Visit the home page of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference web site and you'll find a link to a new conference video that was posted on YouTube this week.  The confernece will be held in Chicago on May 17 and 18. Registration is now open.  Visit http://www.tutormentorconference.org for details.  

The goal of the conference is to bring stakeholders together to network and share ideas that can be used to build more and better volunteer based tutor/mentor programs.  Visit this link to see our concept of leadership that any of our site visitors could apply in their own actions.

If you are planning to attend, please introduce yourself in the conference discussion forum and tell us who you are, what you do and what type of people you want to meet and network with. If you have questions about the conference or about doing a workshop, you can also call 312-492-9614 or email tutormentor2@earthlink.net.

Many of the current and past volunteers of Cabrini Connections have attended graduate business schools at Northwestern, University of Chicago or other institutions.  Some of these volunteers have helped us launch the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Others now serve on our board of directors.

For many years I've attempted to connect volunteers and leaders of different tutor/mentor programs in a network that shares ideas and applies their talents to building and sustaining programs like Cabrini Connections in high poverty neighborhoods throughout Chicago.  While we'd like to connect lawyers, accountants, engineers, etc. with each other, connecting business school students and alumni creates a marketing and advertising resource that is missing in most non profit tutor/mentor programs.

Since 1998 the T/MC has been using the Internet to share information and recruit partners, thus, our goal has expanded to connecting business school students and alumni from other cities, and even other countries.

Up until now we've not had anyone to take on this vision, and make it a reality. That has changed.

In January 2007 a Net Impact Fellow, Nithya Rajan, joined us from the University of Chicago Graduate Business School, to take a lead on this project.  I encourage you to read her  introduction and then review the vision of the Business School Connection.

I encourage you to share Nithya's introduction with friends, family and alumni who are currently attending a graduate business school. Help draw others into this project. Help Nithya make this project a reality.

Parents, social workers and teachers can use this service to find sites where youth can be enrolled for volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, while community leaders can use this service to learn which neighborhoods have enough programs, or where there are too few programs. 

Volunteers, donors and business partners can use these maps to determine where to give there talent,  leadership, dollars and technology to help existing programs provide constantly improving services, and to help create new programs where needed.

This work was done by volunteers. If you or your company would like to provide financial support for the work the Tutor/Mentor Connection is doing, email tutormentor2@earthlink.net