Moving beyond the past to the future

Tonight will be the annual year end dinner celebrating the work done at Cabrini Connections in the past year.

I've hosted these dinners every spring since 1975 in my role as leader of the Montgomery Ward-Cabrini Green Tutoring Program, then Executive Director of Cabrini Green Tutoring Program Inc, and since 1993 as President of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

I won't be at tonight's dinner because I won't be officially part of Cabrini Connections after July 15. It's too painful for me to stand in front of you all asking for your help in making Cabrini Connections available to youth and volunteers for a coming year, when that call to action now will need to come from El Da'Sheon Nix and the Board of Directors.

If I were at the dinner I might want to talk about the history of the organization and show photos from the thousands that have been taken in the past 35 years. I might want to talk about what I've learned and why I've built a passion for the second part of Cabrini Connections, the Tutor/Mentor Connection. I would invite you to stay connected to me and to the information and ideas that I'm sharing on my blog and this web site.

I've received numerous awards and recognition over the past 35 years.

None have been more important to me than hearing the success of our teens and seeing the interaction they and volunteers have each year. The Dinner is special because it showcases this in so many ways. I don't want my leaving to take away the attention from what we have been trying to do at Cabrini Connections.

So I will say to all of you, "Keep the vision alive. Keep helping each other. Keep in mind that the only way we'll solve any of the problems we face is if each of us says "If it is to be, it is up to me".

Cabrini Connections is available because of the efforts of many volunteers over many years. Some of them have worked hard to find the money needed to operate the program. Over the past few years finding this money has been more difficult and that has led the Board of Directors to think that separating the Tutor/Mentor Connection from Cabrini Connections will give them a simpler story and more ability to raise the needed money.

Raising the money has always been about telling the story of why we are involved and why what we do is important to people who have the ability to give money. If all of you keep doing that you should be able to find enough donors.

I will continue to try to help from my role as leader of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and as a long-term member and supporter of the tutoring/mentoring that has been taking place in Cabrini-Green since 1965.

Congratulations on another year. Good luck in what you do to help each other in the coming years.

Cabrini Connections, A New Beginning!

Since 1993, Cabrini Connections, a/k/a Tutor/Mentor Connection, (the “Corporation”), a 501(C)(3) Illinois not-for-profit corporation, has operated two programs. The program known as “Cabrini Connections” is a volunteer tutor/mentor program for kids 7th through 12th grade, which is operated from its location near Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood. When the organization was formed in 1993, building an organization to provide mentoring, tutoring and other activities to support teens moving from 7th to 12th grade was its first priority.

However, the founders recognized that there was no leadership in Chicago helping small tutoring programs like Cabrini Connections get the resources they needed to grow. Thus they built a program to fill this void. That program is known as “Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC)”. T/MC now provides products and services that help tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and other cities increase volunteer involvement, improve quality, and reach more youth; thereby acting as a clearinghouse for information on best practices for tutoring programs.

On April 11, 2011, the Board of Directors of the Corporation unanimously approved a plan to move toward separating the two programs currently comprising the Corporation. The purpose of this step is to allow each program to focus on its mission, thereby allowing both programs to become more efficient and effective. The separation will be effective on or about June 15, 2011.

Upon separation of the programs, the Corporation will continue operating the Cabrini Connections program, serving youth and their families. EL Da' Sheon Nix will become the Executive Director of Cabrini Connections. The Tutor/Mentor Connection will be operated as a separate stand-alone entity. Dan Bassill, the organization’s founder, will lead the new Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Both Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection have been providing outstanding services for over 15 years not only to youth and families in the Cabrini Green community, but to communities throughout the Chicagoland area and beyond. With hard work, dedication, commitment, and a collective effort both programs can and will continue to provide those same great services to those that need it the most.

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Volunteers and supporters are encouraged to provide full support to El and Dan as this change is being made. If you would like to be involved in the re-structuring and future direction of the Tutor/Mentor Connection please follow the articles on the Tutor/Mentor Blog and on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.

"Improbable" rise from poverty

In today's Chicago SunTimes was a feature story about Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts, and is rise from birth in a high poverty neighborhood. He was compared to President Obama and his own rise from poverty.

In this article Patrick talks about how a teacher saw his promise and told him about a program ---called A better Chance -- that would show him another world.

This is what we're trying to do at Cabrini Connections. It's hard to measure the immediate impact because we're trying to help kids grow up.

I first learned about A Better Chance in the 1990s when I was contacted by A Better Chance Edina, from Edina Minnesota. I looked at their web site today and the page where they show the cost of their program. They say "The average cost to run the program with twelve students is $175,000.00 per year." That's over $10,000 per student.

We don't have nearly the same level of funding, and we don't send our teens to a private school, yet we have the same goals and our volunteers are trying to have the same impact on our teens. If we can show another world, maybe students will expand their aspirations and we can help them get there.

We're finishing this school year and struggling to find needed money. Due to this long-term struggle the Board of Directors has decided to narrow its focus to the Cabrini Connections program and no longer focus on the Tutor/Mentor Connection which we have led since 1993.

As we work through this change we will need volunteers and donors to step forward with even greater energy, talent and responsibility than in the past to help assure the ability of Cabrini Connections to help our kids become future leaders in their own adult lives.

More details on this new structure will be coming in the next week or two.

Future Leaders - In Development

Below are two videos posted to the Internet this week. The first shows how students are building leadership and fund raising skills by their participation in the Cabrini Madness and other events that help us keep Cabrini Connections available to them and future students. As with other Cabrini Madness videos our students are the actors which helps them develop confidence in themselves. It also shows them how to use video to communicate ideas and motivate people to respond.

Encouragement Promo from Cabrini Connections on Vimeo.

The second is a new video created by Dan Bassill, that shows how Cabrini Connections is a "collective effort" of many people, over many years, to help inner city youth go through school and on into adult lives. In this video Dan shows how the the leaders and past volunteers in Cabrini Connections created the Tutor/Mentor Connection, which is a larger scale collective effort intended to draw needed operating resources to all tutor/mentor programs in the city on a more consistent basis, thus helping Cabrini Connections get more of the resources it needs, too.



This second video is also the result of a collective effort. We first learned about CamStudio from a volunteer based in the UK who used it to create these videos to show her network how one of the T/MC web sites works. She learned about us when George Siemmens, who is in Canada, wrote this blog article about the T/MC on his web site.

In both of these videos we're focusing on raising visibility, connecting leaders from different tutor/mentor programs with each other, and finding donors and philanthropic investors who will provide the capital needed to support the on-going efforts of our students and volunteers. We're also demonstrating how easy it is for any of our students, volunteers, leaders and friends to create videos that help others understand what we're doing so that they are more motivated to use their own time, talent and dollars to help us.

If our teens (and volunteers) practice this form of learning, leadership and communications over many years they will have tools, skills and habits that enable them to mobilize help from many sectors to help them solve any problem they ever face in the future.

Help with the Holidays

We hope that everyone who has been part of Cabrini Connections, now, or in past years, has been enriched by the people they have met and the experiences that have been offered.

In order for this to continue we need your help in finding holiday donors. Please send this form to people you know, telling of your involvement and asking for their help. If you reach out by email, point people to our blogs, or videos, to show the work we do. If they live in other cities, point out the mapping of the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and how this helps tutor/mentor programs in all parts of Chicago. This strategy can be duplicated in any city.

Or pick up some holiday fund brochures, with art created by our teens, and mail them to friends, family, co-workers. We have these at the Cabrini Connections center at 800 W. Huron, Chicago, Il. 60642

At the Cabrini Fund Raising blog we'll show donors who have responded since Dec. 1. Please send thanks to anyone you recognize on this list. Please help us increase the number of donors so we have the ability to continue to offer this service in 2010 and beyond.

If you are a potential donor or benefactor and want to know more, just email tutormentor2@earthlink.net or call 312-492-9614

2009 Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Benefit

On Thursday the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection organization held our annual Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Benefit, and I have to say it was nearly a picture perfect day! I say nearly picture perfect because right before the dinner our fearless leader, Dan Bassill became ill and had to leave the event. But the show had to go on, and if you know Dan, then you know he wouldn't have had it any other way.

I would like to thank each an every person who contributed to the success of the event. Thanks goes out to all of the sponsors, Highland Park Country Club, volunteers, staff, students, alumni, board members, and all of the other supporters who all came together to ensure that this year's event was a success! Thank You!

We couldn't have asked for a better day, perfect weather, a great golf course, great food, and nearly 100 golfers out there not only enjoying their day but directly and indirectly doing their part to assist in keeping the organization up and running. In today's economy where many are cutting back on their spending by saving and thinking twice about what they spend on, the Cabrini Connections' staff, volunteers, and students are grateful that those who supported the golf benefit understand that education and tutoring/mentoring programs for our youth is not one of the things on the list to cut back on.

But we can't just stop at the golf benefit, we need the people who attended, heard about the event but couldn't attend, and those who wanted to support but just couldn't do it at that time...to continue to support the CAUSE. Although the golf benefit was a fun event, we see it as an opportunity for others to learn more about the program, the people who make up the program, and the vision in which we have for the future...and leave the event doing two things. We want people leaving saying WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP and telling others in their network about their experiences at the event and about the program...with the hopes that they will to say WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?

There where lawyers, business executives, NFL representation (AUSTIN KING (smile) and Nick Roach, President Obama's personal barber, and many other people who have the influence, opportunity, and the means to help Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection continue to provide the necessary services that have meant so much to so many for years. Chicago Bear's Linebacker, Nick Roach said this about Cabrini Connections' student Savon Clark following the event, "Ya man Savon is going to be a big deal some day soon!" And my thought is that Savon and every other youth that joins and is commits to the program can and will be a big deal, but for that to take place WE need the resources to make sure that happens. We hope that each and every person enjoyed the event, met new people, learned more about the organization, and left the event feeling like they can and will tell the story to "CC, T/MC story" to others in their network, and collectively ask "WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?"

What does it take?

El Da'Sheon Nix has been writing articles showing how great sports teams get that way because of the combined efforts of the team on the field, and the team in the front office, and the fans in the stands.

The image on this page shows the goal of Cabrini Connections, of helping transform the lives of the youth and volunteers who become part of this organization. Seems like a simple concept, right?

Yet every day there are numerous activities that good organizations need to do, ranging from those that support youth and volunteers, to those that raise money, and those that provide administrative oversight to the facility, the technology, and the paid and volunteer staff.

We have never had more than one or two full time Cabrini Connections staff to do this work. Nor have we had a secure stream of funding which was available every year to fuel our work and provide job security or retirement benefits for people who work here. Finally, while there is plenty of information to show how to create strong organizational structures, there is little information on how to make a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program have a live changing impact on its members.

Thus, as we've tried to figure out how to make what we do work each year, we've also needed to try to find ways to recruit and keep one or two full time staff, as well as a variety of volunteer leaders. While Gena Schoen stayed with Cabrini Connections from 1993 to 2000, and helped build the structure we have today, no other leaders have come to us from the volunteer ranks, as Gena did (she was a tutor from 1989 till joining the CC staff), thus each new person who has had to build their understanding of the infrastructure support, while coaching the 70-80 pairs in the programs, and while trying to find money to pay the bills.

While we've attracted really talented people in to the lead coordinator role, they have had other opportunities that attracted them to other jobs after one or two years. Thus, building the organizational knowledge and experience that is needed to support the work of kids and volunteers has not been one of continuous growth over the past 8 years, but one where we're always in a steep learning curve.

What has helped offset this has been the growth of a core of veteran volunteers who have stayed with the program 3 or more years, serving as mentors to other volunteers and staff, and often serving as coordinators of the weekly tutoring sessions.

Because this high turnover of staff, and volunteers, is common in non profits, and youth serving organizations, I have created an on-line library of information that anyone from Cabrini Connections can draw from at any time. It's the knowledge and experience that I've gained from leading a tutor/mentor program since 1975. It's also the knowledge and experience of others who also lead tutor/mentor programs, in Chicago, and in other cities. This library is the Tutor/Mentor Connection

In many organizations, one or two people becomes an expert, and a resource or mentor for everyone else in the organization. I've had that role at Cabrini Connections since we started. However, since I've learned what I know by practical application over a 30 year period, it's not possible for me to sit down in a session, or even a series of sessions, and "train" someone else, or all of our volunteers, to know what I've learned, or to be able to apply that knowledge in the same way, for the same goals.

When the Internet became a tool, I started taking information from my mind, and from my file cabinets, and posting it on the T/MC web site. At the same time, I started posting links to other programs, and to research that I was reading that helped me understand what the challenges were that we and our teens face, and what some of the solutions might be, if we could find the volunteers and dollars and staff to implement those ideas.

While the knowledge of the T/MC was originally intended to support just Cabrini Connections, I've been networking and learning from leaders and peers in other programs since I first became a leader myself. Thus, the Internet has enabled me to share what we all know, with anyone who wants to find ways to help build the infrastructure needed to support kids and volunteers in programs like Cabrini Connections.

As we go through this summer into next fall, I hope a growing number of our volunteers will skim through the T/MC sites and begin to draw from that knowledge so that we have more ways to help our own teens and volunteers when school starts in September.

At the same time, I hope some of you will help me find additional volunteers, partners and donors, so we can organize and teach this information, the same way the school of Engineering or Law at a major university organizes its knowledge and teaches it to students every year.

As El Da'Sheon has written often, this is a team sport, and summer is not a time to vacation, but a time to do personal workouts and training so we can improve from year to year. I hope many members of the Cabrini Connections community, and the larger tutor/mentor community, will join me in this on-going learning, and in efforts to apply what we learn to the way we help kids.

If you'd like to meet with me for a tour of our on-line resources, or to talk about ways you might help, please call 312-492-9614

Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference

On May 28th-29th the Tutor/Mentor Connection side of the organization held it's 30th Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference at Northwestern University's Law School. For those who have never attended or who don't know what this event is all about, this event that takes place in May and November is really an opportunity for people who truly care about the importance and need of tutor/mentor programs to come together to share ideas, techniques, skills, and resources to enhance our own knowledge and our respective programs, businesses, and organizations. The event was filled with great workshops, panel discussions, keynote speakers, and formal and informal conversations that can and will hopefully lead future partnerships and collaborations.

Hopefully throughout this week attendees will be debriefing about their experience at the conference and will be sharing their own stories through various face to face conversations, emails, and through blog articles so that the power of the conference can be felt even by those who could not attend.

I personally felt really good after walking out of the conference! Unfortunately, I was unable to attend every workshop and I'm sure I did not have a personal conversation with every person who was present, but the people that I was able to connect with and the workshops I did attend I feel very good about.

Thursday morning's keynote speaker, Jeffery Fields, kicked off the conference in a big way. Just his personal story alone of growing up in Humbolt Park and living in an abusive household and going on to now having a successful life after having two of his brothers killed not only caught the attention of every person in the audience, but provided me with even greater hope that each and every student in the Cabrini Connections can succeed in life.

Following the keynote speaker I had the opportunity to start attending the various workshops that were provided. The workshops I selected were because I either felt that I could obtain information that we could benefit from having in our organization or because I felt that I was not as knowledgeable in a certain area and felt that I could strengthen my skills professionally by attending that particular workshop. And that is exactly what took place. There is not one person in this field or this world that knows everything, but at the Leadership and Networking Conference we have the opportunity to get information that we may not have, connect with people we may not already know, and use this opportunity to all get the valuable information needed to become even better professionals.

On Friday I not only had the opportunity attend the Media Panel that started the day and again visit some of the workshops that were provided, I had the pleasure of actually sitting on a panel. Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection's Board Members Steve Miller and Kurt Kittner(former NFL quarterback), former Northwestern University football players Chasda Martin and Torri Stuckey, and myself provided the "Engaging Athletes, Business Leaders, and Celebrities as Advocates for Volunteer-Based Tutor/Mentor Programs" panel discussion. This panel discussion was really not intended to share football stories and stats and/or our accomplishments in athletics, we discussed how we all used resources such as tutor/mentor programs, sports, and even just a positive role model in our school or neighborhood to assist us all to getting to our respective professions today. We then provided information on how those who attended the panel can not only connect with other athletes but how these athletes can help them in their respective programs.

Unfortunately, I had to depart the conference following the panel discussion, but I'm 100% sure that the remainder of the day was again filled with resourceful workshops and speakers. Although the Leadership and Networking Conference was a great opportunity for people to all come together and share information and ideas, it's what take place in between this conference and the next that will determine how successful and useful this opportunity was. Are people not only taking information back to their respective places of business and sharing the information that was obtained at the conference to those in their networks; hopefully attendees are building upon the relationships that were established as a result of the conference.

Over the weekend and throughout this week I will not only be sharing my experiences such as what I'm doing now in this blog, but I will be following up on any and all of the individual conversations I had with those that I met at the event. And hopefully as a result of attending the May 2009 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference I can grow professionally and as a leader of the Cabrini Connections' program, and I can continue to assist others with their efforts, in their programs, businesses, and organizations as well.

~See You ALL in November~

Partnership Appreciation Breakfast

This morning Jenner Academy of the Arts, a K-8 grammar school in the heart of Cabrini Green, hosted a Partnership Appreciation Breakfast to honor the various programs, agencies and community groups that support them in their quest to help kids from the neighborhood develop into intelligent, motivated leaders of tomorrow. We were extended a special invitation for the special role Cabrini Connections has played in helping keep kids from the neighborhood off the streets and engaged in productive enrichment activities both at our center and in the community.

This was a particular treat to attend because so many of our students attend Jenner and personally participated in the banquet. From Malik's powerful drumming with the Jenner Drum Team, to Gary and Kenyale cheerfully greeting everyone at the door, it was great to see the kids outside of our center, in their element at school. After thanking each organization personally, Principle Woodson turned over the floor to a handful of students, who expressed their appreciation for all the various ways in which programs like ours help Jenner's students.

After helping myself to a generous plateful of lox, quiche, shrimp cocktail and other foods I don't usually eat for breakfast, I was able to connect with some folks at my table, including Philip Jackson, the founder of the Black Star Project, a 12 year old organization committed to eliminating the racial achievement gap. I will be visiting their Bronzeville center tomorrow and meeting with him as they train a couple dozen marines to work with youth and facilitate tutoring programming through the parent and student leadership development curricula that they implement in schools across Chicago. I will report more about The Black Star Project soon in my blog http://chrispip.blogspot.com/ after I learn more during tomorrow's visit. So stay tuned!

Chris