NOTE: As you read this history, you can also view concept maps that diagram the goals and strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.
The roots of this organization extend back to 1965, when associates from the Montgomery Ward Corporate Headquarters in Chicago began to offer weekly one-on-one tutoring to elementary school youth living in the nearby Cabrini-Green public housing complex. Dan Bassill, founder of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection joined Wards as an advertising writer in 1973 and became a volunteer in this program. He became its volunteer leader in 1975. In 1990 Bassill left Wards and converted the original 2nd to 6th grade program to a non profit, called Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, Inc.
Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection was created in aftermath of the Dantrell Davis killing in Chicago in October 1992. Davis’ death was the catalyst for a city-wide media campaign to ‘stop the killings’. The media ran feature articles profiling after school programs in the area working to keep children safe during non-school hours.
Research showed that:
- More than 200,000 school-aged children in the Chicago area could benefit from comprehensive mentoring-to-career programs
- The areas of the city most desperately in need of school reform and after school programs tend to be in the same areas plagued by poverty, violence, and segregation.
Unfortunately, the media’s attention to the events and research findings was short lived and focused on only a few neighborhoods. This was not the type of support that companies like Wards, Sears, and Walmart use to put stores near customers, or to draw customers to those stores on a daily basis.
Daniel Bassill saw a leadership void in the wake of the media attention, and decided to fill it with two organizations:
- Cabrini Connections - An organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring program for 7th to 12th grade teens in the Cabrini Green neighborhood.
- Tutor/Mentor Connection – An organization dedicated to connecting all tutoring/mentoring programs in the city, generating a flow of money, visibility, and volunteers to help each program grow to its full potential.
Cabrini Connections
Since 1993 the Cabrini Connections program has provided mentoring-to-career support for more than 520 low-income, inner-city teens living in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. We now have a pipeline of youth ranging from entry-level 7th graders to college graduates — who were in 7th and 8th grade when they first joined. 55% of these teens have been in one-on-one mentoring for two or more years and 34% (188 teens) for three or more years. We expect to have 75 teens and 85 volunteers enrolled in the 2009-10 program by mid October. We also have a growing number of student alumni and former volunteers now reconnected to us via the Internet.
While we operate a single program serving teens in Cabrini Connections, we created the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) in 1993 to fill a leadership void in Chicago. From almost 17 years of leading a tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 1992, the leaders recognized that:
(a) It is possible to connect workplace volunteers and inner city kids through long-term, one-on-one mentoring, while enriching the lives of youths and adults.
(b) It is incredibly difficult for small programs to consistently find the resources to sustain themselves for the long term.
(c) Programs often suffer from a lack of the consistent leadership strategies necessary to ensure growth, quality, and sustainability.
The founders of Cabrini Connections recognized that in order to draw the consistent resources needed to increase the Cabrini Connections program’s effectiveness, they needed to create a leadership organization that would assist all tutor/mentor programs throughout the Chicago area.
Thus, they created the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The T/MC supports the growth of tutor/mentor programs throughout the Chicago region, in a variety of innovative ways. The T/MC began building a master database of Chicago tutor/mentor programs in 1993, and has been sharing information about these programs in a variety of ways in the years since then. In 1998 the program moved to the Internet, and how shares information about Chicago programs via an Interactive, map based, Program Locator.
The organization supplements this information with an extensive web based library of information for volunteers, students, program leaders and supporters. To encourage more people to look at this information, and support individual programs throughout Chicago, T/MC leads an on-going advertising/PR type campaign intended to draw resources to every program in the Chicago region. Since T/MC does not have money to advertise, it seeks to recruit business, faith and community leaders to share this message via their own communications. In addition, T/MC has organized quarterly events, since May 1994, such as a May and November leadership and networking conference, and an Aug/September Volunteer Recruitment campaign, to build visibility and draw volunteers and donors to different program, and to T/MC web sites
T/MC launched its first survey in January 1994 and held its first conference in May 1994. The T/MC Web site went online in 1997, which paved the way for new technologies like OHATS, the Organizational History & Accomplishments Tracking System, in 2000 and the Program Locator in 2004. (view timeline of T/MC)
In 2005, the technology department at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) donated resources to create the T/MC Online Portal, which currently connects the T/MC community interactively through discussion forums and links pages. T/MC would like to thank IUPUI for its continued support of the T/MC mission.
In 2007 an anonymous donor provided $50,000 which the T/MC used in 2008 to upgrade its Chicago programs database and mapping capacity. In late 2008 the T/MC used part of this money to launch an on-line ineractive Program Locator, with maps that visitors can search to learn where tutor/mentor programs are needed, and what programs operate in those areas.
In 2008 the T/MC rebuilt the Tutor/Mentor Institute web site, where we share ideas and concepts that we have learned over the past 30 years. These are intended to be used by leaders in their own efforts to help inner city kids move through school and into adult lives and careers.
How do we measure the success of the T/MC?
One measure of success is that these resources are still available, and FREE, to people in Chicago and other cities, 16 years after launching the T/MC in 1993. No major donors have provide consistent support during these years, and some donors who did provide significant support, such as the Montgomery Ward Corporation, have gone out of business due to changes in the market place. Much of the work of creating the T/MC has been done by volunteers who have donated their time. Many of these started as tutors/mentors at Cabrini Connections.
Another measure of success is the many ways that T/MC has been recognized for its leadership and service. In 1997, T/MC exhibited at the Presidents' Summit for America's Future. From 2001 through 9/2009, T/MC President Daniel F. Bassill served as a Commissioner for the Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service. The Associated Colleges of Illinois also named Bassill a 2004 Outstanding Example of Liberal Arts Leadership. In 2008 Bank of America recognized Bassill with a community leadership award. A complete list of awards can be found at this link.
In addition, if you search GOOGLE for the words "tutor mentor" the T/MC web sites come up on the first page (many times!). This means our Internet strategy is making this web site a destination for people throughout the Chicago region, and the rest of the world.