Lawyers Lend-A-Hend - How Can You?

Today, I went to the Chicago Bar Association to help Karina Ayala-Bermejo create a blog to tell people about what the Sun-Times Judge Marovitz Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth Foundation is doing. The Lawyers Lend-A-Hand Foundation is a program through the Chicago Bar Association which gives grants to tutoring and mentoring programs throughout Chicago and the surrounding area. Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection is just one of the recipients of a generous grant that has allowed me to stay on and continue to develop the Tutor/Mentor Connection database and network with other tutoring and mentoring programs - and for that, I'm very grateful. They also give awards to attorneys and law firms who have done work for tutoring and mentoring programs as well. One of our tutors and now board member, Mike Hayes, received the My Hero award in 2005 as an outstanding tutor/mentor in the law community.

You can check out Karina's blog at http://karinalendsahand.blogspot.com/. Dan Bassill writes about all the different programs that have received Lend-A-Hand grants in his blog here.
Mike Trakan has mapped all of these programs and written about them in his blog here.

The bigger point is that there should be more organizations like the Chicago Bar Association creating foundations like the Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to youth. There are hundreds of professional organizations in this country who could all be doing the same thing. Or alumni associations, for which, major universities such as Northwestern University have groups in all the major cities in the United States could start organizations like Lend-a-Hand too. This is a wonderful opportunity that I believe more organizations should get involved in.