What Makes a Tutoring and Mentoring Program - This Video Answers that

If you read the other blogs of my colleagues at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, you may have seen the blog post by our president and CEO, Dan Bassill on this video by Breakthrough Urban Ministries. I had the great fortune of visiting Breakthrough Urban Ministries last summer. You can read about my visit here.

When people ask me what makes a tutoring and mentoring program, I could go on forever about how they're important and what they do. However, this video succinctly describes the importance of tutoring and mentoring programs in just seven and a half minutes. It's well worth the watch.

LINK Unlimited

Today, I visited a program in the South Loop called LINK Unlimited. LINK Unlimited is a unique program in that they only serve high school students who go to private schools in Chicago. Students in the program are matched up with "sponsors," adults who not only act as mentors, but who also pledge to pay for the student's high school education.

Every fall, Link Unlimited goes around to elementary schools throughout Chicago and informs students and parents about its program. They also speak to the teachers and administrators of the school to find out which students have the potential, both academically and socially, to go to a selective high school and succeed. Students must not have below-average grades and test scores and their families must demonstrate a financial need to the extent that these students wouldn't be able to go to private school without the financial support from a LINK Unlimited sponsor. Ultimately the cost for private school is split three ways, between the sponsor, whatever financial aid the student gets from the school, and whatever is determined the student's family can pay.

Once students are accepted into the program, they are matched up with a sponsor who has similar interests. Since sponsors are required to demonstrate the capacity to support a student's private school tuition for four years, sponsors tend to be a bit older than volunteer tutor/mentors in other programs. 100% of the students in LINK Unlimited are African-American, but sponsors are of all races, exposing students to new people and experiences.

Once the student is admitted in the program after an application process that includes an interview with both the student and the parent (parents and guardians are considered an important part of the LINK Unlimited program, which is how it should be for all programs), students are required to meet with their sponsor twice a month and also to send notes of appreciate at least twice a year. Students whose grades are below average are required to meet with at tutor an hour and a half, twice a week and the LINK Unlimited Center off of State and Cermak. There are also activities where all of the students and their sponsors go on, sponsored by LINK Unlimited such as attending Bulls games and going on the Chicago Architectural Boat Tour.

LINK Unlimited does an especially good job of keeping in touch with their alumni. LINK Unlimited has an alumni association, very similar to a university's alumni association, where alumni are encouraged to keep in touch and continue to give back to the organization. A wonderful statistic is the fact that 10% of the sponsors at LINK Unlimited are alumni of the program. This is a great testament of the powerful impact that LINK Unlimited has on its students' lives.

East Garfield Park Shootings - The Rest of the Story

This morning, as I did my morning browse of the news, I was shocked and saddened to see that 15 people had been shot the night before throughout the city of Chicago. Last night was a beautiful evening in Chicago - a bit humid but not overly warm - and it saddens me to think that as I was enjoying a beautiful run along Lake Michigan, in other parts of my beloved city people are getting shot, some, possibly, as they were trying to enjoy the beautiful weather as well.

I was especially upset to see that a number of those who were shot last night were in East Garfield Park. Just last week, Bradley Troast and I visited a phenomenal program in that neighborhood, Breakthrough Urban Ministries. I can't help but think of the people who we walked and drove past as Bill Curry, the COO of the organization, who gave us a tour of the program and a bit of the neighborhood, and hope that they're okay. Or that possibly one of the people was who was shot, was a relative or a friend of one of the students who enthusiastically told us what they were doing in the program. It's hard for me to imagine that on the quiet, tree-lined street where Breakthrough Urban Ministries Children and Family Center is, where people sit on the stoops chatting and where well-kept bungalow houses with manicured gardens line the street, a mere two and a half blocks away seven people were wounded by a single gunman.

When people read the news all they will read about is people getting shot in one of Chicago's "bad neighborhood." When I read the news today, I thought of the wonderful people I met and a community that does not deserve this kind of violence. Breakthrough Urban Ministries is performing miracles in East Garfield park, but they can only do so much.

When I searched under "Chicago Community Area - East Garfield Park" in the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, I was a little shocked, but not completely surprised to see the lack of tutoring and mentoring programs in that neighborhood. There are two Chicago Park District After-School Homework Help programs, Altgeld and Homan Square Parks, two Boys and Girls Clubs, Cather and Martin Luther King, Jr. Clubs, and three programs that do not have websites, Agape Youth Victory Club, Bethany Brethren Community Center, and Fifth City/Introspect Tutoring Program. First Church of the Brethren and Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica both have websites but do not mention tutoring and mentoring programs on them.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection will do everything it can to support and create programs in East Garfield Park. We do not claim that having more tutoring and mentoring programs would have prevented those shootings last night. But maybe it would have done something in the way of giving a youth a safe place to be or to compel someone to not want to use a gun in a violent way.

The Kanye West Foundation - Combatting the Drop-Out Crisis

Last night, as I was winding down from a busy of weekend of marathon-training and neighborhood festivals, I was flipping through the channels and came across a concert with the world-renowned hip hop artist Kanye West. While I decided to stay with the concert because I enjoy his music, I was thrilled to realize that this concert was at the Chicago Theater and was exclusively for Chicago Public School students. You can view clips from the concert here.

Anyway, the concert was in conjunction with the Kanye West Foundation, which according to the Foundation's Website, "is to help combat the severe dropout problem in schools across the United States by partnering with community organizations to provide under-served youth access to music production programs that will enable them to unleash their creative ability and reach their full potential."

This is a wonderful and timely cause. In many public school systems, such as the Chicago Public Schools System, the drop-out rate for high school students can be as high as 50%. Many of these students are minorities, usually African-American or Latino Students. If you read my blog and Dan Bassill's blog, we have both written articles about the drop crisis. (For mine go here, for Dan's go here). What many studies show is that students who drop-out of high school are less likely to have a career, and more likely to end up pregnant at young age, addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and in jail at some point.

An interesting article that explores the reasons why students drop out of high school and other aspects of the drop out crisis, that was published fairly recently, go to "The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Drop-Outs,"a study conducted by John B. Bridgeland, John DiIulio, Jr., and Karen Burke Morison and reported Civic Enterprises, and the Peter D. Hart Association for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the main reasons high school drop-outs give for dropping out is lack of interest in their schoolwork. With the inaugural program of the Kanye West Foundation, "Loop Dreams," where "hip hop as a vehicle to teach participants hands on music productions skills, expose them to hip hop dance and art, and teach them important soft skills like time management, communication, commitment, responsibility, and commitment," the Kanye West Foundation is on the right track to finding creative solutions to an extremely pressing issue.

Hopefully, Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection will be able to work with the Kanye West Foundation in some capacity to help kids stay in school. However we end up collaborating, I want to comment Mr. West and his foundation for doing something innovative and concrete to help kids stay in school.

Breakthrough Urban Ministries

As I've mentioned in recent blogs, it's always inspiring visiting organizations that take a holistic approach to changing a community. That is, while it's nice to see tutoring and mentoring programs that serve the youth of communities that have a high percentage living in poverty, you also need to take into account about the other factors affecting the community as well. What about the child not having something eat at home? Create a food pantry. What if a child needs medical attention but doesn't have health insurance? Create a free clinic, etc.

This idea of a holistic approach to a community at-risk has been adopted by several programs that I have visited. One was Circle Urban Ministries in the Austin Community that I profiled here. Another outstanding example of this is Breakthrough Urban Ministries in East Garfield Park, which I visited yesterday with Bradley Troast, our new PIP fellow.

Bill Curry, the Chief Operating Office of Breakthrough Urban Ministries kindly gave us a tour of the organization. He and his wife, Marcie, who's the director of the Youth Program, helped found the Children and Family Services component of Breakthrough back in 2000. In fact, Bill and Marcie, and their three kids live in the East Garfield Park neighborhood and their kids go to school in the neighborhood and participate in the youth programming as well.

While we set out, of course, to see their summer youth program, we witnessed so much more. As Bradley and I entered the Center on West Carroll, we came in with people there for the soup kitchen, wanting to get breakfast. Mr. Curry also made a note that the downstairs of the center was a residence for women who have become homeless, either because of mental illness, drug addiction, or other factors. The Women's Center provides a variety of services, including free health care, drug and alcohol counseling, and treatment for mental illness, in addition to offering a safe place to sleep, eat, and shower. There's also an innovative program that Breakthrough runs that helps prostitutes get off the street and away from their profession. For the men, similar services are offered at the administrative center on N. St. Louis Ave, just a few blocks away.

Upstairs at the Center is the Youth and Family Center, where currently the Summer Studies Program is happening. There, students were creating art and learning about texture in the process, another group was learning about metaphors, and a third was outside doing gymnastics. We also learned that a fourth group of students was on a field trip. What was a great idea, I thought, was that high school students become a sort of student teacher and help out with the children. I was impressed with the level of maturity, patience, and kindness the high school students exhibited in dealing with the young children.

Ultimately the goal of summer studies at Breakthrough is to make sure that the students don't lag behind in their studies before they go back to school. In fact, one study that was conducted showed that students who participated in the Breakthrough Summer Studies Program gained 3 months in the reading level, those that didn't lost 3 months.

For specifics about all the different programs, in addition to the tutoring and mentoring program, that Breakthrough Urban Ministries offers, I encourage you to read Bradley's blog, since he gives a great synopsis. But, a great idea that Breakthrough has employed is the idea of having multiple tutor/mentors act as a support system to a child - somewhat in the idea of "It takes a village to raise a child." The idea is that you have several individuals work with a small group of children as tutors and mentors and let the relationships grow. If a tutor moves away because of graduating from college (a lot of volunteer tutor/mentors are college students from UIC, DePaul and other Chicago schools), or transfers jobs, gets married, has a baby, or has to leave Breakthrough for any other reason that is common for 20-30 something young professionals (which is another large group that tends to tutor/mentor at Breakthrough as well), then the child won't feel abandoned because they still have 4-5 other tutor/mentors looking out for them. This is an interesting idea and might be a method applied by other tutoring and mentoring organizations.

So to Bill, Marcie, and everybody else we met at Breakthrough Urban Ministries THANK YOU for the wonderful tour. What you do for the East Garfield Community needs to be reflected throughout the city and we hope to support you in any way possible in the future.

The Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament was a success!

I also wanted to add a thank you to everyone who came out and played in the Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament, or who came to the dinner and silent auction afterwards. It was a perfect day weather-wise and golf-wise and we sincerely appreciate everybody's help and participation to make our biggest fundraiser of the year happen. Read our program coordinator El Da'Sheon Nix's blog to find out more about how you can help out Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection even after our biggest fundraiser of the year.

Also, my colleague Mike Trakan, our GIS and Mapping Coordinator was interviewed on WLUW's "Outside the Loop" Radio Show about his maps. You can also here some of Mike's music in his other alias as the lead singer and guitar player for the band Trakan. You can listen to the interview and Mike's music streaming here.

Addendum to yesterday's post about programs in Englewood

I just realized, looking over the list of programs that I wrote about in Englewood, I neglected to mention the Chicago HOPES Maria Shelter, which is located in the heart of Englewood. Chicago HOPES stands for Heightening Opportunities and Potential for Success and is an initiative by Chicago Public Schools as part of their Homeless Education Program. The HOPES sites throughout the city offer tutoring and mentoring to homeless youth in the neighborhoods that surround them. You can read more about my visit to Chicago HOPES here.

Tutoring and Mentoring Programs in Englewood

Yesterday I wrote about an article published in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday about living in Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and the difficulty kids face during the summer there. Today, as a follow-up, I'll write about the programs offered in the neighborhood.

Englewood is divided into two Chicago neighborhoods, Englewood and West Englewood, and you can search for programs in the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator by either searching under Englewood and West Englewood under the "neighborhoods" criteria or under 60621 and 60637 under the zip code criteria.

In total there are six tutoring and mentoring programs in West Englewood and five listed in Englewood. In Englewood, there are two Boys and Girls Clubs - Reed Club and Englewood Club and one Chicago Park District park that offers after-school homework help - Sherwood Park. Another one of the programs, Stagg Elementary Time-Dollar Institute Cross-Age Peer Tutoring has been shut down recently. Finally, there is 21st Century Community Learning Center - Family Focus of Englewood. This initiative is part of a larger organization that offers mental health support services in a variety of ways to the Englewood Community. The 21st Century Community Learning Center, according to its website, offers "after-school activities at Bond, Reed and Sherwood Elementary Schools and Woods Academy, a Chicago community school."

Of the programs listed in West Englewood, there are two Chicago Park District Parks that offer after-school homework help - Lindblom Park and Ogden Park. There's also the Academy of St. Benedict School, which offers after-school enrichment activities and tutoring to it's students.

Another program is the Englewood Family Center, Illinois Subsequent Pregnancy Program (ISPP), a program of the Children's Home and Aid Society, which offers mentoring and tutoring to young mother's as part of a constellation of support services to help the mother be a good parent to their baby and to prevent another pregnancy. They also offer a Community Schools Program, which, according to their website "The Community Schools program includes physical and mental health services, performing arts and sports enrichment activities and academic support in a holistic program design. These services include tutoring, after-school activities and in-class groups on topics such as conflict resolution for children and behavior management classes for parents."

It is unclear whether West Englewood Youth and Teen Center - Reach Out and Touch still has a program since they have no website and have not responded to my e-mails. Finally, there's the Youth-Guidance program of the West Englewood Community, located at Harper High School. Youth Guidance also offers a Community Schools Program and a STRIVE Program that lends support services to wards of the state.

While this might seem like a lot of programs, it's not. Two programs are of questionable status at this time and many work with a specific population or have long waiting lists. Simply put, there are thousands of young people ages 6-18 living in the Englewood and West Englewood neighborhoods that could benefit from the services of a tutoring and/or mentoring program. The Tutor/Mentor Connection hopes that people will read the Chicago Tribune article profiled above and read this blog article and be compelled to start a program in the Englewood neighborhood. An interesting idea is the possibility of University of Chicago students teaming up to start a program in Englewood, since the community is literally right next to Hyde Park.

If you're interested in starting a program in Englewood, or in another one of Chicago's neighborhoods stricken with high poverty and high levels of violence, I encourage you to leave a Comment on this post, but also to visit Tutor/Mentor Exchange, which has a wealth of resources for those wanting to start a tutoring and/or mentoring program. I also encourage you to contact me if you have a program in Englewood or West Englewood, or know of a program there so we can list them in our Tutor/Mentor Program Locator.

Circle Urban Ministries

Yesterday, Chris Warren and I visited Dan Hogan and his mentoring program at Circle Urban Ministries in the Austin Neighborhood. Dan has been a great supporter of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Conference, and hosted a very popular workshop on using free technology to build your program's website. He also runs a fantastic mentoring program.

Circle Urban Ministries has served the Austin Community since the early 1970s in a variety of capacity. House in the complex on N. Central Ave., Circle Urban Ministries is the home of CATALYST Charter School, an After-School Program for kindergarten-8th graders, mostly students at Catalyst Charter School, the Circle Christian Development Corporation, which spearheads community revitalization projects, a Food Pantry and Depository, Rock Church, a Community Health Center, a Legal Aid Center, and of course the mentoring program. This all-encompassing commitment to the community in all aspects of helping a person is exactly what the Tutor/Mentor Connection would like to see replicated in high-poverty neighborhoods such as Austin.

The Mentoring Program started in 2001 and most of the students are 4th-8th graders at CATALYST Charter School. Students meet once a week at Circle Urban Ministries with their mentor and then four hours a week during school vacations. The site benefits from an extensive number of rooms where mentors and their students can interact with one another without anyone bothering them. When we were there we saw one pair playing Wii Boxing, another baking cookies in the kitchen, and another playing hang man in the boardroom. While the mentoring program emphasizes the mentoring relationship rather than a tutoring/academic relationship, the student and their mentor are encouraged to set one academic goal for the year and to work on that goal throughout the year with their mentor.

Circle Urban Ministries Mentoring Program also has benefited with networking with the Churches in Austin and Oak Park. Many of the mentors are members of these churches and even some parents of some of the mentees have donated their own time to help other students in the program succeed. What's great is that both CATALYST school is growing (as shown by the top picture, which was taken in the new library being constructed) and so is Circle Urban. Hopefully they are able to find more mentors for the many students who need their guidance and that Circle Urban can expand its services and help even more people in the Austin Community and beyond.

Thanks so much to Dan Hogan for a great tour of the facilities and for all his help with the conferences!

Chicago Youth Centers - Mentoring at Price School

In my travels throughout the city, in order to visit tutoring and mentoring programs, I have visited Evanston, the Near North Side, Avondale, the Loop, Bucktown, Lincoln Park, Rogers Park, Pilsen, North Lawndale, Wicker Park, West Town, Humboldt Park, and the Near West Side. These neighborhoods compromise parts of the North, Northwest, and West Side neighborhoods. In evaluating where I had visited, I realized I had seriously been neglecting visiting programs on the South Side. This was a thing that needed to be remedied - not just because it would expand the scope of my visits, but also because it would shift my focus to an area that has high levels of poverty and is in great need of more tutoring and mentoring programs.

Fortunately, in my efforts to reach out to other tutoring and mentoring programs to come to the May Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference, I heard back from Christy Beigh-Byrne, the Director of Mentor and Volunteer Services at Chicago Youth Centers-Elliott Donnelly Center. She invited me to visit their school-based mentoring program at Price Elementary School in Bronzeville.

Chicago Youth Centers operates a variety of programs throughout the city. Chris Warren and I had already visited ABC Polk Brothers Center in North Lawndale, where they have a variety of programs. Elliott Donnelly Center, which is located in Bronzeville as well, has a variety of programs that operate out of their center on South Michigan Ave., but also has a mentoring program run out of Price Elementary School.

Chicago Youth Centers teams up with CPS high schools and Chicago-area universities in order to find mentors, who are able to come in during the after-school hours of 3-4:15 in order to mentor the students. I spoke to mentors who went to UIC and Northesastern Illinois, and both of them were very enthusiastic about working with their students. For this program, mentors means more tutor-mentors in a similar model to the one we use here at Cabrini Connections. Fourth-Sixth Grade students go around to different stations with their tutor/mentors: spelling, reflection, homework help, and math. At the end of the session, students gather in a circle and discuss what went well in the session and what needs to be worked on. I was really impressed with how self-reflective all the students were, knowing what their weaknesses were but also knowing to celebrate their strengths.

While both the students and mentors told Chris and me that they were having an "off day," Chris and I were very impressed with the level of dedication of the mentors and the students. Our only thought would be to extend the mentoring session for another hour simply so the students and tutors have more time together. Thanks to Christy for inviting us down to Bronzeville!

Community Building Tutors and Making the Career Change from the For-Profit Sector to the Non-Profit

This past Tuesday, I ventured out to Fosco Park, near the University of Illiniois at Chicago campus, in the Near-West Side neighborhood, to visit the new Community Building Tutors program there. Community Building Tutors is a non-profit founded and run by young professionals that trains high schoolers to be tutors to the elementary schoolers in their community. The hope is that these high schoolers, in taking an interest in helping those younger than themselves, will begin to see themselves as leaders in their communities and to take pride in where they come from.

There are three sites currently offering tutoring through Community Building Tutors: Fosco Park, Chase Park up in Ravenswood, and Willye White Park up in Rogers Park. Holstein Park in Bucktown, has also been a site in the past, and will be a site for the 2009-2010 school year as well. Fosco Park is the newest site, having just started three weeks ago. Even though the students in the program are relatively new to a structured tutoring program, they already seemed very enthusiastic, eager to learn, and excited to work with their tutors. As mentioned before, at the other programs, high schoolers tutor the elementary school students. However, the program at Fosco Park is still trying to recruit high school students to be tutors. For now, the program has had to rely on friends of Bart Phillips, the founder and President of the Board of Community Building Tutors and UIC students.

Which brings me to the next topic - talking about one of the workshops that we are going to offer at the May Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. Bart Phillips, and other Community Building Tutors board members spoke at the last May conference (shown in the photos) about their program. This year, on Thursday May 28th, from 1:45-3:00pm, Bart Phillips is going to talk about the topic of transitioning from working in the for-profit world, in the field of medical research, to running his own tutoring program. This is a very timely topic, with the tough economic climate, as many professionals have had to re-evaluate their career choices. Hopefully, Bart's story and wisdom will be of help and inspiration to everyone who comes to the conference.

Thanks to Bart, his dedicated tutors, his enthusiastic students for making me feel welcome at Fosco Park and letting me win in a very heated game of Uno at the end!

Wicker Park Learning Center

On Tuesday, Chris Warren and I made our way up to the Avondale neighborhood to visit Wicker Park Learning Center. Kathy Anderson (pictured left, speaking at our November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference at the Field Museum) has been at the helm of this tutoring and mentoring program for about 20 years and while the location has changed (Wicker Park Learning Center was once in Wicker Park, but has been located in Avondale for the past 15 years), the dedication to helping individuals from kindergarten through adulthood has not.

Wicker Park Learning Center actually employs paid tutors, but is free of charge to the people it tutors. As I mentioned earlier, they are headquartered in Avondale, at the Concordia Center,
where homework help is offered from 3-6pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and 3-8pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A good majority of the students who come for homework help at the center at 3300 N. Whipple, live in the neighborhood and go to the school just down the street. However, Wicker Park Learning Center is willing to have their tutors go to other neighborhoods if students need a tutor and are unable to travel to Avondale. In fact, students can meet with tutors from Wicker Park Learning Center at their homes, at libraries, community centers, and at their schools. Overall, about 15 kids come to the center on N. Whipple, 30 students meet with tutors at Namaste Charter School on the South Side, 5 kids meet at a Chicago-area Catholic School, 10 students meet at park district sites, and then there are those whose tutors come to their homes or local libraries.

Whenever Chris and I visit programs, we always ask them what their greatest challenges are. With these tough economic times, the issue of funding always comes up. Normally ever summer, Wicker Park Learning Center hosts a camp where students have a safe place to go during the summer, while their parents work. However, they are unsure if they will be able to offer the comprehensive recreation and supplementary tutoring program this summer as they did before.

Ms. Anderson also says that she would like to recruit volunteers to actually do some of the tutoring as well. We gave her some ideas of using websites such as Idealist and Volunteer Match
and possibly working with volunteer student groups at nearby universities such as Northeastern Illinois and North Park University. This is why we go out and visit these programs - to find out more about them, but to also see if they need help with anything.

Thank you Kathy Anderson for sitting down and talking to us about Wicker Park Learning Center. We can't wait to hear your ideas about student recruitment on the panel at the May Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference.

Family Matters

Last Thursday, on a beautiful Spring Day, Chris Warren and I visited Family Matters, located just north of Howard St, near the Evanston-Chicago border. We had a wonderful conversation with Jennifer Bricker and Devon Lovell, who are in charge of the tutoring program at Family Matters about all the wonderful programs Family Matters offers it's diverse community. What we didn't expect was that we would get to visit a greenhouse that the program helps maintain for Gale School, the only school in the Chicago Public Schools system that has a greenhouse.

Family Matters has been serving the "North of Howard" neighborhood for over 20 years. It's mission centers around empowering the members of its community to become leaders and be involved in the community. This spirit of empowering the people it serves is a central part of all of its youth programs especially. The newest program, and the program that Jennifer and Devon spoke about the most was the TIGRO program, which stands for Third Graders Reaching Objectives. This program is for Third Graders at Gale School, where they come in after-school and meet one-on-one with their tutor/mentors. There are only 10 students in the program, and many of them are deemed at-risk by the school. What's truly wonderful and unique about the program is that the students have the full use of the greenhouse at the school learning about nutrition, sustainability, environmental awareness, and botany - in addition to their regular homework help. Many of the tutors come from Loyola University and the ones I talked to were extremely dedicated and enthusiastic about the program.

There is also the regular evening tutoring program for students in grades 1-12 that is Monday through Thursday 6:30-8pm, where students can get help with their homework one-on-one with their tutors. Yet another program that Family Matters offers is the reading tutoring program for students with learning disabilities.

Many of the students at Family Matters are in several of the programs offered. For those in kindergarten-6th grade there is the Family Connections Program, which is an after-school program which includes a leadership corps for students to learn the principles of leadership. Parents are heavily involved in this program and are encouraged to come to monthly parent meetings so that they can have a say in the direction of the program.

Hopefully the students who are in the Family Connections Program will continue on into the Teen Girls or Teen Boys groups. Teen Girls and Teen Boys emphasize the idea of shared leadership. For the Teen Girls, activities include learning about community activisim, learning how to make jewelry, making documentaries on domestic violence, and learning African dance. The middle school and high school boys meet twice a week for dinner and have done activities such as African drumming. An especially novel idea is that the students do their own grant-writing, taking ownership of supporting the program that serves them.

I must say I wish I could've stayed longer at the greenhouse, helping with the tending of the plants, or reading in the amazing library in the cozy two-flat building that houses Family Matters. I had a wonderful time learning about this inspiring program and I especially appreciate the time that Devon and Jennifer took out of their busy schedules to explain to Chris and me all the details of their outstanding program.

Chicago Youth Centers - ABC Youth Center

As the coordinator for Tutor/Mentor Connection, which is centered around networking and cooperating between programs, I'm always curious how smaller groups of tutoring and mentoring programs interact - whether if they're in the same neighborhood or part of a larger organization such as Boys and Girls Club or Chicago Youth Centers, whose ABC Youth Center in North Lawndale Chris Warren and I visited yesterday.

The ABC Youth Center offers a variety of programs - from Head Start to pre-schoolers to programs that prepare students for college. We spoke to Jason Bremer, who is the director of the teen program. The teen program runs from 4-8pm every week day and students have to fulfill a variety of criteria in order to continue to participate. The group takes field trips to museums, college and even the other Chicago Youth Centers just to expose the students to other parts of the city. They also offer a number of workshops on resume-building, how to dress for success, and financial aid opportunities. They offer different activities such as a video club, a spoken word club, a photography club, and much more.

One of the most exciting things that the ABC Youth Center kids do is to go to Camp Rosenthal in Michigan to get out into nature and meet other kids from all over the country. It's a great opportunity for the students to be able to try archery, canoeing and simply to see stars in the night sky - something they wouldn't get to experience in their own neighborhood.

ABC Youth Center uses volunteers from a variety of universities throughout Chicago and organizations such as United Way. However, I have to say how impressed that the ABC Youth Center has such a dedicated and enthusiastic leader in Mr. Bremer. I can't wait to see all of his plans fulfilled from having a theater club to planting a community garden. Thanks to him for a great visit!

Casa Central

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of not visiting one but TWO different programs. In the morning I visited Girls on the Run, which has its headquarters just north of us on Dayton and Halsted and in the afternoon I visited Casa Central, which is located in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Incidentally, both of these programs are located in the same zip code as us (as is 826 CHI and Erie Neighborhood House) and I've been astounded by how diverse the zip code is.

Casa Central is actually the largest social service organisation in the Midwest that serves the Latino community. Its services include homework help for grades k-12, a Head Start program for pre-k, housing for the homeless, programs for senior citizens, a teen pregnancy prevention program, and much more. Yesterday afternoon, when I visited, they were hosting an event, co-sponsored by ComEd, for people who are on the verge of getting their electricity shut off to help them figure out ways to pay for their electricity. I was also happy to see news vans outside, which shows that good information about Casa Central is getting out into the news media.

The main program that I was concerned with was their Wednesday night tutoring program for high schoolers, where students meet one-on-one with tutors and mentors. While the program is small right now, Casa Central is looking to possibly expand this program.

In addition to homework help, Casa Central also offers various art, drama, music and drumming, technology and many more clubs to keep students engaged and help them explore various creative outlets. They readily use volunteers from all over the city, but have especially taken advantage of college students from such places as UIC, De Paul, Dominican, and Moody Bible College to help their students grow and learn.

As with all the organizations I visit and write about, I'm more than happy to promote any events and/or fundraisers. On April 26th, which is a Sunday, Telemundo will have a telethon for Casa Central. Tune in and find out how you can help out an outstanding social service agency!

I want to thank Cheryl Debusemann-Serra for sitting down with me and explaining to me all the wonderful things Casa Central does to help their community.

Girls on the Run

In my continued quest to visit all of the programs listed in the Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Locator, I'm especially interested in those programs that come up with unique ways to fulfill the task of tutoring and/or mentoring a child. I was quite impressed with 826 CHI's novel use (pun not intended) of encouraging kids to express themselves through writing as a compliment to their tutoring. I was also quite impressed with Girls on the Run, which is a program where girls in 3rd-8th grade have the opportunity to train for a 5k and learn about various life lessons such as cultivating a healthy body image, and staying true to yourself.

Girls on the Run was founded in 1996 in North Carolina and has since expanded to other cities. Girls on the Run has sites in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, Will, and Kendall counties and runs the gamut of all income brackets. All of the programs are run through the school sites and many of the volunteers are parents, teachers, or administrators. The groups meet once a week and in addition to training for the 5k, they have a weekly theme that touches on important life lessons. The program runs for 12 weeks and culminates in a 5k. There are two programs, one in the fall and one in the spring and girls can participate as many times as they want.

The next Girls on the Run 5k will be Saturday June 6th at Montrose Harbor. Men and women are both welcome to run with the girls and their mentors. Girls on the Run is also having a fundraiser, an Associate Board Bags Tournament, at Joe's Bar on Weed St. on Thursday April 16th. Check out the Girls on the Run website to find out more.

And thanks to Charlotte Schultz for meeting with me yesterday morning and explaining to me all the great things that Girls on the Run does to help girl grow both athletically and emotionally.

Erie Neighborhood House

Last night I visited one of the closest programs to us proximity-wise, Erie Neighborhood House. Erie Neighborhood House has four locations throughout the city, but their site at 1347 W. Erie, where their tutoring and mentoring program, TEAM (Tutoring to Educate for Aims and Motivation) is hosted, is its original site. In fact, Erie Neighborhood House has been serving a primarily Latino-based community for 25 years.

Erie Neighborhood House offers many services outside of tutoring and mentoring. These include ESL classes, aide for getting citizenship, a Head Start Program for young children, a language exchange where English and Spanish speakers meet and improve their language skills, technology classes, a food pantry, and much more. Many of the students in the TEAM program, started out in the Head Start program and continued on through high school, which is a wonderful example of a program serving people of all ages in a community.

The TEAM program is a part of the larger Youth Options Unlimited or YOU program. The YOU program includes a drop-in center with homework help that runs Monday through Thursday after school, a service-learning component where students do community service such as picking up trash in their neighborhood. Students also have access to technology classes in the computer labs, sports activities in the gym, and art and writing classes where they can express their creativity.

Every Monday and Wednesday is the TEAM program. 7th-9th meet with their tutor/mentors on Mondays and 10th-12th graders meet with their tutors on Wednesdays. Students are matched up one-on-one with tutor/mentors, who must give a commitment of at least a year. The students who are in advanced math or science are matched up with volunteers who come from an engineering firm in Skokie, to help these kids especially. During the tutoring sessions, students get help with their homework, but can also use the computer labs to research colleges and scholarship opportunities.

One of the issues that every tutoring and mentoring program has is keeping in touch with the alumni. Erie Neighborhood House has volunteers who specifically in charge of keeping in touch with alumni - often over the phone or internet. The only stipulation is that these volunteers and alumni meet face-to-face at least twice a year. This is not only a great way for Erie Neighborhood House to keep track of the students who have graduated, but also gives the students an adult resource to help guide them through the post-high school years.

I had a great time at Erie Neighborhood House and thoroughly enjoyed meeting several of the students and their tutor/mentors. Special thanks to Rebecca Estrada and Joshua Fulcher for hosting me and answering all of my questions!

826 CHI

In my quest to visit all of the tutoring and mentoring programs in the Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Locator, it's always nice to see what other programs there are in the neighborhood. This week, I'm exclusively visiting programs in our zip code (now 60642, formally 60622). Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of visiting 826 CHI, a truly unique and wonderful tutoring program with a focus on writing.

826Chi is one of six sites throughout the country where students learn about the joys of writing, along with getting homework help. The original site was in San Francisco/Valencia, California, and was founded by Dave Eggers, the renowned author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What. At the original site, the zoning required there be a store and Mr. Eggers started a pirate store as a joke. Quickly, he realized that the store was a wonderful reason for people to come in and find out more about the tutoring program at the site. It also removed the stigma that some students have about going to a tutoring program. After 826 Valencia expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Chicago, the idea of the store was repeated. If you're walking down Milwaukee Avenue in the Wicker Park/Ukrainian Village Neighborhood in Chicago Chicago, be sure to head into the Boring Store, and you will not only be able to buy supplies to become a secret agent, but also books published by 826 CHI, with writings by the students they work with.

826 CHI has several different components to their curriculum. The tutoring component happens Monday through Thursday evenings from 3:00pm to 5:30pm, where students come in to get help with thei homework. Many students come all four evenings, but most tutors only come one day a week. Many of the tutors are writers themselves and usually have more flexible hours, allowing them to come in during the afterschool hours. The one stipulation is that before they start on their homework, they have to do 10-15 minutes of writing about anything they want. This helps them focus on their homework and helps them develop their writing skills.

After 5:30, there are writing workshops that the students can sign up for. The workshops can be about anything that can relate to writing. Usually the topics are ideas of the tutors. So for example, last night a group of students went to an art gallery and wrote about the artwork that they saw. Other workshops have included writing about knitting, writing about a certain type of music, and much more.

826 CHI also teams up with schools around the city and has them come to the center to learn about creative writing. Volunteers come to help host the students and students will complete a book written by them at the end. 826 CHI also has had a partnership with Schiller School, in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood, where they come in every week and do a writing workshop there.

I'm always more than happy promote upcoming fundraisers that programs are hosting. 826 CHI is hosting a "prom" with the theme "Robot Armageddon." The attire will be thrift-store (think 80's prom dresses and tuxes) or robot. It's going to be Saturday April 25th at 8pm at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse. Tickets are $30 for admission, food, and beverages. To find out more visit the 826 CHI website.

Also, special thanks to Mara O'Brien for explaining to me the ins and outs of the program, and Patrick Shaffner for telling me more about the Boring Store and Robot Armageddon prom!

Blessed Sacrament Youth Center

In my quest to visit all of the tutoring and mentoring programs in our Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Locator, I am trying to make a special effort to reach out to programs on the south, west, and southwest sides where there are the highest rates of poverty, but also the lowest number of tutoring and mentoring programs. Many of these programs often are underfunded, understaffed, and trying to serve a need that is just too great for their resources. We are also much less familiar with many of these programs because they simply do not have the time or the capacity to fill out the Tutor/Mentor Connection Program Survey. Finally, many of these programs only last for a couple of years because despite all the good intentions of the founders to help kids succeed, they simply don't have the support and funding like many programs do in areas closer to the Loop. My fear is that as the economy gets worse, while even well-funded, well-managed, more visible programs are going to struggle, the programs in areas with higher poverty are simply going to fold. As a result, there will be that many more students out on the streets with no place to go, and the tragic results of that fact - joining gangs, selling and buying drugs, getting pregnant, dropping out of school will only increase.

That is why we were thrilled to get in contact with Blessed Sacrament Youth Center, which is located in North Lawndale. Blessed Sacrament Youth Center is located on the Corner of Cermak and Central Park, right on the border between the predominantly African-American North Lawndale neighborhood and the predominantly Latino Little Village Neighborhood. Blessed Sacrament has been around for 22 years, and originally was in a two flat. However, with the recent sale of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Blessed Sacrament now has the entire use of the church to conduct its afterschool program. An especially cool part of the transformation from church to youth program is how the sanctuary has been transformed into a basketball court, where the kids can have a safe place to play after school.

Blessed Sacrament's program, which starts at 3pm Monday through Thursday, begins with supervised homework help. After finishing their homework, students do a form of community service, either cleaning up the church, or, if the weather is nice, to pick up trash in the surrounding neighborhood. This not only instills a sense of pride in the students for the learning center and neighborhood, but also shows an example to the surrounding community. Apparently, after the kids started picking up trash around the neighborhood, something that had never been done before, other neighborhood residents started picking up trash as well.

One thing that greatly draws from the Midtown Boys Program model is the idea of the character talk. After the students perform community service, they are given a talk on a particular virture such as cheerfulness or tenacity. The after-school program then finishes off with a sports activity such as basketball or jump rope.

Recruiting students doesn't seem to be a problem for Blessed Sacrament, although it was was mentioned that they would like to see more students from the Little Village neighborhood come to the program since there are so many more young people in that neighborhood than in North Lawndale. Recruiting volunteers is a problem, however. North Lawndale seems to have a bad reputation amongst potential volunteers, and despite being one block from the Central Park Pink Line Stop and just blocks from the Eisenhower Expressway, many volunteers have expressed concern about their safety in coming to volunteer at Blessed Sacrament. Their is a college student who comes to work specifically with the girls in the program, but Blessed Sacrament has found another solution to the issue of volunteers coming to the youth center.

Every Saturday, twelve students are bussed to St. Michael's Church in Old Town to meet with one-on-one volunteer tutor-mentors in their Summit Tutoring Program. They would like to expand the program, and also are welcome to having volunteers come to the center in North Lawndale to supervise the after-school program. Tutor/Mentor Connection is willing to help in any way to make this possible.

Gads Hill Center

Last Thursday, Chris Warren and I visited Gads Hill Center in the Pilsen Neighborhood. Gads Hill has three wonderful programs serving students from kindergarten to college. It's this continuous commitment to helping youth throughout their childhoods that makes Gads Hill such a great example to other programs.

For elementary-school aged students, there's Club Learn, which is an after-school program where students can come in for homework help, or just have a safe place to go after school. The kids do sports, learn about computers and technology, and learn about healthy choices such as not doing drugs and eating well.

Teen Connection starts when students are in the 7th grade and is a college-preparation program. The tutors are graduate students from local universities such as Loyola and the University of Chicago. Students are given a specific schedule for them to follow, based on their age. Students get help with their homework, but also attend workshops about getting into colleges, and take test prep classes. There are scheduled college visits and financial aid and college admissions counseling since many of the students will be the first ones in the family to attend college. To keep the parents on the same page, there are also monthly parent meetings for parents to meet with volunteers and staff members.

The newest program at Gads Hill Center is the New Horizons program. New Horizons is the one-on-one tutoring and mentoring program, where at-risk students from Orozco Middle School are paired one-on-one with a tutor/mentor. The program is in its infancy, having just started in January, but looks forward to helping many students stay on track to graduating from high school and going to college, rather than dropping out and joining gangs or getting into drugs.

Gads Hill offers many great programs, but sees the endless need that there is in its neighborhood for its services. Johnny Tirado, the coordinator of the Teen Connection Program mentioned the need of a program for students needing extra help before going to high school, who may not fit the profile of the high-achieving Teen Connection student preparing for high school. He feels that a middle-school program for those needing that extra boost in their academics before going to high school.

Chris and I had a great time at Gads Hill Center, and look forwarding to helping them in any way possible in the future. Thanks to Johnny Tirado of Teen Connection, Xavier Salvado of New Horizons, and Cecelia of Club Learn for taking the time out of their busy schedules and sitting down with Chris and me and helping us really understand what makes Gads Hill such a great tutoring and mentoring program.