The May 2010 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference is well under way. The conference planning committee already has had one meeting and lots of great ideas were shared.
However, in order for the conference to be a success, we need help from sponsors who will support us giving people scholarships, and providing food, beverages and materials for the conference. Our Tutor/Mentor Conference is not a unique one. Mentoring partnerships throughout the country have mentoring conferences every year. These conferences are well-funded by sponsors who believe in the possibilities and solutions that mentoring creates.
For example, Mentoring Partnerships of Minnesota has a mentoring conference every year. They also have a training institute that offers workshops to help mentoring programs become the best they possibly can be. Mentoring Partnerships of Minnesota is generously sponsored by several well-known national companies that are based out of Minnesota, such as 3M and Target.
Another example is Washington State Mentors who also put on trainings and events similar to the Tutor/Mentor Conference. Washington State Mentors benefits from hometown supporters, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as Bank of America and Costco.
Why can't something like this happen in Illinois. First of all there is no Illinois Mentoring Partnership. The Tutor/Mentor Connection is actually the closest that we have in Illinois (that we know of at least) to a mentoring partnership. So why don't local or national corporations that are based in Chicago do the same thing to sponsor the Tutor/Mentor Conference? Hopefully, we'll be able to show what other states have done to foster partnerships and help mentoring (and tutoring in our case) programs become better and convince these corporations to sponsor the Tutor/Mentor Conference.
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