The Tutor/Mentor Connection's Public Awareness Strategy is based on the marketing/advertising strategies used by big companies to draw customers to multiple locations in many states. T/MC does not have an advertising or public awareness budget, thus it looks for other ways to create media frequency and reach and greater public attention.
One strategy is to create maps that follow feature stories in local papers and TV, which usually sensationalizes violence and poverty. We call our map strategy "THE REST OF THE STORY". We post these maps in blog articles that are intended to leverage the public awareness generated by the media, in ways that draw volunteers and donors directly to tutor/mentor programs in neighborhoods that have been the focus of negative news.
In March 2009 T/MC launched an interactive program locator, that enables visitors to create their own maps of different sections of the city. This blog article shows a map created in just 10 minutes, using this feature. Now students in high school and colleges can become advocates, and journalist, drawing media, volunteer and donor attention to neighborhoods where more non-school learning, mentoring and career opportunities are needed.
With the help of students, volunteers and the business community, we can get THE REST OF THE STORY on the internet, within 24 to 48 hours, while it is still featured in the news, the local papers become our advertising partner. This is a strategy that we hope youth journalists and advocates in high school, college, or other community technology centers, will adopt, with youth creating maps of their own neighborhood, and drawing volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in their own community. Contact the T/MC if you'd like to learn how you might use the T/MC map gallery and database for this purpose.
Vision: because of the work we do youth living in poverty today will be starting jobs and entering careers out of poverty by age 25
In Chicago, Baltimore and other big cities, media stories constantly remind us of the negative impact of concentrated poverty and inequality. New research is published monthly, showing the impacts of inequality and how where you are born and where you live often determines what your future will be.
Since 1993, the Tutor/Mentor Connection (led by The Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) has led a year-round strategy intended to mobilize attention and involvement of people in all parts of the Chicago region, and to focus it on high poverty areas of inner city neighborhoods, using maps, and a Program Locator Database (an archive since 2021), to help volunteers, donors, business, faith groups, parents and students connect with youth serving programs which already operate in different parts of the city and suburbs, or to help build new programs in undeserved areas.
To achieve this goal, many people need to spread this message to people in their network, who become volunteers or donors. And many of these people need to spread the work in their own networks. The end result might be the growth of leaders from every part of "the village" who become champions for tutor/mentor programs and the T/MC strategy . This chart illustrates the goal.
The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) was created in 1993 to increase the number of stories that draw attention and resources to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every poverty neighborhood using same strategies as advertisers for fast food, banks, lenders, TV shows.
To do this T/MC created an annual event/marketing plan that repeats from year-to-year. Starting a volunteer volunteer-based tutor/mentor program is difficult, but is really the easiest part of the lessons we're sharing in the Tutor/Mentor Institute. Sustaining a program and growing it into a great program, having a life changing impact on youth, as well as volunteers, is a long-term process. Thus, leaders need to have a business plan for finding resources to fuel constant innovation and process improvement.
This calendar of events was developed between 1994 and 2000 and continued through 2015 as part of an effort to bring more attention and resources to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs operating in Chicago and other cities. In 2011 the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC was created as a structure to continue the T/MC in Chicago and help it spread to other cities. While Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC is still looking for partners/sponsors it's primary goal is to motivate institutions to adopt and lead it in other cities, beyond 2021. If you'd like to make a contribution, click here.
Planning Strategies
Vision: 
