tutormentor

@tutormentor.bsky.social

2807 Followers 4364 Following

I collect & share ideas others can use to fight poverty & inequality & help volunteer-based tutor, mentor & learning orgs reach K-12 youth in more places. Piloted since 1993 in Chicago. I have posted on social media since mid 2000s.

This is one slide from a "shoppers guide" visual essay from Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). The title says "Does (a youth program's) website show a "theory of change" or "logic model" on the website? The graphic shows a birth-to-work timeline, three times during the day when youth may need extra support. The call outs emphasize that it's not enough to have a great program serving a few grades when there are no programs that follow.
This is an article on Substack.com titled, "If you did not see this in 1990s, look now". It shows a page from one of the newsletters of the Cabrini Connections-Tutor/Mentor Connection which was launched in late 1992 in Chicago. This image features a "leaders wanted" message with a map of Chicago showing all of the places where mentor-rich non-school programs are most needed.
This is a pin-button created by Algot Runeman, a retired educator. It says "I look forward to living ... TODAY". It's part of an article on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog that encourages tutor/mentor programs to add this as an activity for youth and volunteers and as a public awareness and recruitment tool.
This is the June 1993 newsletter of the Cabrini Connections tutor/mentor program that myself and six other volunteers launched in late 1992. At that point the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy was still in development. The headline is "Do the Right Thing" and shows a photo of students and volunteers who met each Saturday morning from January through June in the dayroom of a church in Cabrini Green.
This is Dan Bassill, founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). The photo is from the late 70s as Dan was speaking at a year-end event for volunteers who were part of the volunteer-based tutor/mentor program he led from 1975 to 1992.
This graphic shows students in the 1974-75 Montgomery Ward-Cabrini Green Tutoring Program. I've stayed connected with a few of them through 2026. The graphic says "Things I Fear" and starts with "sons and daughters of former students being shot just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time"
This graphic shows the role of information libraries in on-going innovation and problem solving. The carrot represents a "good idea/practice". If shared publicly it attracts early users (the rabbit) who is then followed by other innovators (the first dog), who then are followed by others. Adding new information to the library (carrots) is an on-going part of the process.
This is a view of a portion of the July 2026 Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC newsletter, which can be found at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net In this issue we point readers to several Chicago youth serving programs, such as Chicago Scholars, Chicago Youth Programs, Inc, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Chicago and Learning Edge Tutoring.
This graphic shows a strategy piloted in Chicago since 1993 by Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). The blue box in the middle represents the information hosted our its website, which includes lists of youth-serving programs and maps showing areas where extra help is needed. The list on the left shows all the people who could be using this information to find ways to help youth, and youth programs, grow throughout the city.
This is part of an article on Substack.com that breaks down a graphic that shows the role business, philanthropy, government and others need to take to make comprehensive, long-term, mentor-rich programs available to K-12 youth in every high poverty neighborhood.
This is the front page of the 1982-83 yearbook of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, showing some of the kids and volunteers who were part of that year's program.
This is a page on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website where I show new links added to the library in 2026. You can click directly to the links I added, or you can go the the page where I host the link. There you can find dozens of similar links added over the past 30 years.
This is an article on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog that shares links to Systems Thinking Case Studies. The one shown is from the SCiO (Systems and Complexity Organization) website.
This concept map shows the 30 year goal of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). At the left is a birth-to-work staircase showing programs needed at different age levels as kids move through school to adult lives. At the right is a map showing many barriers that all kids face, but kids in high poverty areas have fewer resources to overcome. It also shows some challenge that kids in affluent areas don't face.
This is a page on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website that features an event mapping tool created by students in an information visualization MOOC at Indiana University. It shows how participation from 20 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences held every six months from May 1994 to May 2015 is shown on a Kumu.io map.
This is a Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) article on Substack.com. It shows a history of using GIS maps, dating to late 1992, to show where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Chicago were located, where more were needed, who could be helping, and to draw resources to each program. The maps shown were created in 1995 as part of a "Rest of the Story" strategy intended to draw resources to areas where media reported "bad news" such as "Gang gunfire kills girl, 15") The maps show the location of this incident, any tutor/mentor programs in the area, and business, faith groups, etc. who could be helping programs grow.
The 1990s photo at the upper left shows teens who were part of a tutor/mentor program Dan Bassill led in Chicago. One of those teens is shown at the right, when she was a speaker at the 2010 year-end dinner. The graphic shows how some people are "pushing" kids to do their best while business and others need to be using their talent, jobs, dollars and influence to "pull" kids through school. There are three time frames when kids can be reached. Kids in areas of highly concentrated poverty may need continuous extra support from pre school through post high school and into the workplace.
I've been posting articles around July 4th for many years. Below is what I posted in 2022, with a few updates. Today millions of Americans are celebrating the founding of this country, while millions also are wondering when freedom and full rights of this country are available to them. Even more are fearing that freedoms that have been gained are now being taken away. Many are sharing the quote from Benjamin Franklin, who said something like "It's a democracy, if you can keep it."
This is the front page from the Chicago SunTimes of October 15, 1992. The headline says "7-Year Old's Death at Cabrini Requires Action". I've kept this page in my office as my own reminder and I've posted it in my newsletters and blog at least once a year to remind everyone else.
This is a July 2006 Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) blog article titled "An Urgent Call to Action". It starts by saying, "As we celebrate freedom this weekend and honor the men and women fighting overseas, I hope we'll also honor those who are fighting poverty and terror in America's inner-city neighborhoods."
This is Daniel Bassill's account on Scribd.com. He "started Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 to innovate new ways to support networks of people working on complex problems, such as making volunteer-based youth tutor/mentor programs available in more high poverty areas of Chicago and other places. It shows six out of nearly 60 visual essays that have been uploaded since 2012.
This is a slide from a visual essay that describes what a Tutor/Mentor Learning Network looks like. It's based on work done since 1993 by a small organization in Chicago to connect the ecosystem of youth development, workforce development, education, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs, funders, policy-makers, etc.
This is a post from the MappingforJustice blog created in 2008 by the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present). It shows a 1997 newsletter with maps of Chicago and uses the headline of "No General Would Go into Battle Without a Map".
This is a view of lists that Dan Bassill (tutormentor) hosts on Twitter. Each group focuses on a specific area of interest. Some, like the collective impact group, have over 1600 members. Others, like the ChicagoTM list, only include non-school, volunteer-based, tutor, mentor and learning programs that operate in the Chicago region.
This is a post on Facebook by a former student in the tutor/mentor programs Dan Bassill led from 1975 to 2011. She was responding to the Logic Model graphic that I had posted earlier. Her post starts out saying "This post resonates deeply with me because I wasn't just connected to the Tutor/Mentor movement, I was impacted by it."
This is the degree from Illinois Wesleyan awarding an honorary PhD to Daniel F. Bassill.
This is a Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) blog article. The title is: "Focus on conditions that affect student performance - new UCLA Center report" The text starts with: Today I read a new article from the UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools, titled "Disregarding Inequities Fuels Victim Blaming". It focuses on how "far too little attention is focused on the role that societal and school inequalities play in shaping both student difficulties and school performance outcomes." I encourage you to open this PDF and read the article. This is not new information to me. I've been collecting articles like this for over 30 years and sharing them in my library and via posts like this.
This is the first page of a visual essay created in the 1990s to show a strategy that engages youth from many schools in on-going activities that draw attention and resources to high poverty areas of cities like Chicago. It asks, "How do we keep attention focused on social organizations long enough for them to have an impact? What roles might youth and interns take?" The graphic at the left shows the 12 years it takes for a youth to go from 1st grade to 12th grade and a range of age appropriate learning activities that they might participate in. The graphic at the right includes a map of Chicago, showing areas of high poverty and locations of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs. The YOU indicates a role anyone can take to draw people in their network to the map, and to the programs. In the middle is an example of youth activism, which in this case was a video created by students in a tutor/mentor program.
This is from a Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) blog article. The two concept maps were created in 2007 to show the challenges facing nonprofit organizations and how leaders in business, universities, etc might change that. The text in the first paragraph reads: "Those who lead small non profits, or are struggling to get social benefit ideas launched, may relate to this One-To-Many graphic. We're constantly reaching out in many different directions, trying to find the help we need. We're like fish in a bowl, competing with thousands of others for a limited amount of dollars and volunteers. Unless you've got a powerful marketing machine, or are well connected in donor circles, you succeed some of the time, but not most of the time, and you spend tremendous amounts of emotional capital and energy all of the time."
This is part of a Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) blog article. The images are a map of Chicago showing high poverty areas, and hands gathered in prayer. The text reads: When I was a retail advertising manager (1973-1990) for the Montgomery Ward headquarters based in Chicago I learned that more competition in a market created more advertising and led more customers to want the products we were selling. Those customers usually shopped at a store near where they lived or worked. I've piloted the uses of maps since 1993 to show where tutor/mentor programs are needed and to help potential customers locate programs in different parts of the city. I've borrowed ideas from others for more than 40 years. My background studying history in college, and spending three years in US Army Intelligence, taught me to look for ideas applied by others and to borrow those ideas to improve my own efforts. One of the web sites I found nearly 15 years ago was one that is called Internet Evangelism Day. This article suggests that the old way of standing on street corners to pass out religious tracts is replaced by using websites to express ideas. The people who find your websites are already interested in what you offer, thus will spend more time trying to understand your message.
This graphic says "Year-Round events intended to draw attention, volunteers and dollars directly to every volunteer -based tutor, mentor and learning program in the Chicago region". It includes a map of the Chicago region and a graphic showing quarterly events that could be used by marketing students in campaigns aimed at helping local youth-serving organizations thrive.
This Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) blog article shows monthly traffic on the blog and website.
This graphic compares the planning involved in winning World War 2 with what's needed to make long-term, site-based tutor, mentor and learning programs available in all high poverty areas of cities like Chicago. The heading of this graphic is "War on Poverty - Complex System". At the right are maps that highlight high poverty areas of Chicago.
This graphic features a map of Chicago, with high poverty areas highlighted. It shows the location of the Cabrini Connections program on Chicago's Near North Side. That was the single program I led from 1993 to 2011. At the same time I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection to help similar programs in all parts of Chicago get needed attention, volunteers and funding.
This video was created in 2013 by an intern from South Korea, via IIT in Chicago. He drew information from an article and graphic on the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog. The title is "War on Poverty". It asks, "When you think of helping kids in poverty, do you think of battlefield images?"
This photo shows teens giving a performance during a weekly session of the Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Program that I launched in late 1992 and led through mid 2011. It's part of an article that encourages businesses to support such programs as part of their own workforce development strategies.
This is a map showing locations of Historical Black Colleges and Universities in the SE part of the United States.
The first panel says "connecting a youth and non-family adult in a supportive relationship is a good thing." If you don't agree with that then you don't need to read any further. The second panel says that in big cities like Chicago, where poverty is measured by miles and the number of kids in poverty numbers over 200,000, organized non-school programs are needed to enable volunteers from many different backgrounds to connect, and stay connected, to kids for multiple years. Some of the programs themselves become anchors in the lives of kids, offering safe places and a community of supportive adults and learning activities beyond what a single mentor might offer. I've been building a list of organizations that provide various forms of tutoring and/or mentoring in Chicago, which you can find here. If you agree that organized programs are needed, then the next progression is to think of ways to make high-quality, mentor-rich programs available in every high poverty neighborhood for kids as early as first grade and as old as age 16 to 26.
This is a graphic showing an event and conference analysis tool and process dashboard created by students from an Information Visualization MOOC at Indiana University, based on data from 1993-2015 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences held in Chicago.
This is the analytics dashboard created by IVMOOC students at Indiana University to understand participation in 1994-2015 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago. Under the heading of "Mapping & Analyzing Participation" they wrote: "Who shows up to build a community? Which organizations sustain engagement over years, and which sectors are consistently absent? This platform answers those questions using 6410 attendance records from 42 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences hosted by Daniel F. Bassill between 1994 and 2015.
This is a page on the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) website. It shows a sub-section of the library that I've built since the 1990s. The links in this section focus on * challenges facing nonprofit organizations * general operating support articles' * fund raising hubs, intermediaries and platforms * grant references * Understanding philanthropy articles * Pro athletes supporting causes
This is part of an article talking about "who needs to be involved" for a committee, an organization, or a movement, to be successful. This "Committee Organizing Principles" is part of a visual essay created in the 1990s by Dan Bassill, founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present).
These two images are part of an article on the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). The programs featured are Tutoring Chicago and College Bound Opportunities. Several others are highlighted in the article.
These are some of the articles Dan Bassill (Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) has posted on Substack.com since August 2025. They highlight key ideas and strategies aimed at helping mentor-rich non-school, volunteer-based learning programs reach K-12 youth in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other places.
These are two graphics from Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present). Both focus on building long-term, mentor-rich youth serving programs that reach K-12 kids in every high poverty areas. The top shows three time frames where support is needed. The bottom says "If flying, I want enough fuel to get to my destination. It takes 12 years to get from first grade through 12th grade. Yet funding from foundations and gov't often only lasts 1-3 years. This is like saying to a child, "I'll raise you for the first three years. You find someone else to take you the next 3 years."
This graphic shows a birth-to-work university-based strategy that could create a pipeline of future leaders for youth-serving programs, progressive government, climate change, etc. It just needs a long-term funding source.
This article shares a visual essay that asks "What stories on a tutor/mentor program website would convince you to join, or support it, with time, talent and dollars? The images are youth and volunteers in a tutor/mentor program that I led in Chicago from 1993 to 2011.
This table was created by Gemini when I asked it to search specifically using the "tutor/mentor" word combination and give me the top ten results. When you use the specific slash format "tutor/mentor", the search results shift away from general "tutor" ads and toward The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC). This is a framework developed by Dan Bassill that treats tutoring and mentoring as a single integrated strategy for poverty reduction and student success. Most of the top results (1, 4, 6, and 7) are actually different branches of this same 30-year-old initiative.
This is a page on the Afterschool Alliance's Collective For Youth Empowerment in STEM and Society (CYESS) Initiative. It shows work done by youth through a program of CYESS.
This is a page on the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) website that hosts lists of Chicago area volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs. The list was started in the mid 1970s when Dan Bassill was the leader of a single program in Chicago and began to reach out to others for ideas and support. It's organized by sections of the city. So, if you open the "Chicago North" section you'll find programs based in that part of the city.
This is a page on the MyChiMyFuture website that shows 14 community area plans developed in 2023 and 2024. Click on any of these and you open a PDF showing extensive plans focused on making more youth programming available in those areas. This is part of their on-going effort to bring stakeholders together for citywide meeting and to share information via email newsletters, their website and social media.
This is a graphic used with an article on Substack.com, titled "Mentor Kids to Careers - 4 Part Strategy". The graphic shows a birth-to-work timeline, with three timeframe when youth need support from tutors and mentors. It shows teens in the mid 1990s who were part of a tutor/mentor program in Chicago and one of those teens in 2010 when she spoke at the program's year-end dinner.
This is the front page of a Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present) visual essay. It's asking "What stories on a tutor/mentor program website would convince you to join, or support it with time, talent and/or dollars? It uses an image of a person viewing a website to show how supporters should be able to browse lists of programs and "shop" for which they want to support, based on information provided on the website.
This is a Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog article with the title "Making Out-of-School-Time Programs More Available". It features images from the 2026 State of Chicago Youth Report from an organization called "A Better Chicago". The charts show the low percent of Chicago K-12 youth involved in out-of-school-time programs, with some areas of the city much lower than others.
This visualization was created by Dan Bassill in the 1980s to show the volunteer-based organization structure of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, which he started leading in 1975. This shows teams focused on recruiting, training, admin, parent involvement, activities, field trips, newsletter, computers, and more. All were volunteers.
This is a 1993 Chicago SunTimes article about poverty in Chicago. I highlighted some quotes, such as "the city lacks a comprehensive battle plan". I show quotes from other media that show how short-term city responses have been.
This is a Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blog article that features the new 2026 State of Chicago Youth report from A Better Chicago.
This visualization shows organizations that participated in the two 2009 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences which I hosted in Chicago. The orange nodes are the conferences and the green nodes are participants. The green nodes in the middle are organizations that attended both of the 2009 conferences.
This is a visualization from a Kumu.io map created by the Nov 2025 IVMOOC team at Indiana University. This shows organizations that attended the May and the November, 2002 conferences. Included are Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Chicago, East Village Youth Program, Family Matters, the YMCA, Cook County Juvenile Justice Department, etc
This graphic says "How Do We Keep Attention Focused on Social Organizations Long Enough For Them to Have Impact? What Roles Might Youth and Interns take? The graphic shows the 12-16 years of support youth need as they move through school and into jobs and careers. It also shows a map of Chicago, with high poverty areas highlighted. The YOU is anyone reading this.