During the May and November Conference periods, as well as during the August/September Back to Schjool Volunteer Recruitment period, my goal is to create blog exchanges in which volunteers, youth, donors and leaders of tutor/mentor programs tell stories about what they do, where they do it, why they do it, and how volunteers can support them.

What is a Blog Exchange? 

The Non Profit Blog Exchange is now hosting its 7th round of blog exchanges. I've participated in most of these, and as a result have met many new people, and learned many new ideas that I can apply in my own work.

Young Caucasus Women, is a group blog for young women from the Caucasus region (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia). The students participating in this project are foreign exchange students of high school age currently in the US.   This web site is really useful, because it provides all of the organizing information anyone would need to design a blog exchange like this.

A tutor/mentor blog exchange can take place in May or June 2007 if we can find just one volunteer who will take the same lead that Emily did in creating the Non Profit Blog Exchange and that Katy did in creating the Young Caucaus Women's blog.

If that person is YOU, please introduce yourself here, or email tutormentor2@earthlink.net

If you write a blog, I encourage you to join us.

Ted Ernst used his Humanize the Earth! blog to build a list of blogs that were connecting to each other as a result of a discussion taking place in the forums of Omidyar.net.

As we link blogs we link our networks to each other. If you're the leader of a tutor/mentor network in another city, state or another country you can link the programs in your city to programs in other cities, and to donors from around the world, if you link your web site, or your blog, in this manner.

How do I start a blog? This was a question a friend from Atlanta asked me today.  I did a search on Google, and found a pretty good guide to answer this question. It's at http://ask.yahoo.com/20031024.html

If you want to recomment other "getting started" blogs, please do.

I've posted an article at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2007/05/volunteers-tutormentor-leaders-donors.html that shows the various organizations that have connected with us because of the Blog Exchange idea.

One link goes to a group in Vermont, who just started their own blog a week ago. One of the first messages points to the Cabrini Connections blogs as an example of what they seek to do.

That's our goal. While we're trying to get people to connect face to face, we realize most people can't do this often, and most people will never be able to attend a Chicago Conference. That's why were looking for many different avenues to connect volunteers, leaders, donors and youth from many different programs.

Why do we do this? Because we realize that in order to get the various resources we need to help our own Cabrini Connections program be more effective each year in maintining youth and volunteer participation, we need the help of hundreds of other tutor/mentor leaders to attract more strategic involvement from resource providers (businesses, foundations, universities, etc.).

Why do we focus beyond Chicago? Because a program in another state many have connectins to the CEO of a corporation that does business in Chicago, or a Senator who may lead a mentoring initiative in Congress. Leaders don't need to be in Chicago to have an influence on actions that support the growth of tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.