Each year the January National Mentoring Month celebrates the role mentors play in the lives of all of us. As we think of who has been our mentor, we ask you to focus attention on kids living in inner city neighborhoods where kids and families need extra mentors, and extra learning and experience opportunities in the non-school hours. These are places where tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections are needed. In the Program Locator and Chicago Program Links sections of this web site you can find dozens of programs like Cabrini Connections. Each is constantly looking for resources (dollars, manpower, leaders, ideas, technology, etc.) that they can use to maintain connections between mentors and youth.

Learn how your company can recruit talent volunteers (PDF), to help build stronger tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities. Learn ways you can be more consistent in connecting people in your network (pdf)  to tutor/mentor progams in your city.

Please consider a 2008 donation to the Cabrini Connections or to one of the other mentoring/tutoring organizations listed on our web site to help every tutor/mentor program in Chicago, and in other cities, continue this service in 2008 and beyond. Thank you.

This week Daniel F. Bassill, President, CEO and Founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Cabrini Connections is the featured interview on the Blau Exchange web site, hosted by Paul DiPerna.  The Interview can be found at http://www.blauexchange.org/int_dbassill.html 

The Blau Exchange Project is a web-based initiative that will be an intermediary for professional groups interested in how information and communications technologies (ICTs) affect society, with particular focus on the Internet and World Wide Web.  This project honors Peter Blau, one of the 20th century's most influential sociologists.

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.

Chicago, Nov. 18, 2006 --- Holiday gifts came early to 20 different volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs who today received a total of $47,000 in grants and awards from the Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend A Hand Program.  The awards and grants were given during a reception hosted at the Chicago law offices of Much Shelist Freed Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C. 

Organizations receiving grants of $500 to $2500 included Big Brother Big Sister of Metropolitan Chicago, BUILD (Broader Urban Involvement and Leadership Development), The Bridge Youth and Family Services, Cabrini Connections, Cabrin-Green Tutoring Program, Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program/Chicago HOPES, Christ Evangelical Luthern Church Brain Boosters Program, Chicago Youth Programs, Inc., Christopher House, East Village Youth Program, Family Matters, Hermosa Community Organization, Horizons for Youth, Inspired Youth, Inc, Life Directions, Maywood Youth Mentoring Program, McGaw YMCA Project SOAR, Midtown Educational Foundation, PEAK (Partnership to Educate & Advance Kids), and Sunlight African Community.

In addition, two awards were given.

The Much Shelist Founders Award, which is a $7,000 gift to a tutor/mentor program under 5 years in operation, was awarded to Inspired Youth, Inc. Executive Director Beth Palmer, and five youth from this program entertained with songs and dance, and were overjoyed at receiving this award for the second consecutive year.

Thomas A. Demetrio Award of Excellence, recognizing an example of outstanding volunteer based tutoring/mentoring in Chicago, was given to the Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program, Inc, a program celebrating its 41th consecutive year of serving elementary school age children lilving in the Cabrini Green area.  This Award included a $10,000 grant from the law firm of Corboy & Demetrio.

In addition to these awards, Jim Morsh, the Chair of the Lend A Hand Executive Board, announced the receipt in November 2006 of a $2 million donation from the Chicago Sun Times,  Morsh talked of how he and other volunteers, such as the Honorable Tom Donnelly, Dan Cotter, His Emmenence Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Rita Planera, and Dan Bassill of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, had helped grow the Lend A Hand from a single grant of $2,000 in 1994 to its current status, and the ability to increase the grant pool dramatically in 2007 and beyond.

Each of the programs who received grants can be found in the Program Locator and Chicago Programs Links sections of this web site. Learn about these programs and others in Chicago. There is still time to add your own gifts, so that all tutor/mentor programs in Chicago have more of the dollars each needs to effectively connect disadvantaged youth with volunteer tutors/mentors and a variety of enrichment and learning opportunities.