This month's newsletter is going to focus on poverty research and ways volunteers in organized tutor/mentor programs can use this information to change conditions and do more to help K-12 youth move safely through school and into adult lives.

The ideas and resources shared in this monthly newsletter point to a library of resources that can be used by anyone, in Chicago, or around the world, to help mentor-rich youth programs thrive in all of the neighborhoods where they are most needed.

Encourage others in your city to find and use these resources!

Data maps provide information in a visual way, making it easier to look at indicators for a small part of a city or state, or the entire city or state. This concept map points to many of the websites that I point to in the Tutor/Mentor library. Use them to build your understanding of where people need more help, and then to create stories that mobilize that help.

I've often asked "Who is teaching youth and adults to make sense of this data, and to share it in stories that get other people involved?" In a recent forum I was introduced to the New American History website. This page titled "Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America," shows lesson plans that can be used in school and non-school programs throughout the country. Take a look.

In order to reduce poverty, we first need to understand it, and empathize, so we're willing to do more with our time, talent, dollars and votes to change public and private practices and beliefs that have contributed to the levels of poverty and inequality that exist in America today.

If you've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program for multiple years, or volunteered for multiple years, you know the many different benefits these programs offer, to young people and adults. If your program operates in a big city like Chicago, with huge areas of concentrated poverty, you also know how difficult it is for one volunteer, or a single program, to reduce the many barriers caused by systemic racism and long-term government policies.

Over many years I've seen how some volunteers who have been well-supported by the programs they are part of, begin to do more to help the kids they work with, and the programs they are part of. Some may even become politically involved.

Why can't that be happening more frequently?

What if the poverty research that I point to above were part of the library of every volunteer-based organization and that efforts to keep volunteers involved, led to more taking greater roles?

Explore this graphic in this blog article.

Then read this "Mentor Role in a Larger Strategy" article.

I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago for 35 years. For the first 15 years I was a volunteer with a full-time advertising job in the headquarters of a big retail store corporation. The program I led had 100 pairs of elementary school kids and workplace volunteers in 1975 when I became its leader and grew to over 300 pairs by 1990, with volunteers coming from more than 100 companies in the Chicago region. That program still serves Chicago, under the name of Tutoring Chicago.

I had to learn to recruit volunteers who would help with leading the program and doing all the work involved. Over time this became the formula - R&D+F&L. This means Recruit and Delegate. Follow-up and Lead. View this blog article to learn more about this strategy.

In the article I pointed to above, I share pages from the annual yearbook that I created each year from 1975 to 1999. One set of pages shows the tutoring program volunteer committee in 1975, with 13 people. The second is from the 1991-92 program, with a committee of more than 60 volunteers! There's an important lesson from these photos.

Great programs don't start great, they grow great over a period of many years of constant innovation and improvement. This is a lesson we need to share with donors so that more will provide the constant flow of dollars needed to build and sustain constantly improving programs.

Imagine the potential impact of this volunteer growth strategy in hundreds of volunteer-based organizations serving youth and families throughout the country. Imagine connecting these people to each other in a movement intended to reduce barriers to learning and opportunity.

What's you strategy for growing your program and getting volunteers involved? Do you have a blog where you share the work you do to make your program great? Please share it with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and/or Mastodon.