In 24 states voters cast ballots to determine who would be candidates for the next President. While that election won't be decided until November, you can vote today, tomorrow and every day, to make a difference in your community, by the way you get involved with non profit groups.  Today's Chicago SunTimes editorial says "Still Want to Make a Difference?" and gives five ways, including tutoring kids, where you can get involved.

The SunTimes editorial points to this web site, as a place to find volunteer opportunities.  Click on the Find A Program link and you can find links to web sites of more than 200 different organizations. Some have multiple sites. Some have great web sites. Some are small single sites.  They all need help from volunteers, and from donors. 

If you are overwhealmed by the information on this web site, start here, and learn how this can be a resource for not only finding a volunteer-opportunity, but for staying involved and making a difference in the lives of children throughout the Chicago region.

Not in Chicago?  The information on this site is valuable for volunteers, program leaders, donors and business leaders in every major city of the US where there are high concentrations of poverty.  If you don't have an agency like the Tutor/Mentor Connection, maintaining a database of local programs, then borrow our idea and build one.  If you need reasons why, then read the articles in the research section of this web site.  Want help?  Email the Tutor/Mentor Connection at tutormentor2@earthlink.net

One of the most proven ways to recruit new volunteers is to have your current volunteers ask friends and co-workers to volunteer with them.  We've created a template letter that you can use. Just personalize it with your own information and experiences.  If  you'd like to have more male volunteers, ask your volunteers to just send this to five men they know who might volunteer. If you're looking for technology help, send it to technology people.

Visit the Discussion Forum to share your own recruitment strategies or to join with the Tutor/Mentor Connection in a citywide volunteer mobilization effort.

On May 31, 2007 Oprah Winfrey, Essence Cares and its partners (including the National Urban League, 100 Black Men of America, Inc., and YWCA), and MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership launched a call for 1,000,000 new mentors.  View a video clip.

We hope that as this partnership raises visibility for mentoring, it will cause more people to view the infrastructure needed to make comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring programs more available to kids in every inner city neighborhood. That's the goal of the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

While a May announcement of a new campaign to recruit mentors is welcome, we hope it leads to more businesses, churches, hospitals and univertisit providing leadership needed in August to help mobilize volunteers as schools starts, and in November/December, to help  mobilize donors as the  year end holidays stimulate giving. If you'd like to support the Chicago campaign email tutormentor2@earthlink.net or call 312-492-9614.

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.

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