New Position, Same Old Story

As April winds down, it will be one year that I have been hired on at Cabrini Connections. In July, I will transition from my position as Assistant Program Coordinator and Northwestern Public Interest Program Fellow to my new position as the Tutor/Mentor Research and Networking Coordinator under a grant through the Chicago Bar Association. I'm very happy to be staying on with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection for at least another year and to be able to continue my work doing outreach to other programs throughout the city, state, country and world.

One of my first projects under my new title is to organize the May Tutor/Mentor Conference, which will be held Thursday May 29th and Friday May 30th at Northwestern University Law School on the north side of Chicago. The conference is already coming together quite nicely and I'm very excited about all the wonderful workshops that have already been put on the schedule and I am especially pleased to moderate two panels on Thursday and Friday morning on Program Strategies and Successes and Volunteer Recruitment and Retention Respectively. I highly encourage everybody involved in working with youth to attend this conference.

If you can't go to the conference for the entire time, I recommend at least taking your lunch break at Northwestern Law School on those days, because two amazing speakers will be our lunchtime keynote speakers. On Thursday May 29th from 12:50-1:15pm, Margot Pritzker, who is the Chair of the Zohar Education Project Incorporated and President and Founder of WomenonCall.org will be speaking about "How do non-profits extend their limited resources by using professionals in the most efficient way." On Friday, at the same time, Dr. Max McGee, President of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy will be speaking about improving education for underprivileged youth.

While the conference is a great way for networking, another way to network that I have recently discovered via my boss, Dan Bassill is ning sites, which act as social networking sites for organizations such as ours. Please visit our ning to find out more about how programs such as ours can collaborate on the internet.