentor, Molly Shah, working on everything from U.S. History to her graphic design class. Her biggest struggle is Chemistry, where Molly is trying to push her to earn the As that they both know she can get. Through working together over the past 2 years both inside our center and out Molly and Yolanda have developed a strong and supportive relationship. In Yolanda’s own words: “Molly’s stayed with me, made me stay focused on homework…she’s the reason why I’m in the top 10 instead of just playin’ around”.

Yolanda and Molly have met inside and outside of our center, building a well balanced relationship that is a mix of work and play. For instance, they have gone bowling together, eaten dinner at restaurants like Ed Debevic’s and Galleria Marchetti. For Yolanda, what originally drew her to Cabrini Connections is the fact that it’s fun! She likes the fact that we “go a lot of places.” Her favorite outing is our yearly summer trip to Six Flags for students with over 80% attendance the prior year. She’s also enjoyed attending some of our college trips, where we arrange private tours of colleges and universities to give the students the opportunity to learn first-hand about the campus, the classes and the student life of schools like DePaul, Chicago State, Westwood and Illinois Institute of Technology.

Although she’s only a sophomore, Yolanda is already thinking about her future. In the coming years, she hopes to attend Clark-Atlanta University, where she will study business. After that she’s thinking she will go on to cosmetology school and open her own hair and nail salon. Luckily, Yolanda has been working hard to keep her grades up and, if she stays on track, should be on track to follow her dreams!

The great thing is that now she’s not alone. In fact, in a recent interview for a mentor appreciation video, Yolanda, slightly nervous, but still confident explained: “Molly is my tutor. She’s my best friend. She’s like the best friend I ever had. She knows what to say when I’m up and when I’m down.” With friends like Molly, Yolanda can’t be stopped. Congratulations and keep up the great work!

College Program: Interview with a First Generation Latina College Graduate

2009-03-22T14:54:00.001-07:00

The first interview in my series on minority experiences in college prep and as college students kicks off with an interview with a first generation Latina college graduate.

This college graduate grew up with her mother, an immigrant from a Latin American country, and her siblings. She was the first in her family to attend an institution of higher learning an accomplished much during her tenure as a college student. This young woman achieved excellent grades as a high school and college student, attained fluency of a foreign language during a one year study abroad program, and will attend law school in the fall. Notably, this young woman achieved all this even though she had to financially support herself and her mother almost entirely while in college. The interview follows below.

Question: What were your assets preparing for and going into college as a first generation Latina student?

Response: I was fortunate enough to have a lot of encouragement from my mom and my teachers. I never really questioned if college was perhaps for me or not - it was always something I knew I'd do even though my parents and older brothers and sisters didn't go to college. I think my positive attitude and my mothers encouragement helped me. I was also very involved in high school and I believe that helped my university see potential in addition to just minority status.

Question: What challenges did you face as a first generation Latina, either in your college prep process or as a college student?

Response: I think the biggest challenge I faced as a first generation Latina to attend college was my mother's unfamiliarity with the system. She couldn't help me and although you can get help at school, it's still hard to never have anyone to give you advice or warn you about how college might be. Subsequently, one has to work a lot harder to gather that type of information. I think it added stress for me. I think I would have liked my mother to talk to me about college. That never happened.

On that same note, I have a unique situation because I had to live at home, so that I could use my financial aid to pay for our mortgage since my mother was unemployed. Perhaps similar things can happen to first generation minorities who go to college and are not completely detached from worries back home. That's definitely detrimental to performance and even sociability. That was another big challenge for me.

Question: What advice would you give to other Latino students preparing to go to college?

Response: I would suggest that the summer before senior year of high school, or even the one after, prospective students should look for mentors, read about college life, etc., so that they can make the most of it. I would also suggest that they encourage their parents to be involved in the process. Sometimes parents seem to feel detached and think they cannot contribute. However, a mere presence or display of interest and encouragement can make a great difference.

And learn a foreign language! I'd suggest that. College is still a great time to start.

***************

Thank you to our interviewee. If I ever need a trilingual lawyer, you will be the first person I call!

College Program: Interview Series

2009-03-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

If you have been reading my blog, you might have noticed I am a big proponent of working with others to learn from their expertise and experiences. Over the few weeks I will post brief interviews with college graduates of diverse backgrounds. The interviews will focus on two topics: experiences at different types of institutions of higher learning and the experiences of minorities in their college preparation and as college students.

Here are some disclaimers about the forthcoming interview posts:

All interviews will be anonymous and will not name the interviewee's alma mater. I have chosen to do it this way because I want the interviewees to give candid responses and because I am not in the business of promoting any one institution over another.
As with any "advice" that I or anyone else will offer you about college prep, make sure you consider the message and perspective of the individual, but always carefully evaluate what works best for you and your student.
Please note that I always start each interview by asking about the assets the individual or type of institution has to offer.

If you would like to participate and talk about your college experience as a member of a specific social or religious group, as an alum of a specific program or type of institution, or you would like to just share general advice, please contact me (carla [at] u [dot] northwestern [dot] edu).

Volunteer Spotlight: Brea Adams

2009-03-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

23 year old and recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Brea Adams is passionate about youth. She just spent four years studying human development and family studies and is currently a graduate student at DePaul University where she is training to be a school counselor. Although she is unsure whether she wants to eventually work professionally with middle school or high school youth, she’s very happy to be working with her current mentee, 8th grader Dallae Rodriguez. They have only been matched up for a few months, yet they have already cultivated a strong mentoring relationship. They work on a variety of academic topics, primarily math, which has actually been a learning experience for Brea as well, since it forces her to brush up on some math concepts that may be a bit rusty. However, Brea’s research has definitely paid off since according to Dallae, “working with Brea has drastically brought up my grade for math”. She now regularly arrives at tutoring beaming from her scores of 90% and 100% on math tests where she was previously earning significantly lower marks. When speaking about their relationship, Brea sums it up with: “We connect well!” In fact, they have more in common than might meet the eye, for instance, they both wear the same style of shoes, are constantly smiling and even share a favorite book: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which addresses adolescent issues such as teenage sexuality, drug use and abuse in a real and honest way.

Tutoring youth is nothing new for Brea. In fact she has been working with younger students since high school and currently helps to run a program at DePaul that hires undergraduate tutors for the university. Because she enjoys working one-on-one with kids so much and missed this interaction after graduating from college and leaving Madison, she sought out our program immediately upon arriving in Chicago. However, originally she was not matched with Dallae, but rather with another student who unfortunately had infrequent attendance throughout the fall quarter. However during this time, Brea demonstrated her commitment when she remained with the program despite not always having her mentee to work with, instead kindly offering to work with other students when their mentors couldn’t come and keeping a positive attitude in the face of adversity. When asked what she thinks of Cabrini Connections Brea offers: “I think this is a great program; I’m happy to be a part of it!” Thanks Brea for your dedication and all your hard work. You are a true asset to Dallae and our program!

The Serve America Act

2009-03-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Back in September I wrote a post about public service and the election. In it I mentioned a bill that Edward Kennedy had introduced in the Senate called the "Serve America Act", which aims to expand and improve opportunities for public service. Since this bill has the potential to benefit tutor/mentor programs and other organizations making a difference, I think it's important to examine the meat and potatoes of the bill. According to opencongress.org, if made law, the bill will:

+Create a "Youth Engagement Zones to Strengthen Communities program which will provide grants for partnerships between local educational agencies that serve high-need, low-income communities and community-based or state entities to engage students and out-of-school youth in service-learning addressing specific challenges faced by their communities

+Create a Campus of Service program, which will annually grant up to 30 Universities with exemplary service-learning programs the funds to assist their students' pursuit of public service careers

+Direct the Corporation for National and Community Service to contract for a 10-year, longitudinal service-learning impact study.

+Establish the Commission on Cross-Sector Solutions to America's Problems to study ways in which the federal government and businesses can more effectively collaborate with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations to address pressing national and local challenges.

+Create a Community Solutions Funds Pilot program awarding competitive matching grants to grantmaking institutions or partnerships between such institutions and state or local governmental entities which will use the grants to provide competitive matching subgrants to community organizations for use in replicating or expanding proven solutions to specifically identified community challenges.

+Establish an "Innovation Fellowships Pilot Program" that will award competitive grants to individuals who have completed at least one period of national service, to establish innovative nonprofit organizations that address national and local challenges.

+Create a ServeAmerica Corps program that will award competitive grants to states and nonprofit organizations to fund national service in low-income communities by founding an:

--Education Corps that improve certain education indicators, including student engagement, achievement, and graduation

--Healthy Futures Corps that improve certain health indicators, including health care access; -- Opportunity Corps that improve certain opportunity indicators, including financial literacy and access to housing, and employment-related services

-- Encore programs designed to take advantage of the skills of participants age 50 and older. Creates additional incentives for national service participation by individuals age 50 and older.

+Establish the ServeAmerica and Encore Fellowships program providing ServeAmerica Fellowships to university-nominated individuals and Encore Fellowships to individuals age 50 or older who agree to be placed with nonprofit organizations to carry out projects in specified areas of national need.

+Creates a Volunteer Generation Fund program awarding competitive matching grants to states and nonprofit organizations to increase the availability and capacity of volunteers to address state priorities with regard to areas of national need or work with nonprofit civic entities, including faith-based organizations, to address such needs.

+Ensures the commencement of a nationwide Call to Service Campaign.

+Requires the Office of Volunteers for Prosperity (VfP) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement a VfPServe program providing skilled professionals with fixed-amount stipends to offset their costs of volunteering abroad to address specified VfP objectives aimed at ameliorating living conditions in developing countries.

This is some really good stuff! As you can see, Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection potentially has a lot to gain from the passage of this bill, from increased availabilty of funding and volunteers for Cabrini Connections, to increased government support for some of the ideas that I've been discussing on this blog and on tutormentorexchange.net. Unfortunately, despite getting press in such high profile publications as the New York Times, the bill is currently stuck in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions with only 17 co-sponsors. The co-sponsors are as follows:

Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D, MD]
Hillary Clinton
Sen. Thad Cochran [R, MS]
Norm Coleman
Sen. Christopher Dodd [D, CT]
Sen. Richard Durbin [D, IL]
Sen. Judd Gregg [R, NH]
Sen. Orrin Hatch [R, UT]
Sen. John Kerry [D, MA]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln [D, AR]
Sen. John McCain [R, AZ]
Sen. Barbara Mikulski [D, MD]
Sen. Patty Murray [D, WA]
Barack Obama
Sen. Charles Schumer [D, NY]
Gordon Smith
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D, RI]
Sen. Roger Wicker [R, MS]

Therefore, if your senator isn't on there, give their office a ring and ask them why the heck they haven't come out in full support! You can find their contact info here.

Considering that the federal govt has already SPENT NEARLY 5 TRILLION DOLLARS BAILING OUT BANKS AND LARGE CORPORATIONS, don't you think it's time to put a little of our taxpayer money to good use?

College Program: Our Mission

2009-03-17T21:58:00.001-07:00

I am proud to announce that the College Program now has a mission statement. The mission statement will guide us in planning future programming and a serve as the starting point for program evaluation.

The mission statement reads, “to transform youth from economically and educationally disadvantaged neighborhoods into college bound students through providing structured support, resources, and training.”

Although mission statements are only a sentence long, they pack a punch. Mission statements attempt to encapsulate an organization’s broad goals and briefly state how an organization will get there. They are not an operating or strategic plan, which lay out in detail an organization’s specific goals, performance metrics, procedures, and strategies. In that sense, mission statements tell you everything that an organization does while telling you almost nothing about how the organization operates.

Allow me to explain some of the details behind our mission, so that if you are a tutor/mentor with our program or another program, you can see what the mission statement means on the ground. The first that I did in developing this statement was refer to Cabrini Connection’s mission statement, which is to, “Engage workplace adults in structured activities that make a life-changing difference for youth living in economically and educationally disadvantaged neighborhoods.” I borrowed language from the larger organization’s mission because the College Program is one of the “structured activities” offered by Cabrini Connections. I also incorporated the adjective “structured” into our mission so that we create programming in line with the broader organization’s procedures and values. A part of our structure includes weekly meetings, appointment scheduling, regular team meetings, and planned intake sessions and assignment sheets. Additionally, I borrowed the phrase “youth… from economically and educationally disadvantaged neighborhoods” from their mission statement to ensure that we ultimately serve the same population. The College Program serves all students at Cabrini Connections, so I equated our population with that of the organization.

Finally, I want to note my use of the word “transform” and the phrase “college bound students.” Transforming another human being is a challenge. It is a stronger than saying something like “to assist youth from economically and educationally disadvantaged neighborhoods in becoming college bound students.” As tutors/mentors we are literally assisting students, but more importantly we are a layer of support in the process of transforming a child who might have frame of reference about higher education into a student who is curious and excited about going to college. College bound students are the end goal for of providing "support, resources, and training." We do not define “college bound” students solely as students who have received college acceptance letters or students who have enrolled at a community college. College bound students are students of any grade who ask questions, go on college trips, study for the ACT, research colleges, and get excited about March Madness.

In our pilot year as a separate curriculum, we hope to develop a strategic plan that will turn our goals into measurable outcomes, create strategies and procedures to attain those outcomes, and lay out a criteria for evaluating our work. We will report back on these plans as developments arise and incorporate the mission statement into our planning.

For now, our new mission statement will allow the College Program to move purposefully throughout the remainder of the school year.

College Program: Working with First Generation College Students

2009-03-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Working with potential first generation college students poses a unique set of challenges for tutors and mentors in prepping their students to go college. The tutor/mentor might be the only adult in the student’s life that has attended college or some form of higher education. If the student has not received messages about college or higher education at school or through other enrichment programs, the student might have a limited idea about college, its purpose and the overall preparation process. If you face this challenge, you may wonder how to prepare a college student starting at square one.

Here are some strategies I have either implemented or seen others implement in working with potential first generation college students in the college prep process.

If you work with your student at a tutoring/mentoring program, do not underestimate the resources available to you through the organization. Connect with other mentors and the program staff and ask them about how they worked on college prep with their students. If you meet other tutors at square one, brainstorm, research and keep networking.

Start by talking about your own experience in higher education. Talk about your own education experience staring from what you did in high school to prepare for college and what your experience in higher education was like. Prepare a set of questions in case your student does not have any questions about your experience. Sample questions include: Did you live at home, in a dorm? What was your major? What were you involved in on campus? Was your college small, medium or large? How was attending college important to what you do now?

Use a pop culture reference. When asked, some students will open up about things they have seen in movies or television. I learned this strategy in college when I did some rape and sexual assault education at some high schools in Chicago. Although bringing up the topic of rape and sexual assault often made students feel shy or think that the topic did not pertain to their lives, I found that students better connected with the topic when I would ask, “has anyone seen Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?” Connecting the topic to media the students consume every day made them think about how the topic fit into the real world. Fortunately, college prep is a less dramatic topic and less likely to induce a sudden case of shyness. If you use this method, you can start with, “what have you seen or heard about college on TV or in movies?” Make sure you only address “appropriate” pop culture references about college. You want to stress the academic and personal development aspect of college.

Ask about the student’s interests and favorite school subjects. This topic provides an excellent segue into talking about majors and potential careers.

Go for a college visit. Visit institutions of higher education in the area and if you can, sit in on a class. College visits help students envision themselves as a college student. Some institutions have offices that work with at-risk youth. If you can find a university with such an office, take your student for a visit and make sure you make your student aware that these resources exist on college campuses.

Engage the parents. Parents are your best allies for preparing your student for college. Talk to them about your college prep goals and feel out the parent’s educational goals for their child. Do not assume anything about the parent’s educational or personal background. Some parents might not have an education past elementary school and some parents might have a college degree or some other training. Some parents might be refugees or immigrants with educational backgrounds ranging from no formal training to post-graduate work. Other parents may have served time in prison. Some parents might not speak English well enough to have a conversation with you. Furthermore, depending on cultural and individual preferences, some parents might have a hard time accepting their child might go to college and live away from home and some parents might want their child to become a world traveler. Be sensitive to these concerns and go in with an open mind.

Start each session with a practice ACT or SAT exam question. Many of these sample questions are available for free online. A weekly practice question can introduce your student to the types of questions they will encounter on the exam.

Encourage your student to attend a summer enrichment program. If you live in Chicago, you should check out a Chicago Public Schools program called Summer Quest, which sends CPS high school students to summer educational and leadership programs, including sessions at colleges. In addition to the educational benefits, these types of programs help students and families mentally prepare for the idea of having the student attend college.

I will post more suggestions as I think of them. If you have suggestions please contact me (Carla [at] u [dot] northwestern [dot] edu).

Volunteer Spotlight: Mike Hayes

2009-03-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

Mike Hayes, one of our veteran mentors, has been working with youth at Cabrini Connections since 2002. He originally got involved through his friend Mike Jozwik, another one of our veteran tutors, with whom he was doing improv comedy at the time. Their troupe was known as Flambango and has performed all around Chicago including at Second City and The Apollo Theatre. Though Hayes eventually transitioned into a less active role, his partner in crime Mike Jozwik remains active in the troupe. Though they no longer perform comedy together in front of an audience, they recently took center stage at a slightly more serious event a couple weeks ago. The two Mikes, in an attempt to foster more camaraderie and collaboration among the mentors at Cabrini Connections, put together a mentor “Bull Session” that took place after tutoring on both Wednesday and Thursday nights. There they facilitated a ‘mentors-only’ round table discussion where they encouraged their fellow mentors to share effective strategies and resources that they have discovered or developed through their years of combined mentoring experience.

In his 5+ years with our organization, Mike has worked with 2 students, recent high school graduate Kevin Cordero and up and coming 8th grader, Christian Palacios who is occupying the student spotlight position this week. In fact, Mike’s mentoring must have played a role in Christian’s nearly perfect 985/1000 CPS selective enrollment score. Discussing the wide variety of subjects that he and Mike work on together, Christian explained “He’s good at everything!” During his tenure at Cabrini Connections, he has not only built strong relationships with his 2 mentees, but he also met and married his current wife, former Cabrini Connections tutor, Susan Avery!

In addition to mentoring Christian, Mike is also a member of the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection Executive Board where he serves as secretary, constantly trying to build resources for our organization and kids all over the city. With his law degree from Marquette University and work experience in fields ranging from litigation consulting to his current business development job with AIG commercial insurance, he has developed the skills and networks to be a tremendous force for Cabrini Connections.

In fact, thanks to Mike, over a dozen of our most active students had the opportunity to savor a free 8 course meal last week at one of the finest restaurants in the country, Charlie Trotter’s. Mike reached out to a friend and got us on the list to participate in the Charlie Trotter’s Excellence Program, which gave students a chance to learn more about the culinary arts, etiquette and of course enjoy a gourmet meal! About the experience Mike says “It was great! It was fun to see each student’s reaction to the courses,” which included such delicacies as steamed eel wrapped in banana leaves, poached quince and Pickering Pass Oysters. Needless to say, the students, volunteers and staff of Cabrini Connections are lucky to have such an experienced and dedicated mentor/board member in Mike Hayes! Keep up the great work.

Student Spotlight: Christian Palacios

2009-03-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

This week we're proud to put one of our brightest, most promising students, Christian Palacios, in the Student Spotlight. Christian recently received some fantastic news. After scoring a nearly perfect 985/1000 on his High School Admissions rubric, he was extended offers of admission to Lincoln Park High School, Lane Tech and Whitney Young Magnet School, three of the best high schools in Chicago. After much debate, he decided to attend Whitney Young, where he will continue to prepare for a career in medicine, ideally as an anesthesiologist. Despite being in 8th grade, Christian has big dreams for the future. He's already planning on attending the University of Chicago to continue his preparations for medical school.

Christian and his mentor Mike Hayes realize that it's never too soon to be thinking about his future. For this reason, Christian has been attending the UIC Health Science Enrichment Program, which serves as a pipeline for students interested in health care careers, imparting the necessary skills for a career in medicine while introducing students at a young age to various careers and health care professionals. For example, through this program, Christian has met numerous doctors and even attended a cadaver laboratory, which he described as a fun and very interesting experience. Christian is dedicated to this program since, like Cabrini Connections, it offers graduating seniors college scholarships that they earn throughout the years based on their involvement.

Despite his passion for medicine, Christian describes himself as a fan of the arts. In fact, his favorite class at the school he attends, Skinner elementary, is his art class. Though he hasn't had much academic training, he is a very talented self-taught artist who plans to continue studying art in a classroom setting throughout high school. Right now he's enjoying learning about the role of art in different African cultures and has developed a particular affinity for the works of Norman Rockwell. He also has been involved with his school's drama club and plans to stay involved with theater in high school as well. In addition to arts and science, Christian has a passion for the Spanish language and continues to study it at school in his quest for fluency.

Throughout the past year, Christian and his mentor Mike have developed a strong tutoring/mentoring relationship, working together on a wide variety of subjects including lots of math, social studies, science...etc. They also talk a lot about current events, politics and other newsworthy topics. Though Mike has at times accused Christian of being a contrarian, it always provides them with plenty to discuss. We're just glad to have such an ambitious and dedicated student in our ranks. Keep up the great work Christian!

College Program: ACT Study Group

2009-03-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

I am proud to announce the kick off of the College Program’s ACT study group next Thursday at 5 pm at Cabrini Connections. We are fortunate to have a volunteer willing to lead the ACT study group and serve as our on-site math/science/reading/writing guru for juniors interested in getting additional tutoring and practice for the ACT. If you are a tutor at Cabrini Connections and your student is interested in prepping for the ACT (regardless of their grade), please encourage them to come to the Thursday ACT study group sessions. The group is tentatively scheduled to meet for six weeks (from March 19th to April 23rd).

Midwestern colleges and universities prefer evaluating students’ ACT scores as a part of their admissions process in the (West coast and East coast schools prefer the SAT), but we hope that students will gain skills from working with the group that will help them in all standardized testing they will encounter in the next few years. We also hope that the group will learn how to study in teams and encourage each other to keep studying for the big test.

Thanks to the generous support of Cabrini Connections, the College Zone has two ACT test prep books full of sample exams and study tips at our students’ disposal. Additionally, do not forget to search for the various practice exams and study skills available for free online. I recommend the ACT’s official website for students seeking knowledge about the test and practice materials (www.act.org).

Whether or not you are a tutor/mentor at Cabrini Connections, remember to reinforce the importance of ACT or SAT test prep to your student’s college prep process. If you feel you cannot provide your student adequate support in preparing for the test, form a group with other students and tutors to support and motivate your student and bridge the resource gap. If you volunteer through a community organization, reach out to other volunteers (preferably a math whiz and someone lexically inclined) to pool together your talent and get your students ready to do their best on test day.

--Carla

College Program: Creating Life Long Learners

2009-03-11T21:08:00.001-07:00

In tonight’s college mentoring sessions, one of our tutor’s comments stood out to me and reinforced my vision of the college program: creating life-long learners. While doing a intake session with one of our student/tutor pairs tonight, I asked the tutor to recount the story of her journey in higher education. This tutor told us all about the exams she had to take to attain her dream of becoming an attorney. This tutor told us that every time she took an important academic test, she thought that she was done with tests for the rest of her life. After getting through the SAT, LSAT and Bar exam, this tutor realized that she would never be done with taking tests. In fact, she has to continue earning continuing legal education credits (CLE’s) to maintain her licensing. After listening to her story, I reflected on how her realization that she would never stop taking tests holds true for all of the academic challenges we encounter in our lives. Whether we face tests at school, at work or in our personal lies, we never stop learning.

As college tutors we help students look at the long-term picture of what they want their lives to look like and in imagining this long-term picture we should stress the importance of seeking out knowledge and applying it to their daily life. At Cabrini Connections, we work with at-risk youth, and these students often lack resources critical to attaining a higher education and jobs. However, the College Program strives to create resourceful students. We want our students to know that if there is a question related to their academic or professional development that they cannot answer or a resource they lack, they can find someone out there that knows the answer and someone who can help the student obtain necessary resources. We encourage students to ask questions, find information, consider their options, try out a plan and evaluate how it works for them. This strategy does not just work for high school students applying to college. It is invaluable for students and professionals over the course of their lifetime.

Ultimately, the College Program teaches our students a process. We cannot provide a road map to success that will apply to every student. However, we can show them that planning for the future is a process of asking questions, researching the possibilities, trying out different paths and evaluating the outcomes. Empowering your student to become life-long learner can help them navigate the difficult process of picking a college and finding out “what they want to be when they grow up.”

Encourage your students to always keep learning. When you keep learning, you keep growing.

--Carla

Volunteer Spotlight: Susan Nice

2009-03-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Veteran volunteer Susan Nice, a realtor at D’Aprile Realty, Inc. has been working with Kenwood Academy senior, Eboni Rivera for the past 3 years. After finding our program online, she came in for an interview and was immediately matched up with Eboni, who was lacking a committed mentor at the time. Luckily, they got along great right off the bat and have continued to grow in their relationship throughout the past 3 years. For Susan, Eboni “has always been easy to work with, eager to learn and very motivated to come to tutoring and work together.” At first at tutoring, they would primarily work on homework assignments, such as Eboni’s math homework. Now Susan finds herself assisting Eboni with longer papers, big projects and stepping more into her mentoring role as they try to figure out Eboni’s future after she graduates in June!

Besides academic tutoring, Susan and Eboni will occasionally go out on the town. They have gone to the movies, Bulls games, out to lunch and have even shopped together for particular occasions, such as when Susan has helped pick out dresses for some of Eboni’s formal school dances. Susan also picks Eboni up from school in Kenwood and will sometimes attend her school events. According to Susan “We always have fun when we’re together.”

Susan has found it a pleasure to work with Eboni over the years and is excited to be helping her through the college admissions process in whatever way she can, though admittedly, Eboni has taken a lot of initiative and has made considerable progress on college-related stuff with her church groups and school counselors/teachers. At this point, they’re both waiting to see what Eboni’s financial aid package will be at Florida A&M University, her 1st choice school. Throughout the years Susan has supported Eboni as she changed her desired career path from medicine in favor of embracing her more creative side and becoming more serious about studying journalism.

When asked what has kept her volunteering at Cabrini Connections over the years she replies “My bond with Eboni has kept me here, the sense that I’m doing something for someone else.” However, reflecting on her time here she offers “I feel like Cabrini Connections has changed a lot, it’s taken a lot of different directions, I feel like right now it’s really student friendly and getting everyone more involved. There are lots of initiatives being taken that are good for everyone here”. Thanks so much for your hard work and dedication Susan! That’s why you’re in the volunteer spotlight!

Student Spotlight: Sean Mayfield

2009-03-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

8th grader Sean Mayfield came into our program 2 years ago straight from Cabrini Green Tutoring Program with his tutor, Alan (AJ) Tyson in tow. In fact, it was Alan who first told Sean about our program here at Cabrini Connections and originally encouraged him to continue on past 6th grade. We’re glad they did because Sean has become one of the most active and engaged students here at Cabrini Connections. He constantly goes above and beyond, seeking out ways to get involved and taking leadership positions, despite only being in 8th grade. For instance, he is the youngest student on our Youth Leadership Council, which he was voted onto by his peers and their mentors. He also came into our center each week over the past summer to be the beta tester for Steve and Alice’s Tech Club, which meets on Tuesday nights and has grown exponentially since the summer. Through his involvement in Tech Club, he has acquired the skills to design his own website, which is now up and running with personal content.

Sean and his mentor AJ have come to be quite close over the past 4 years. One thing they both share is a love for reading, which they often do together. For instance, right now they are reading a collection of science fiction short stories entitled “The Martian Odyssey.” In fact, most days after school when Sean isn’t here at Cabrini Connections working on homework or with tech club, you can find him at the Borders near North and Clybourn, soaking in as many books as he can. Besides sci-fi, he has a particular affinity for Manga, or Japanese comics, for the uninitiated.

Despite his literary passions, Sean’s favorite subject is Math, which he has been exposed to a great deal since he attends Newberry Math and Science Academy. He’ll soon be changing schools however as he enters high school next year. Remarkably, Sean was admitted to all 6 of the high schools to which he applied, including Noble Street Charter, UIC College Prep and Rauner College Prep. He has decided to attend Rauner where he will work hard towards accomplishing his dream of becoming a video game designer.

Although he does play a lot of video games, Sean has another factor motivating him to become a video game designer…his 29 year old brother, who is currently in the Air Force, has worked as a video game designer, designing games for game boy, PC and Playstation 2, including the new Street Fighter game.

In addition to being featured in the student spotlight, to reward him for all his hard work, Sean will be attending a free dinner at Charlie Trotter’s next Tuesday, where he will eat dinner with other youth leaders in our program and learn about careers in culinary arts. Congratulations Sean and bon appetit!

campusCATALYST @ cabriniCONNECTIONS

2009-03-07T12:35:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week Dan and I met with Liz Weber, a co-coordinator of campusCATALYST, which is a relatively new organization at Northwestern that gives undergraduates a chance to work with Kellogg MBA students, taking on a consulting role for local non-profits. Cabrini Connections, The Tutor/Mentor Connection was selected as one of the 5 organizations that they will be consulting with during this upcoming Spring quarter. Therefore, we met in order to determine an area of need that a team of 5 undergraduates and 1 Kellogg MBA could tackle in the coming months. Dan and I decided that this would be a good opportunity to try to expand our "Business School Connection" model, which sees business schools as resource-rich potential partners that should have a vested interest in working with youth tutor/mentor organizations around the city.

We are hoping that this partnership could be loosely modeled after our Lawyers Lend a Hand Program, which brings together lawyers of all stripes from the Chicago Bar Association who are interested in using their networks and resources to "lend a hand" to at-risk kids throughout the city in the form of renewable grants to Chicago Tutor/Mentor Programs. Last year the "Lend A Hand" program distributed over $200,000 in grants to 27 different tutor/mentor programs to be used for general operating funds, the most difficult yet useful type of funding for programs like ours to receive.

With this project, we’re aiming to use campusCATALYST's talents and relationships with the Kellogg school of Business to increase their engagement with tutoring/mentoring programs across the city, including our own. The skills and expertise that business schools impart on their students and alumni are exactly the kinds of skills that tutor/mentor programs need to increase their effectiveness and impact on the kids they serve. For example, in conceptualizing the relative lack of tutor/mentor programs compared to the number of at-risk kids who need them, it is helpful to think of it as a marketing and distribution problem. We’re selling hope and opportunity delivered by adult tutors and mentors. For kids, volunteers and business partners to respond, we must have a good product, we must offer effective services and we must have as many distribution points as possible so our services are easy to access, we must have great people and we must sell, sell, sell!

We feel that business must be more responsible for youth entering the workforce. They cannot depend on public schools or the government to create a system that will be competitive with education to careers programs in other countries. We believe that in today’s climate of increasing corporate social responsibility, high profile business schools, such as Kellogg School of Management, have an opportunity to take the lead in encouraging and supporting business involvement in the process of pulling at-risk kids towards college and careers. The Tutor/Mentor Connection has already met with faculty and leaders of a number of Chicago business schools with a goal of enlisting faculty at one school to become a partner with the Tutor/Mentor Connection the way the Chicago Bar Association has become a partner through our “Lawyers Lend a Hand” initiative and in the way that www.verizonreads.org supports literacy programs throughout the country. These organizations believe in the effectiveness of tutor/mentor programs in bringing about a wide variety of positive youth outcomes including but not limited to: improved grades and self-esteem, improved H.S. graduation and college matriculation rates, reduced likeliness of teen pregnancy, initiation of drug and alcohol use and improved school attendance.

The partnership we are seeking is significantly different from traditional philanthropy, which often initiates a project and then asks the organization to seek other sources to keep it going. We are aiming to create a sustainable partnership where Kellogg and other business schools take a leadership role in channeling resources to tutor/mentor programs around the city, helping to pull disadvantaged kids to success, to careers and towards making a positive contribution to society.

Once this resource stream is established, we want to develop a competition between business schools around the city and country to put together teams of students and alumni to fight to raise the most funds and/or bring much needed resources to the many under-funded tutor/mentor programs in each city. Since tutor/mentor programs offer a unique solution to some of the most hot-button social issues of our time: poverty, educational inequity, corporate social responsibility…etc, this provides business schools a great opportunity to use their resources to make a big impact on at-risk youth while at the same time, building positive PR for their schools and developing tomorrows workforce.

Interested in this idea? email me at chris.warrens.mail(at)gmail.com and we can discuss some different ways to get involved

Volunteer Spotlight: Charlie Megan

2009-03-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

This week we’re proud to put 3 year veteran tutor, Charlie Megan, in the Volunteer Spotlight! Back in 2006 Charlie was looking to get involved in youth mentoring through Big Brothers/Big Sisters. He found himself seated next to Cabrini Connections Founder and CEO, Dan Bassill at a Union League Club annual dinner and the next thing Charlie knew, he was paired up and working with Jones College Prep freshman, George Johnson, his current mentee. At that time George had been bouncing around between a handful of tutors looking for the right match. Upon Charlie’s arrival, they hit it off right off the bat and started making great strides with George’s math coursework. Charlie found that, since George has the smarts to be getting good grades in math, they would focus on improving his organization, making sure to get him in the habit of writing out all the steps as he arrived to a particular solution.

However, Charlie’s mentoring role has taken different forms at different times to suit his student’s particular needs. During the past few years, Charlie has worked to earn George’s trust and friendship, focusing on building their repoire so he can be more responsive to George’s needs. To this end, Charlie has also been building a relationship with George’s family. For example, he went to his 8th grade graduation and was able to meet his parents and some extended family. Charlie stays in particularly good contact with George’s mother. They typically exchange emails about 3 times per week, updating each other on George’s status, challenges, achievements…etc. as well as to confirm that George will be attending tutoring each week. Charlie has also made an effort to develop relationships with individuals at George’s school, such as his school counselor, to stay abreast of any important developments at school. He also ensures that they meet once a month outside of our center for dinner or just to go shopping together for school supplies.

Though Charlie had never mentored youth before starting here at Cabrini Connections, he has always had a fondness for teaching—he taught at a sailing school growing up. For this reason, he has found his time here to be a real learning experience. However, in his relationship with George, Charlie has found out that the key factor is consistency. George knows exactly what to expect from him week after week and can count on him to be there for him.

Having studied finance at Michigan State and gone on to start his own real estate development firm, Red Ceder Partners, Charlie is no stranger to the hard work and dedication it takes to see a project through to completion. Thus, we are confident that he and George will stay the course and reap the rewards of the significant investment they’ve made in each other. Congratulations Charlie and keep up the great work!

College Program: It’s College and Career Month!

2009-03-04T16:51:00.000-08:00

This March is an exciting time at Cabrini Connections: College and Career Month. This month we’ll be focusing on preparing for college and careers and today’s post will focus on developing your student’s professional skills.

As tutors and mentors we often focus on the academic and personal side of the relationship with our students, but it is also important to focus on your student’s professional development. At-risk youth especially need their tutors to introduce them to the values and norms of the professional world. As a supportive adult in your student’s life you can play a critical role in teaching your student skills that will pay off over the course of your student’s working life.

It is often hard to imagine a student as a professional. After all, as adults we look at our students and want them to enjoy being young. However, the teenage years are perfect for planting the seeds of professionalism in your student and for beginning to cultivate a mature and responsible young adult.

Students require basic training in professional skills that we often take for granted at work: punctuality, good posture, appropriate dress and speech, and organization, just to name a few. Teaching students to take personal responsibility, particularly through punctuality and good organization skills are often (hopefully) skills that your student receives some training in at their school. The finer points of professional, knowing how to dress and speak, are often harder to teach a student. These skills are nevertheless important in helping your student prepare for future job and college interviews and for interacting in a professional environment.

A good way to introduce a high school aged student to professionalism is through a practice mock interview and job shadowing. Help your student prepare a resume, one that highlights their academic achievements, extracurricular activities and an work or volunteer experience they might have and give your student a mock interview for college admissions or job. This exercise will help a student understand the functions and importance of a resume and interviews. Job shadowing can demonstrate the importance of etiquette and professional dress at work. If you have a student shadow you at work, ask them to take notes and report back to you on their observations. Some questions for observations on professionalism can include:

How do the employees of this workplace speak to each other?
How do the employees of this workplace dress? Make sure you explain the purpose of your dress code to your student and note that workplace dress codes vary. Some workplaces require business professional or business casual dress while others require a uniform or permit casual dress
When do employees take breaks from work?
How do employees share resources, i.e. workspace, supplies to equipment?

Taking the time to focus on professionalism with your student will introduce them to skills and experiences that will frame how they approach the professional world as a young adult. If you address this topic with your student, you can help them become comfortable with behaving professionally and another step toward success.

-Carla

Student Spotlight: Marcus Burks

2009-03-04T11:26:00.000-08:00

Wells Prep 8th grader Marcus Burks is glad to be involved with Cabrini Connections. Despite living on the South Side, Marcus is determined to show up each and every week to tutoring and has had perfect attendance so far during this brutal winter. Although Marcus has been paired up with his Mentor Joe Fridlin since the 5th grade, this is their first year active in our program. They met through Marcus’ cousin when Marcus was involved in a youth program at the old YMCA. They stayed in touch and are now building a strong mentoring relationship. They often find themselves working on social studies and reading, subjects where Marcus seeks improvement.

When not at Cabrini Connections, Marcus is the starting small forward and shooting guard for his school's basketball team . Although last year he didn’t get a lot of playing time, with a new basketball coach who appreciates Marcus’ talent despite his small stature, this year Marcus is having a great season!

Despite being only in 8th grade, Marcus is inspired to become a lawyer. He sees himself getting his degree at Northwestern University and going on to study law. Maybe it’s just the glasses, but all throughout Marcus’ life people have commented on his ability to argue and make his point articulately. Being as committed as he is to his future, Marcus attended a college visit and information session at Westwood College this fall with a group of other students. He even met with the dean of the college, whom he impressed with his intelligence and charm.

Like many of us, Marcus can’t wait until it’s summer again, so he can hit the neighborhood pool and hang out with his friends without worrying about getting frostbite! By then, he’ll know what high school he will be attending. He’s hoping to get accepted to Whitney Young, one of the most competitive schools in the entire city. However, Marcus knows that success doesn’t depend solely on what school he attends; he knows that either way, he’s going to have to take advantage of opportunities at programs like ours to connect with people all over the city who can help ensure his success! Congratulations Marcus and keep up the great work!

UIC Flames WIN!

2009-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I chaperoned a group of 25+ students and mentors from Cabrini Connections to a UIC Flames basketball game at the UIC Pavillion. The Flames took on the SIU Salukis, which was an ESPN bracketbuster game, which means these 2 teams were battling for a potential NCAA tournament berth. We were given the opportunity to go for free as part of the UIC Flames Community Assist Program, which provides opportunities for non-profits like ours to take our kids to see an NCAA basketball game for free! They organized buses and gave everyone free shirts as well.

Since I was the only Cabrini Connections staff member who went, I was the de facto coordinator, making sure everyone got there and back in one piece, despite the crowds at the game and the natural inclination for junior and senior high school kids to wander around and mingle with the other students attending the game. Luckily, with the help of Volunteer Coordinators Tami and Alexandria, we were able to keep everything organized enough for everyone to have a great time. I was able to meet some friends of current students and explain to them why it would be beneficial for them to join the program, while at the same time hanging out with our current students/volunteers and getting to know them a little better.

All in all, everyone had a great time. Where I was seated, I was lucky enough to be treated to some great play by play analysis from resident ballers Aarion Woods and Joshua Vera. Though we were pretty high up (some students were actually concerned for their safety!!) we were situated near half court, so we got a pretty good view of the Flames laying a whooping on the SIU Salukis, a frequent NCAA tournament attendee 74-67. Even waiting with the kids after the game for their seemingly nonexistent rides to arrive, getting hit by an errant snowball or two, was a good time. So, thatn

The Black Star Project Site Visit

2009-02-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

So this morning I had the opportunity to visit The Black Star Project, a multifaceted organization led by Philip Jackson that aims to accomplish nothing less than eliminate the racial achievement gap. In their own words, their mission is "to provide educational services that help pre-school through college students succeed academically and become knowledgeable and productive citizens with the support of their parents, families, schools and communities. Additionally, we help students aspire to post-secondary educational opportunities and training while exploring careers that will be emotionally, intellectually and financially rewarding."

They try to accomplish this by offering the following services:
The Toyota/Black Star Parent University, which was created to address a long-standing challenge: "parents who need additional support to build stronger families and ensure the proper education of their children. Local parenting experts, who serve as “professors,” teach courses that range from educating parents about resolving their childrens' conflicts to developing their children's financial literacy."

The Student Motivation Program, "a classroom-based mentoring program, has been working in Chicago area schools since 1996 to inspire and motivate students to do well in school, expose students to various college and career options, encourage students towards healthy and positive lives, and help students to create viable life plans and make good decisions." While at the center I met with the program coordinator, Mr. Ivory Harris, who informed me that they are currently operating in 50 schools, with around 200 volunteers who offer to come in and speak at schools at least once a month. However, the number of children reached by this programming could easily be doubled if they were able to recruit more volunteer motivators.

The Silas B. Purnell Destination College Program, "created in 1997, provides earlier exposure to college options and creates the expectation in students that a college education is vital to their future success. Destination College Workshops and Destination College Campus Tours provide opportunities for 7th- through 12th-grade students to learn tips for college success from current college students." This is something I'm very interested in looking more into (along with our College Program Counselors Carla and Stephanie), since with the recent development of our own College Zone and College Assistance Program we are always interested in learning and sharing best practices.

The Fathers Club organizes monthly outings for children and their fathers, grandfathers, foster fathers, stepfathers, uncles, cousins, big brothers and other significant male caregivers. Members of the Fathers Club are committed to being better fathers for their families, better role models for their children, better husbands for their wives, and making a difference in their communities. They also coordinate the Million Father March, which encourages Fathers to walk their kids to school on the first day. Last year over 600,000 fathers participated, marching in 475 cities. This year they are planning on expanding it to 550 cities!

The Barbara Ann Sizemore Forums for Educational Excellence are "a way to properly involve parents, families, citizens, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, businesses, elected officials, civic leaders, educators and bring them together to address timely and important educational issues that are facing educators, students, parents and communities today." These forums are designed to bridge the chasm between schools, homes and communities and often take place in local churches, trying to bring faith communities out in force to support youth development and play an active role in improving the community at large.

and finally... The Black Star Scholars Tutoring Program which includes free after-school tutoring at around 20 schools around the city, including Jenner Academy, where I met Black Star Founder Phillip Jackson at a community partner appreciation banquet. They also operate a private one-on-one tutoring option at their Bronzeville facility which is $25 for 2 hours with a reduced cost for students qualifying for free/reduced lunch.

However, I came to Black Star Project not during a tutoring session, but to witness Mr Jackson broker a partnership with the US Marine Corps wherein the military recruiters mobilize their ranks to come into the schools as tutors and the strong, disciplined male role models that the 70% of black children who grow up fatherless lack, allowing Black Star to expand their reach into more communities with greater effectiveness. Mr. Jackson views this as a potential model to be replicated with the other 3 branches of the armed forces across the US, connecting thousands of disciplined, respectful and knowledgable males with at-risk kids lacking such a figure in their lives.

It is important to note, however, that some of these marine recruiters who will be coming into the schools with Black Star as tutors will have been denied admission in the past due to concerned parents and students, worried about impressionable young people being cajoled into giving their life to the military, so to assume complete benevolance on behalf of the military is probably a bit naive, but in the ranking officer at the meeting's own words: "I see the Marine Corps as more than bodysnatchers for war, we are members of your communities, we want to get involved in schools to share our professionalism, character, strength and discipline." So, there are arguments on both sides, and faced with the slim options of a life on the streets or in poverty, sending in the Marines could prove to be beneficial.

Luckily it looks like we're going to have a chance to beginning discussing this idea in depth as Mr. Jackson has agreed to address the issue at our May Tutor/Mentor Conference, coming up this May 28th and 29th at The Northwestern School of Law. Until then, share your thoughts on the issue by commenting on this article or through the poll on the top right of the screen.

---quoted passages can be found in their entirity on www.blackstarproject.org

Volunteer Spotlight: Anne Davies

2009-02-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Veteran Tutor/Mentor Anne Davies has been working with her student, Imann Mitchell for 4 years! They were first matched up when Imann was a 7th grader. Now, Anne helps Imann navigate the complex dynamics, both social and academic, of being a sophomore at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center. Since their first year working together, Anne has helped Imann blossom into a talented and articulate writer, as well as a proficient Spanish-speaker. They have also worked a lot on Imann’s math skills. In addition to academic pursuits, Anne has helped Imann to put her best foot forward and gain the confidence to conquer her shyness and assert herself in social situations. Since Anne and Imann have worked to build a strong mentoring relationship, Anne is also able to counsel Imann and help her navigate the many non-academic challenges she has as a high school sophomore grappling with many new and exciting issues for the first time.

In mentoring Imann, Anne can draw from a wealth of experiences she has had working with youth throughout her life. For instance, Anne worked for three years at a teen helpline in Indianapolis where she helped counsel teens through whatever issues they were struggling with at the time. She also coached youth soccer teams throughout her college years at the University of Tennessee, where she graduated with a degree in journalism. Since then, Anne has continued on with her education, recently receiving her MBA from DePaul University with a focus on marketing and communications. She earned this MBA part-time while working for her current employer, General Growth Properties, which owns large shopping malls around the city, including nearby Water Tower Place.

Luckily for us, Anne’s commitment to our program extends beyond her work with Imann. She has helped in the planning of our annual “Year End Dinner,” which is a celebration of our kids and a chance to show off the successes of our program to prospective students and their families, potential donors and the community at-large. Anne has also recently expressed interest in putting her marketing and communications degree to use helping us figure out how to get more media coverage for our program and events so we can spread our message to more potential friends, students, volunteers, donors…etc. She also will be working with our staff to try to facilitate more effective workplace fundraising efforts from our volunteers. So, thanks Anne, for constantly going above and beyond! Both you and Imann are destined for great things!

Student Spotlight: Whitney Hemphill

2009-02-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

This week we’d like to draw some attention to long-time student, Whitney Hemphill. Whitney, a Sophomore at Wells Community Academy, has been with the program since she was in 7th grade. Although she’s always been a committed student, she has shown particular dedication in recent months as she has fought to bring her grades up. She and her mentor, Anna Ashbaugh, have been working exceptionally hard to make sure all her assignments are turned in and that she really understands the material, particularly in U.S. History, where she is shooting for an A. She has also made it to school on time every single day this quarter, no easy feat in the middle of winter.

She has been working to improve her grades because she knows that if she proves herself to be a good student, it will be easier for her to gain admission to nursing programs so she can follow her dream of becoming a nurse. Ever since she was in the 8th grade, her own family doctor has inspired her to seek a career in nursing. She would particularly love to work in pediatrics as she already has lots of experience working with youth. Whitney has been active in the neighborhood “By The Hand” club which matches up older youth like herself with younger kids from the neighborhood to ensure their success in after-school programs that keep them off the streets. During the warmer months she also works at the nearby “City Farm” at Division and Clybourn where she works with After School Matters to plant, farm and sell fruits and vegetables in an urban community garden that is tended by local residents.

We are also proud to recognize Whitney as the winner of our recent “I have a dream…” essay contest with her presentation “I’m Dreaming of Change.” In it, Whitney, a 15 year resident of Cabrini Green soberly lays out its past and present, including the 2007 shooting of her cousin Kearra. She shows how the attitudes of her peers have changed as they’ve matured and how some get drawn into gangs, drugs and violence, while others, like Whitney, manage to stay on track. It’s a powerful presentation and I recommend that you check it out on the wall in our center or on the Cabrini Connections website!

Congratulations Whitney on a job well done! Keep up the great work!

Who's in your network?

2009-02-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

When it comes down to getting jobs and career opportunities, it's all about who you know. We've heard it a million times. Regardless of work experience, schooling and commitment, when the job market is tough and there are lots of qualified applicants searching for fewer and fewer jobs, the personal connections you cultivate can often make a world of difference in determining your career options. Recognizing this, and the fact that kids growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods like Cabrini-Green don't often have networks of successful professionals willing to lend a hand to write a letter of recommendation, vouch as a personal reference, or introduce them to successful professionals in their chosen career track who can share valuable advice and experiences.

All too often, kids in high-poverty areas are surrounded by folks who, rather than pulling them towards college and careers, serve to push them into lives of crime, delinquency and squandered potential. Therefore, in our mentoring program, we bring volunteers, most of whom are successful professionals working in sectors such as law, finance, education...etc, together with at-risk kids, so that the kids can not only benefit from their relation with their mentor, but from their mentors' networks as well. For instance, if a student such as DeSean Hale is interested in becoming an architect, but his mentor isn't in the field, his mentor can reach into his own network and introduce DeSean to civil engineers, architects and draftsmen that he knows, giving DeSean access to valuable contacts and information that he wouldn't otherwise have.

So take a moment and think about your networks and what they could do to help a kid growing up in Cabrini-Green without such an extensive network of support and resources. A facebook app called Touchgraph photos can help you visualize your network as a series of nodes and find connections you never knew you had. Many people are also using programs like LinkedIn to map their own social networks or Muckety.com to trace the connections between newsmaking figures and the people and organizations that are in their networks.

For example, I've been trying to organize college visits to some regional colleges and universities. Clicking on a given college on my TouchGraph map shows me who I know that is affiliated with a given College, such as the University of Illinois. Therefore, I can easily identify friends who I can reach out to by email/phone/facebook msg to see if they would help me put together a visit. Since you can set touchgraph to sort your network by any number of different criteria, it is a powerful tool for visualizing your relations to other people you know.
Since social networking sites such as myspace and facebook are so popular, both among young professionals and the kids we serve at Cabrini Connections, it has never been easier to connect, online and in person, and be the bridge that these kids so desparately need to networks of greater power and influence.

Cabrini Connections can help you be that bridge!

Student Spotlight: Victoria Rivera

2009-02-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

Lincoln Park High School Sophomore, Victoria Rivera is a long time student here at Cabrini Connections who is destined for great things. Victoria has been here since the 7th grade and in the interim has developed a deep friendship with her mentor, Amy Proger. They often get together outside of tutoring to grab a bite to eat and chat; Amy is always encouraging Victoria to try new things, like tapas or regional Italian food, which is always a treat.

Victoria has a lot of different interests. Talk to Victoria for a minute and you’ll realize that she’s bubbling over with enthusiasm about things to come. It’s clear she spends a lot of time thinking about her future and as a 10th grader, she’s already figuring out what she needs to do to avoid the common pitfalls that have prevented people she knows from going to college and reaching her fullest potential. As a 2 sport athlete, softball and cheerleading, with a passion for helping others, Victoria is interested in sports medicine and becoming a physical therapist.

In addition to cheerleading at school, she pursues her passion for dance at her church, where she participates in a contemporary dance ensemble that she really enjoys. Victoria is quite active in her church, she has been taking speaking classes there since 7th grade, which prepare her to speak extemporaneously so when someone in the congregation falls ill or fails to show up, she can take over and deliver the message like a pro. She also participates in a youth program at her church called “Project Achieve.” Participation in this program each Saturday helps Victoria prepare for future success. For example, they organize a trip each year to historically black colleges such as Clark-Atlanta and Spelman so students like Victoria can experience these Southern colleges first-hand.

For Victoria, she keeps coming back to Cabrini Connections year after year because “It’s like home.” She attributes her recent success on her 1st semester grades (all A’s and B’s) to a combination of her own hard work and her mentor’s commitment to helping her succeed. We’re so proud of your accomplishments Victoria and are certain that these are but a taste of the greatness to come! Congratulations!

Volunteer Spotlight: Anna Ashbaugh

2009-02-17T09:51:00.001-08:00

This week Cabrini Connections would like to recognize first-year mentor, Anna Ashbaugh, who has been working with Whitney Hemphill this year. Since being paired up this past fall, they have made great progress together. Last week you read about the great work that Whitney Hemphill has been up to both academically and outside of school. In fact, since then, Whitney and Anna worked together on her “I have a dream…” powerpoint presentation, which won first prize and netted her $100. This week it’s time to find out more about the other side of the coin, her mentor Anna.

Like a handful of us on staff at Cabrini Connections, Anna is a recent graduate from
Northwestern University. She graduated in 2007 with a degree in cultural anthropology, doing her thesis on corporate social responsibility. She is now a Client Executive at Burson-Marsteller, a Public Relations firm, where she does corporate communications, community relations and corporate social responsibility. She helps companies such as Hormel Foods track their environmental and social impact. Much as she tries to work with her clients to help them become more responsible corporate citizens, she has been working with Whitney to develop her talents and potential.

Anna first became interested in Cabrini Green through another anthropology student at Northwestern who did their thesis on the language used in the media and around Chicago to refer to Cabrini Green and the dynamics of how that same language was also used by its residents. Looking for a way to get involved and use her talents to help others, she found out about our program and immediately found it to be “a really engaging, challenging experience.” Having mentored interns in the past, Anna particularly notices how “everyone here really cares about the students.”

Working with Whitney on her schoolwork and various other projects Anna finds that they both enjoy the freedom of the program, which encourages mentors and mentees to come together and decide for themselves at tutoring sessions what the most valuable use of their time would be. Tutoring Whitney also gives Anna an opportunity to brush up on her U.S. History and other subjects that she hasn’t read up on much since high school! Building a relationship with Whitney has also led them to meet outside of our center, to see movies like “The Secret Life of Bees” and to share stories and life experiences over dinner.

A harpist and singer since the age of 6, Anna originally took up the harp because she “wanted to be an angel.” It may have taken her 15 odd years of practice, but we’re glad she’s touching the lives of others in such a meaningful way here at Cabrini Connections. Thanks Anna and keep up the great work!

Working Bikes and Cabrini Connections

2009-02-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with Raul Gonzalez of Working Bikes Cooperative in their Western Ave warehouse. If you don't already know about Working Bikes, they are a Chicago-based non-profit that takes bikes that would otherwise be thrown away, fixes them up with the help of volunteers, and donates them en masse to charity organizations in developing countries such as Ghana, Angola, Cuba and Guatemala. Each year they give away over 5000 bikes! They can afford to do this because they sell some of the bikes they fix up out of their Western Ave store (1125 S Western) to fund their humanitarian mission.

BAJILLIONS OF BIKES IN THEIR WAREHOUSE!!!!!

Though I am a big fan of Working Bikes, I wasn't there just to hang out with Raul and check the place out, I went to discuss a project Raul and I have been discussing, a way for Working Bikes to help us provide incentives for our kids to get more involved in our various enrichment activities, including our Clubs, Essay Contests, eLearning curricula and other leadership activities. They have agreed to donate bikes to all students who earn more than 400 points this quarter. This special reward was designed to capitalize on kids' excitement for the coming spring and desire to have a set of wheels they can use to explore their neighborhood, go visit friends, come to Cabrini Connections...etc. All students who earn a bike will also receive a free helmet and lock.

The points I mentioned can be earned through a student's participation in all the above activities in addition to attendence and receiving good marks on their report cards. Besides making students eligible for a FREE BIKE this quarter, points are converted to cash upon each student's graduation from High School. In this way, students can earn their own scholarship, to be used however they wish, it's their money!

Therefore we just wanted to take the opportunity to recognize Working Bikes for all the great things they do for organizations both domestic and abroad! Thanks! and keep up the great work!

Volunteer Spotlight: Jacqueline Shay

2009-02-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

Art Club Coordinator Jacqueline Shay, a.k.a. Jackie, is one of our most enthusiastic volunteers. Since coming to Cabrini Connections in 2005 she has expanded our Art Club to encompass more than just painting, but to include drawing, printmaking, sculpture and a variety of other media and techniques. She has also sought to engage the kids with more collaborative projects to encourage community and a spirit of togetherness in the club. A great example of this is last year's "Hand Mural" which currently graces the wall near the Art Club space. She is currently working with the kids on a new collaborative mural in a similar vein. Jackie has also been the driving force behind the yearly Cabrini Connections Art Festival, which has brought art connoisseurs together from around the city to local galleries to peruse and buy Cabrini Connections student’s art work. In the past, these have taken place in Wicker Park’s prestigious “Around the Coyote” gallery and gold coast art mecca Pallete and Chisel, where it will be held this year on April 4th. These Art Festivals are a great way for students to show off their artwork alongside professional artists and always earn students accolades from the attendees who are consistently impressed by the quality of their work. This event also serves as a fundraiser that helps support our year-round tutoring/mentoring programming.

Here at Cabrini Connections, we are lucky to have such a talented artist in our midst. Jackie grew up in a home full of artists, instilling in her a profound appreciation and passion for art which she pursued first at the City College of San Francisco and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied studio art, focusing on printmaking and drawing. In addition to her passion for art, Jackie has always enjoyed youth work and has worked at numerous after school programs. Therefore, when she found out about this opportunity here at Cabrini Connections, she jumped on it.

Jackie is constantly amazed at the maturity and talent of our kids. She has particularly enjoyed helping students such as Senior Angelene Hemphill, work to develop their art skills through the years. Jackie feels that the impact of art club goes beyond improving students art skills and also gives them something new where they can develop mastery and feel good about their success, hopefully giving the kids confidence to take on other challenges head-on and come out on top.

Though Jackie is satisfied with the program, she would love to see more kids getting involved. Since she has no trouble finding tons of volunteers who are eager to engage with the youth, it’s unfortunate we can’t bring even more youth into the Art Club fold and take advantage of Jackie’s talents and great ideas. Either way, we’re excited to grow together and make this year’s Art Club and Festival better than ever!

College Program: Where we fit into the big picture.

2009-02-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have read about the College Program and wondered if Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the school district that serves all of our students, offers college counseling and if so, how the College Program fits into their structure. The College Program operates independently of CPS, which provides college prep programming under its Department of College and Career Preparation (DCCP). The DCCP’s website (http://www.postsecondary.cps.k12.il.us/) provides details on college prep services available through CPS and links to other resources available to parents and students.

The College Program at Cabrini Connections offers its students another layer of support and guidance in addition to the DCCP or any college counseling services offered by individual schools, particularly charter schools. The College Program mentors are on-site reservoirs of college prep information ready to address any college prep needs students may not have addressed at school and above all, make college prep a priority for the students and their mentors. Our tutor/mentors have built trust with their mentees and we at the College Program believe that their relationships and the organization create an additional support system for our student’s college prep experience.

If you are a tutor or mentor, consider your place in the network of support your student has in their college prep journey. Your role in your student’s life may shift between tutor, friend, confidante, cheerleader and math guru. Build a college prep focus in to all your roles, so your student feels supported throughout the process. Become a tutor who edits their college and scholarship essays, a friend who shares their experiences with higher education, a confidante to who listens to their student’s academic and financial concerns about college, a cheerleader who encourages their student to finish their college applications and of course, a math guru who knows how algebra and geometry apply to the ACT or SAT.

Student Spotlight: Ashaunti Roby

2009-02-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

Newberry Academy 8th grader Ashaunti Roby is a stellar student; just look at her most recent report card. On it you’ll find all A’s and just 2 B’s. Her school is a math and science academy, which is good for her because math and science are her two best subjects. For Ashaunti, academic excellence isn’t enough. She shows her leadership through involvement in her school’s student council where she represents the entire student body as Vice President. This means that she and the President run all the meetings and determine what activities and projects the council takes on. For instance, their most recent project was coordinating a food and supply drive for soldiers in the Middle-East.

Ashaunti is committed to speaking out and helping to be the change that Obama spoke so often about during the recent election. She recently wrote an essay as part of our I Have a Dream… contest about her hopes and dreams for her community in the coming years. In it, she lamented the number of young “wanna-be gangsters” growing up in her community without a place for them outside of gang life. She put forth the solution of greatly expanding after-school programs to keep these at-risk kids off the streets and in productive activities that will help give them the drive to succeed. She also discussed the rising unemployment and how the government doesn’t adequately provide for ex-cons after they do their time and want to re-enter society. She argues that most ex-offenders simply want the opportunity to pay off bills, put food on the table and clothe their children but are denied even this opportunity because of the extraordinary hurdles that society puts between them and decent jobs. Read the rest of her essay on the Cabrini Connections website.

When not studying, convening student council meetings or at Cabrini Connections, Ashaunti loves listening to music. Some of her favorites are Ne-Yo, Beyoncé and of course, her namesake Ashanti.

Ashaunti and her mentor, Sarah Randag, have been together for 2 years now and have developed a strong mentoring relationship. They often get together outside of tutoring to chat, go out for dinner or even see a play. They work together to ensure Ashaunti stays on the right track to accomplish her long term goal of becoming an English or Math Professor. Since Sarah and Ashaunti are so consistent in logging their progress with SVHATS, we’re confident that we’ll be able to track her progress each week as she continues her quest to become Professor Roby. Congratulations Ashaunti!

New Contributor, The College Program hits the Internet

2009-02-08T18:35:00.000-08:00

Greetings to Chris' loyal readers. My name is Carla Reyes and I would like to introduce myself as a new contributor to Chris' PIP blog. Like Chris, I am also a Northwestern grad and participating in the PIP fellowship. My PIP placement as a research associate at the Civic Federation has me focusing on public finance and policy by day. However, by night I am a volunteer with Cabrini Connections' College Program.

I plan to contribute posts about the College Program and its progress in addition to posts about mentoring with a college prep focus. I would like to share the program's story, challenges and triumphs and also discuss strategies for building a college prep component into a tutoring and mentoring organization.

Before I start contributing to the blog I would like to provide some background on the College Program:

* The College Program is the brainchild of Jen Nolan, a Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor, attorney and die-hard Illinois basketball fan. Jen worked with students applying to college in the 2007-2008 school year, but envisioned that the College Program could work with more students and provide more services.
* Jen, the Cabrini Connections staff and I created the College Program's current structure. The program currently works with students of all grade levels on a rotating basis. Any student can sign up to speak with a college mentor during tutoring time and college mentors alternate meeting with all students of a certain grade level every week to address their specific needs. For example, college mentors are currently meeting with all Juniors on a one-on-one basis every week during February to address their ACT prep needs and to answer any college related questions these students might have.
* The program has two college tutors: myself and Stephanie Rogers, a soon-to-be graduate of Westwood College and native Chicagoan.

I would like to thank Chris, for setting up this wonderful blog and for challenging me and Jen to build this new program. Thanks are also deserved for my colleagues at Cabrini Connections, EL Da'She On Nix and Nicole White, for all their help in building this program. My never ending gratitude also goes to Stephanie Rogers, my fellow college mentor, for jumping into the program and not missing a beat.

Finally, hats off to Jen Nolan, for creating this program and providing her support. Stephanie and I are working to execute your vision every week. I hope we can still be friends when Northwestern beats Illinois on Thursday.

Media Outreach Internship

2009-02-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

So, with the recent departure of our Media Outreach Coordinator, it has become necessary to look elsewhere in our constant quest for publicity and media attention. Since I obviously can't do everything that is necessary to get ample press coverage for our events, brand our many websites and publicize our big mentoring partnerships and initiatives, I'm trying to recruit someone who can. Therefore I've created a flexible internship position here at Cabrini Connections called the Media Outreach Internship that will assist me with all of the above things, plus any additional public relations that arise. I'm hoping that with the job market as bad as it is, people still reveling in Obama's victory and its concomitant spirit of community engagement, and the need for real-life P.R. experience among college students, we can attract one or more unpaid interns that will fulfill some of these roles and bring their networks into the fold here at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

So, if you or someone you know is looking for an opportunity to gain real-life experience in Public Relations while at the same time helping at-risk kids succeed, please check out this internship. It's essentially an opportunity to work with us to create your own internship based on your particular strengths. Though we haven't worked out anything with particular universities to earn credit, this unpaid internship would be a great opportunity to fulfill an internship, community service or service learning requirement. So, if you or anyone you know would be interested in this internship, please have them call us at 312-492-9614 or email me at chris.warrens.mail (at) gmail.com

Thanks!

Volunteer Spotlight: Heather Coleman

2009-02-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

Veteran Cabrini Connections volunteer, Heather Coleman, has been with our program for over 5 years! She found our program via a google search while she was looking for a meaningful way to tutor a youth. She hasn’t looked back since. She’s currently in her 4th year of tutoring/mentoring with Lincoln Park High School Junior Dijana Smith. Since they have known each other for so long and have worked to build their relationship, Heather can help Dijana navigate the complex web of academic, social and personal challenges that she faces as she begins to think about life after high school. Since stability is so important for youth, we’d like to point out that in the rare case that Heather can’t make it to tutoring, she always arranges for someone else to attend in her place so that Dijana is guaranteed a caring substitute mentor for the evening.

Heather herself is a University of Indiana alumna, but Dijana is thinking more about staying in Chicago and going to DePaul University, though a part of her wants to leave her hometown for a little change of scenery, perhaps in Atlanta. Either way, Heather is committed to helping her find her way and achieve the goals they both know Dijana can attain. For now they’re trying to figure out which of Dijana’s many interests she should pursue in college. Here, Dijana’s interests in education, psychology, cooking and fashion all compete for her time and future. However, over their frequent dinners of chicken wings and French fries at Buffalo Wild Wings, we’re sure that Heather won’t steer Dijana astray.

Being a manager at Morningstar Inc, a financial services company, Heather is hoping her leadership skills are rubbing off on Dijana, since she considers herself lucky to be keeping up with Dijana’s rapidly improving math abilities! For now, Heather is happy to be in such a strong mentoring relationship with Dijana and glad to be in a situation where she can make a positive difference in a child’s life.

Student Spotlight: Jazmine Terrell

2009-02-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

9th grader Jazmine Terrell is in her first year at Noble Street College Prep and she’s loving it. She’s been spending much of her free time practicing and performing with the cheerleading team at her school, where they root on the Noble St Golden Tigers basketball, football and soccer teams. As much as Jazmine has been challenging herself with her involvement in cheerleading, she and her tutor Jen Nolan have been working together to ensure she thrives in her challenging academic environment as well.

Jasmine and Jen, a lawyer working at the Civic Federation, a non-partisan government watchdog organization, have been working together this entire year to bring Jasmine’s grades up, and they’ve had great success! According to Jasmine, since working with Jen, she has been “working harder, asking more questions in class when I don’t get something and coming in early for help when I need it.” Jasmine has also been attending her school's “Homework Fiesta”, which is something akin to a University professor’s office hours. Here she can get one-on-one homework help with her teachers as well as connect with other students to master her coursework.

Jasmine started here after her tutoring program ended at the YMCA. She heard about our program through friends from the neighborhood and upon coming, realized she knew more kids from the neighborhood than she thought.
Throughout the year so far, Jasmine has developed a great relationship with her mentor, Jen. Jasmine says: “Everything’s been going great, we can talk about anything. I tell her everything ‘cause I know I can trust her. She encourages me and gets me to keep a positive attitude.” Jasmine continues: “Without Jen and this program, I’d still be getting straight C’s.”

Jasmine has benefited from her relationship with Jen in other ways as well. For instance, although Jasmine isn’t exactly sure what she wants to do when she grows up, she knows it will have something to do with law. Here, Jen has been able to share her own experiences with law school and the law with Jasmine so that she can have a better idea of what a career in law would be like, which has only further encouraged Jasmine to follow her dreams of becoming a lawyer. Go for it Jasmine! We’re rooting for you!

Cabrini Connections Students show their appreciation

2009-01-30T14:47:00.000-08:00

Just in case you are too lazy to check out http://www.cabriniconnections.net/ please check out these videos that the Youth Leadership Council put together to show their appreciation for everything our mentors do. The top video features our Wednesday Night students and the bottom one features our Thursday Night Students.

Thanks again mentors and volunteers!

Woo hoo! I had no idea how easy it is to embed video in my blog. Be on the lookout for more great clips as the year progresses.

Have a great weekend!

National Mentoring Month winds to a close

2009-01-29T10:33:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! As National Mentoring Month winds to a close, I hope you've all taken this opportunity to thank the mentors in your lives, those who have encouraged you to pursue your dreams and have inspired you to live your life to its fullest possible potential. If you haven't already, you're in luck, there are still 3 days left. So dial up that mentor and let them know how much you appreciate them.

In a similar vein, I'd like to share a video that the Cabrini Connections Youth Leadership Council and I put together to show our appreciation for the mentors in our lives. You can stream it from our website at www.cabriniconnections.net. I'd highly recommend checking it out, if for no other reason than to see the impact a mentor can have on a child's life. If you're inspired, get involved and help us make every month National Mentoring Month!

Thanks for your support!

Volunteer Spotlight: Stephanie Rogers

2009-01-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

Cabrini Connections volunteer Stephanie Rogers is at a turning point in her life. In 2 months she will be receiving a Bachelors degree in Criminal Justice from Westwood College and will be entering the workforce. Though she doesn’t have a particular job lined up, she knows she wants to work in youth advocacy. She wants to use her talents and knowledge of the criminal justice system to help defend kids from injustice, whether it’s at school, home or in a public setting.

Stephanie has known that her calling was youth work since she was very young. Growing up on the Northwest side of Chicago, Stephanie saw a lot of friends suffer injustices growing up and came to realize that rather than give up and accept these things as inevitable, she wanted to stay positive, study hard, and work to make a difference. For Stephanie, helping others is in her nature… “obviously,” she says “I’m a Leo like Obama and we’re generous people.”

We couldn’t agree more. Since starting with us as a volunteer mentor in the Fall, Stephanie has been nothing less than generous in sharing her time and talents with us. Rather than giving up after her original mentee left the program, she has stuck around, helping us with a wide variety of things, including taking our students on a personally guided tour and information session of her school, Westwood College. She enjoyed this so much that she is now one of 2 coordinators of our new Cabrini Connections college zone. In this role she will work with our students and their mentors to ensure they’re on the right track with college admissions, assisting them with everything from searching for schools, the application process, financial aid, advice about budgeting at college…etc. She has generously decided to come in each week on both Wednesdays and Thursdays so that she can dedicate enough time to each student who needs it.

When not studying or volunteering Stephanie really enjoys writing poetry and listening to music. One of her favorite things to do is just walking around outside when the weather’s nice. However, her true passions lie with kids and her relentless desire to make other people happy. She’s completely committed to working with kids and she is confident that “If you stay motivated and working towards something you really believe in, you can’t be stopped.” Now those are words to live by. Thanks Stephanie!

Student Spotlight: Ashanti Anderson

2009-01-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

Jenner Academy 7th grader Ashanti Anderson is in her second year here at Cabrini Connections. Starting last year as a 6th grader, she joined in order to improve her math skills and benefit from a mentoring relationship. This year she has been paired up with Motorola Senior Electrical Engineer Frances Kwee, who is well qualified to help her with her math. Their relationship has progressed well in the past couple of months and they even met up on their own over Ashanti’s winter break to grab some Chinese food and get to know each other better. Though Ashanti learned that she’s not the biggest fan of Chinese food, they had a great time and will continue to work hard to build their relationship.

In school Ashanti’s favorite subjects are math, reading and social studies. She recently watched the classic PBS series Roots, and found it fascinating to learn more about the history of slavery both here in the U.S and in Africa. She says that learning about slavery helps to “tell us about why we are free now.” Though she likes the majority of her classes, she despises science—finding it dull and boring. Luckily, Frances is actually a scientist herself, and a very interesting and engaging one at that, so perhaps with a little encouragement she will eventually grow to enjoy the subject. She might want to in order to accomplish her dream of becoming a trial lawyer like the ones seen on CSI.

We at Cabrini Connections are so glad to have Ashanti with us and are proud to put her in the Student Spotlight. Congratulations Ashanti and keep up the good work!

Has Obama inspired you?

2009-01-21T13:09:00.000-08:00

If you're not already aware, our wonderful eLearning and Technology Coordinator recently created a website to replace our aging "Tutor/Mentor Institute". It's called the Tutor/Mentor Exchange and it has information about a wide variety of tutoring/mentoring related topics, particularly those aimed towards helping potential advocates to more effectively support tutoring/mentoring initiatives of all kinds. There are articles here for anyone wants to help us in our goal to give every child growing up in poverty, access to a high quality tutoring/mentoring program...for those who agree with President Obama that our nation's success depends "on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

If you have been inspired by Obama's call to service like so many others and are in the health care field: check out the Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection to see how you can make a difference.

If you or anyone you know is a student, professor, employee or is otherwise affiliated with a College or University, check our our model for a University Tutor/Mentor Connection

K-12 students should check out this article here to see how they can play their part in creating a more just world

How about faith communities? We have hashed out a plan to help concerned individuals mobilize their church, mosque or temple to help at-risk youth succeed!

Are you a lawyer or know a lawyer? Check out our Lawyers Lend a Hand campaign and see how you can join other members of the legal community who are connecting with at-risk kids all over the city and broadening their horizons.

Or perhaps you find yourself among the ranks of the unemployed, retired or otherwise have some extra time on your hands... perhaps you might be interested in starting a tutor/mentor program? If so, check out this collection of essays and how-to guides about what it takes to start AND SUSTAIN a volunteer tutor/mentor program. The information in these essays draws from decades of tutoring/mentoring experience culled from the members of the Tutor/Mentor Connection as well as Cabrini Connections Founder and CEO Dan Bassill's personal experience. In either case, it's worth checking out.

Hopefully you'll find one of these links worthwhile and find a way to get involved and use your particular talents to make a difference!

Volunteer Spotlight: Brian Lange

2009-01-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

Recent Notre Dame graduate Brian Lange knows a leader when he sees one. As a research analyst at Egon Zehnder International, he assesses and recruits top-level executives for leadership roles at organizations across the globe. Therefore we are particularly glad that when he was searching last year for a meaningful place to volunteer in his spare time, he ended up here at Cabrini Connections. Last year Brian was paired up with a student, Anthony Allen, in a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Anthony did not return this year, so Brian decided that this year he would be well suited for the volunteer coordinator role, which he is currently filling on Thursday nights. Brian has slipped into the role with ease, given his easy-going demeanor and leadership skills, which he will be further honing beginning next year at the University of Chicago.

Brian was recently accepted into the U of C Booth School of Business where he will be studying marketing, strategic management and behavioral finance beginning in fall. 2009 is shaping up to be an important year for Brian as he will be getting married to his fiancé Elizabeth this summer, who is a 3rd year medical student at Northwestern University. They met during Brian’s time at Notre Dame where he studied modern European history and business. Though he was busy in college, he found time to share his time with worthwhile organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. His most memorable experience with them was when he decided to join a group of concerned individuals in 2005 and travel to Sri Lanka for 3 weeks to help rebuild after the devastating tsunami that killed nearly a quarter million people in late December 2004.

About Cabrini Connections, Brian says: “it’s a good group, doing a good service to the city… I’m proud to be a part of it.” We’re glad you agree Brian!