School Violence Problem of the Day - Where are the Solutions

If you've been following Chicago news lately, you have probably been inundated with stories about leaders from Mayor Richard M. Daley to President Barack Obama have been trying to come up with answers to the recent spate of violence in our inner city schools. You'll read about how Secretary of Education and former Chicago Public Schools Superintendant Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder visited Chicago and promised an emergency grant to Fenger High School, the scene of the fatal beating of Derrion Albert. You'll read about how Mayor Daley has introduced new Police Patrols in schools and new CTA stops as measures to quell the violence. Unfortunately you will also read how a young mother was killed in a drive-by shooting in East Garfield Park last night, yet another victim or a random act of violence.

Dan Bassill has been writing about the complex solutions to an increasingly complex problem in his blog, that I encourage you all to read. What we can't stop saying however is that there are two very important ways you can help make kids lives better and steer them away from violence:

1) Volunteer to be a Tutor and/or Mentor. Visit the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator and find a program near you to volunteer at. If you need help, don't hesitate to call us at 312-492-9614 and we'll help you learn how to use the program locator. Helping one student might not seem like a lot, but as the saying goes "To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world."

2) Donate to the Tutor/Mentor Connection. When you donate to T/MC you're donating to programs all throughout Chicago that we help throughout the year. And! There's a variety of ways to do just that this weekend:

1. Come to Martini Madness, which will be TOMORROW, Friday October 9th from 6:30-9:30 at the Store, 2002 N. Halsted at Halsted and Armitage. Admission will be $40 and will include all-you-can drink martinis, soft drinks, and appetizers. Wine and beer will also be available for purchase. There will also be a raffle with prizes such as two airline tickets to anyone in the continental United States, a free hotel stay, dinner for four at a top restaurant and more. You can pay for your admission online here.

2. Donate to Nick Infusino and me running the Chicago Marathon for Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, which will be this Sunday, October11th starting at 7:30am. You can donate here and find out how to follow us by text message or watch us here.

Remember, even a donation of one to two hours of your time in tutoring and/or mentoring a child or donating even $20 to show your support will make a WORLD of difference to solving the problem of youth violence.

Thanks to the Garrard McClendon Show for having Dan on!

So, apparently someone from the Garrard McClendon Show on CLTV Channel 10 read my blog post yesterday about CPS's 30million dollar anti-violence plan and asked Dan Bassill, the president and CEO of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection to come on. You can watch the interview here.

At the end Dan says "Give me $1 million a year for 10 years and I can do a lot more than they can with $30 million." This is so true. I think people would be shocked to find out what miracles we can create with as little money as we have. A lot of you are fans of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection and have seen all the good work we can do. If we had $1 million a year? Just you watch what great things we create with that!

Unfortunately, we do not have $1 million a year right now, or even enough to sustain us through September. We need your help. Here are a couple of ways that you can support Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection in these tough times:

1. Donate to Nick Infusino and me running the Chicago Marathon. Right a check, click on the paypal link in the upper right-hand corner of this blog, or visit http://www.firstgiving.com/nicolewhite3
So far we have raised $891! That's amazing and it's all thanks to you! Help us reach our goal of raising $2000 before October 11, which is the day we run the marathon. (And I'm running 18 miles on Monday so you don't think I'm slacking either:))

2. Pay for your Martini Madness admission today by visiting here. Admission is $40, but of course we will take more!

3. Attention all Northwestern and UofI Alumni! Our Cabrini Connections Administrative Coordinator, El Da'Sheon Nix, and former Northwestern Football Player is having a fundraise-off with Kurt Kittner, former quarterback for University of Illinois and now a board member at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Are you a Wildcat alum who hates to see the Fighting Illini win? (I know I am!) Visit http://www.giveforward.org/illinivsnuchallenge/

Er, yeah, we'd still like to see donations from UofI alums too. Visit http://www.giveforward.org/illinialumsgive/ ;)

Or if you love Big 10 Football, you could just donate to both!
If you want to know more, visit El's blog.

Anyway, there a variety of fun ways that you can help out Cabrini Connections. The easiest way is to just spread the word. Have a "Support Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection" status on facebook or gchat. Tell people at the Labor Day barbeques about all the great work we do.

Ironically, I'm attending a wedding where the bride and groom are both Illinois alums and are HUGE football fans. I assume a lot of the guests will be as well. While it will kill me to have UofI possibly beat us, I will definitely tell them about the fundraising challenge and see if we can all do our part in supporting Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

CPS Unveils a $30 millionPlan to Prevent Violence

Today I received in my e-mail in box an e-mail with an article from the Chicago Tribune about how Chicago Public Schools' Superintendent, Ron Huberman, unveiled a $30 million anti-violence plan today to help CPS's most at-risk students.

The article cites that two of the strategies that they plan to use to help kids in school and out of trouble is to have full-time mentors and getting the students jobs. Those are both great tools for giving at-risk kids the support they need. However, I wonder how CPS is going to approach this. Are they going to start their own mentoring and job-training program? Or could they align themselves with tutoring and mentoring programs in the neighborhoods where these schools with these kids exist? The Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Exchange both have a wealth of resources to help CPS create a quality partnership with tutoring and mentoring programs throughout Chicago. I hope that CPS has a plan like this and will support tutoring and mentoring programs like Cabrini Connections and many others throughout the city as we face the economic challenges that are threatening to end all of the good work that we do.

The Chicago Tribune quotes that this anti-violence plan is going to help 1200 students. Now $30 million divided by 1200 is $25,000 per kid. Just to give you a sense of perspective, if we got $30,000 per month, we would be able to help 85 kids per month in our own program. Doesn't that sound more cost-effective?

What kids think will end the violence here in Chicago

This past Friday, July 31st, students from the Mikva Challenge's Education, Teen Health, and Youth Safety Council's held a press conference at the Joyce Foundation briefing the media, politicians, and other leaders in Chicago on the survey they conducted, asking 758 Chicago Public School's Students on their views on youth violence. Mikva Challenge is a wonderful organization that teaches kids about civic responsibility and guides them in becoming activists in their community.

As we all know, violence in Chicago is at the forefront of the news right now(recommended reading is Mark Brown's column about attending the press conference here and Mary Mitchell's column about the Secretary of Education and former Chicago Public School's Superintendant, Arne Duncan's reaction to another shooting of a CPS student who had graduated from Von Steuben High School, where many of our Cabrini Connections kids go to school as well, here ) and it appears that the issue of violence in the community is at the forefront of kids' minds as well. The results of the survey are jarring and you should read what they have to say. Of course, as someone who is concerned with how tutoring and mentoring organizations impact the communities the serve, I was pleased to see that students consider "adult mentoring" as one of the best strategies for reducing youth violence. Hopefully donors and potential donors will take it from the source - the kids that these mentors work with - and realize the importance that these mentors have in these kids lives and realize that adult mentoring is one of the many ways of combatting youth violence.

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.

Why you should come to our golf tournament

On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the difficulties that urban kids face during the summer. The article profiles four siblings who spend most summer days at the library, since that is one of the few safe places in their home neighborhood of Englewood to go during the summer.

If you visit Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection's president and CEO, Dan Bassill's blog, you can read what he has to say about the article and how there are not enough tutoring and mentoring programs in the Englewood neighborhood. This is despite the fact that it's one of the main neighborhoods in Chicago in regards to poverty and violence, making the need for tutoring and mentoring programs for the kids that much greater.

If you search the interactive program locator, and search under "zip code" for 60621, the main zip code for the Englewood neighborhood, you'll see there are only four tutoring and mentoring programs in the neighborhood. Now, I must add, that when I talk about tutoring and mentoring programs in relation to the poverty and violence that occurs in the neighborhoods here in Chicago, I don't want to say that it's the single solution to these issues. There are too many factors going into why there is such high levels of poverty and violence in the neighborhood that tutoring and mentoring programs are only one piece of the puzzle in improving the situations in these neighborhoods. However, if you look at the interactive map that Dan Bassill created above, you can see the churches, hospitals, schools, and businesses that can collaborate to help make the Englewood neighborhood a safer place for children to be this summer and throughout the year.

This is one of the goals of the Tutor/Mentor Connection - to help new programs get off their feet and existing programs to continue to thrive and serve the community in neighborhoods such as Englewood. If more tutoring and mentoring programs were able to offer summer programming so kids would have a safe place to go, the kids profiled in the Tribune article wouldn't have to just rely on their Public Library to spend their summer days.

Unfortunately, as I'm contacting programs throughout the city, many programs' summer programming is being cut due to the crisis in the Illinois State Budget, or because funding has dried up from foundations or grants have not been renewed. Simply put, a lot less money is going out to tutoring and mentoring (and most social services programs in general). One of the first types of programs that tutoring and mentoring organizations cut is their summer programming. However, as many of us now know, summer is the time when kids have the most free time on their hands and where many are left unsupervised because parents and guardians have to work. There is a reason why we see the number of kids getting shot and killed rise during the summer.

So, what can you do to help? A fun way to help benefit tutoring and mentoring programs throughout the city of Chicago, is to come to our annual Jimmy Biggs Memorial Golf Tournament, which benefits our own tutoring and mentoring program, Cabrini Connections as well as tutoring and mentoring programs throughout the city of Chicago through the Tutor/Mentor Connection. This year, the golf tournament will be held this Thursday July 16th, 2009 at Highland Park Country Club. Find out more by visiting the golf tournament's website
and sign up to play. Also, if you're not a golfer, but like to eat and drink (and who doesn't!), you also can just come to the dinner and bid on silent auction items such as an autographed NY Jets Football and basketballs signed by basketball superstars such as Chicago-native Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat. I hope to see everyone there!

Trying to combat a "Legacy of Violence"

Yesterday I wrote about Dawn Turner Trice's article that was featured Monday in the Chicago Tribune and the comments section where Dan Bassill and I both posted comments. In today's edition of the Chicago Tribune, Mary Schmich writes about the shooting death of Dantrell Davis that Dan has written about several times in his blog. In it, Ms. Schmich talks about how students at Jenner Academy, where a good majority of our 7th and 8th graders attend school, commemorated the shooting death of a little boy 16 years ago. At the end, Ms. Schmich interviews the local Alderman, Walter Burnetts, who was raised in Cabrini Green. She asks "if he thinks a 7-year-old black child is safer in Chicago now than when Dantrell Davis was shot to death." Alderman Burnett's response "No . . . I don't."

This is the reality that we are working against. Cabrini Connections essentially started in the wake of the aftermath of Dantrell Davis's shooting. Many positive things have occurred here at Cabrini Connections, dozens of kids from Cabrini Connections have grown up, gone to college, and have gotten jobs. But we can only help so many kids and there are still way too many who are joining gangs, becoming addicted to drugs, getting pregnant while still a teen, going to jail, and dying way too soon. I appreciate both Ms. Turner Trice's and Ms. Schmich's efforts to raise awareness about how too many of these kids are falling through the cracks. They are asking tough questions that deserve tough answers. However, they aren't highlighting enough the role tutoring and mentoring programs can impact these communities where children are dying.

As a followup to my earlier blog post, Ms. Turner Trice pointed out that the media's main focus is on the economic crisis. There is a good reason for it, but the media isn't exploring all the different ways that people are going to be impacted. The only mention I've seen of how non-profits are going to be impacted in the local media has been in the Chicago Reader, where they highlighted the difficulty of arts non-profits to get money in tough economic times. If the media were really wanting to make a difference, they should encourage people to donate to non-profits that serve these communities because these communities are being hit the hardest right now.

On a positive note, the New York Times has highlighted the efforts of the Denver Broncos football team to be mentors and work with at-risk youth. Their Coach, Mike Shanahan has done a commendable job of encouraging his players to serve their communities - especially those players who have had run-ins with the law themselves. Does anybody know if the Chicago Bears do similar community work and if so, why haven't we hear about it. Just a thought.

It's times like these where what we're doing is more important than ever

The news has been pretty ominous lately. Hurricane Ike hitting the Gulf Coast of Texas, the presidential election continues with accusations from both the Republicans and the Democrats about who is less ready to lead the country. Finally, there's the recent news from Wall Street of turmoil and thousands of lost jobs as Lehman Brothers files bankruptcy, Merrill-Lynch is bought out by Bank of America, and AIG, the world's largest insurance company looks like it's going to be the next on the chopping block. These are scary times for all of us.

So, how can we, as a relatively small tutoring and mentoring non-profit here in Chicago, Illinois, ask for money in times where thousands of people have lost their homes to natural disasters, and thousands more have lost their jobs because the uncertainties of the market. All of us here at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection are trying to answer these questions in our own way. From my perspective as the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Coordinator, times like these mean that we need even more tutoring and mentoring programs than before.

We've seen how the New Orleans School District has struggled to rebound from Hurricane Katrina and many children down there are being, in no better words, "left behind." After this natural disaster money poured into organizations such as the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity to help survivors of the Hurricane get back on their feet. This was a wonderful show of generosity from the American people, but the money only flowed in for so long. Today, almost exactly three years after Katrina, people are still living in FEMA trailers and children are still going to failing schools. There still is immense need along the Gulf Coast.

I know I may be sounding like a broken record, but it is true that a great help to places like New Orleans, and now Galveston and the Houston area would be to start up tutoring and mentoring programs in these areas. Many of the children most greatly affected in these areas were living in poverty to begin with. After a natural disaster, this only compounds the need for extra help and confidence and a safe place to go after school. Some celebrities such as Brad Pitt, have shown a wonderful initiative in helping rebuild New Orleans with safer, more environmentally friendly housing. Wouldn't it be wonderful if a celebrity took on helping children succeed in places like New Orleans by championing tutoring and mentoring programs in those areas.

But you can be a champion of tutoring and mentoring programs even in tough times like these. While we are inclined to donate money, time, and supplies after a natural disaster such as Ike, we need to look at the long-term picture. Children are living in poverty all over the country and not just in communities that have been hit by natural disasters. Tough economic times mean that it's only going to get tougher out there for children in these areas to succeed. It will also mean that there will be more children and families to serve as people lose their homes and their jobs.

So what can you do to help these people out when you, yourself, are concerned about how you're going to make it? For one, you can volunteer your time over the long-term. Become a tutor or a mentor, sit on the board of a tutoring or mentoring organization, volunteer your expertise in finance or techonology to help these organizations run better than before. Working at a soup kitchen for just one day, or donating your clothes to a battered women's shelter are all fine ways of helping out, but the real help is made with a long-term commitment. Second, rather than making one big donation somewhere, make small donations on a consistent basis. This will be both beneficial to you and if enough people do it, beneficial to organizations throughout the world. Finally, if you're truly concerned about the people living in Galveston or New Orleans, or even worried about the children in Chicago who are being shot while playing in their front yard, look into how you can help start a tutoring and mentoring organization in these neighborhoods. If we all did something to help each other in these tough times, then the world would truly be a better place.

November Tutor/Mentor Conference - Why do we have it? Why do we need it?

Hello everybody! Tonight is our second night of volunteer orientation and tomorrow and Thursday will be our student orientations. Next week starts the first nights for tutoring here at Cabrini Connections and so it's back-to-school and back-to-tutoring.

This also means that our November Tutor/Mentor Conference is right around the corner. I still am having trouble finding a site and would appreciate any tips or suggestions for places to hold the conference. We are looking at the second or third week in November on either a Monday/Tuesday or a Thursday/Friday, but if a Tuesday/Wednesday or a Wednesday/Thursday would be better that would work too. We would even be interested if there was a great space that could only accomodate us for one day and that could hold between 100 and 150 people in one large room for keynotes and then several smaller breakout rooms for workshops and panel discussions. I have contacted all of the city colleges of Chicago and several other universities, but am often finding that they can't accomodate us because of classes. I'm also about to start contacting museums and churches. If you have any other suggestions for a site, please let me know in a comment to this post or you can e-mail me at nicolewhite.cabrini@gmail.com

I'm also looking to put together a committee to help set up the conference. Ultimately we would like to have corporate sponsorship for the conference so we wouldn't have to worry about the cost of sites and also would be able to fund more people to come from all over. I'll be talking about the conference committee in future posts.

Ultimately though, I want to touch on why we host a conference every year. There are many reasons for the conference. What I think puts the conference most in perspective though is how, as children all throughout the country are going back-to-school, the topic that seems to come up most in relation to back-to-school here in Chicago is the number of children dying from violence this year already in the Chicago Public Schools. Since last September 36 CPS students were killed. Over the Labor Day Holiday 3 young people were shot including a young women in Humboldt Park who is a friend of the family of one of our Cabrini Connections employees. You can read her heartbreaking post about how this has affected her family and neighborhood here.

Cabrini Connections was founded in the wake of a shooting that transformed the city of Chicago, the killing of a 7-year-old child in the midst of gang gunfire in the Cabrini Green neighborhood in 1992. On Sunday the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about the aftermath of the shooting and how the shooting affected Chicago but still children die every week from violence. If you scan the blotter of the Tribune, you'll read about how just in the past week, a young man in West Englewood was shot, a young girl in the Calumet Area was shot while tying her blind younger sister's shoes, and a young girl visiting Humboldt Park was shot at a family party. In the Chicago Sun-Times, there was a series that ran this summer about the fear of violence that has run rampant in the Chicago Public Schools and how it's caused many children to fear even leaving their homes.

This has got to stop. Children should be excited about going to school. They need to feel like there are safe places for them to go afterschool. We should be reading articles about how excited everyone is about going back-to-school rather than hearing reports of another innocent life lost to violence. While they don't have all the answers, tutoring and mentoring programs have a lot. There need to be more safe places for children to go to learn and to socialize. Children need mentors to show them that there's an alternative to a violent lifestyle and to make the right choices in order stay as safe as possible. Children need tutors to help them succeed in school and dream big dreams of going to college and finding a successful career path. There are far too many programs right now to serve the amount need that is in these neighborhoods.

This is why we need to have the November Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference. This is why I need your help in making it happen.

The Costs of Growing up in a Violent Environment

On the frontpage of the Chicago Tribune today, there was a photo of a young African-American boy standing in front of the Cabrini-Green rowhouses. The boy is DeJour Stewart, and he is the younger brother of one of out students here at Cabrini Connections. The article is about the mental health challenges young people face when they grow up in neighborhoods where violent crime is prevalent. The article is very good, but I especially recommend watching the video to see the young people talking first hand about how hard it is growing up in neighborhoods such as Cabrini Green and constantly being scared.

Obviously, parents in these neighborhoods are doing all they can to make sure their children live as normal of lives as possible. Another article, in the New York Times talks about how groups of parents in Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods have set up systems of escorting their children to school. This is a wonderful example of parents taking control of the violence endangering their children's lives. Another is in the Chicago Tribune article, where DeJour Stewart's mom, Norrine Rhodes, talks about the importance of keeping kids off the street but at the same time keeping them active. She mentions how she has enrolled her sons in tutoring and mentoring programs so that they will not only succeed in school, but that they also will have a safe place to go after school.

This also brings up a wonderful point. If people see stories such as DeJour's in the news, then they will want to do something about the violence that we are seeing as of recent. One of the most effective ways of combatting the violence is to give money to tutoring and mentoring programs throughout the city so that there will be places for even more children to go to. We just had a fundraiser ourselves this past Friday at Schuba's Bar. We raised over $4000 and had a lot of fun doing it. Thanks to everybody who came to our Spring into Action event.

Also, if you want to find out more and get involved in helping kids stay alive and succeed, you can always attend out Tutor/Mentor Conference, which will be Thursday May 29th and Friday May 30th at Northwestern Law School off of Lake Shore Dr. and Chicago Ave. You can also visit the website at www.tutormentorconference.org

23rd CPS student killed - How do we stop the violence?

On Sunday, a CPS high schooler was beaten to death with a baseball bat, making him the 23rd student killed this 2007-2008 academic year. (I believe I earlier stated, erroneously, that 20 students have died since January. Rather, it's since September). Still, this school year has proven to be outpacing last year as the deadliest year for Chicago Public Schools in decades.

I know that everytime I open up the web page of the Chicago Tribune and see the headline "Chicago teenager killed," my heart starts racing, hoping it's not one of my kids. Thankfully, none of our students has been involved in any incidents of the kind this year, but still there's always that small possibility. I can tell the sheer number of students killed, especially in the month of March, the deadliest month so far, is weighing on my students. I hear talk of being scared to walk to school, or to go outside of their neighborhood.

These similar sentiments are echoed in a wonderful article, that was in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, about how violence is affecting the lives of CPS students who just want a safe place to learn and live. Most of the students who were killed were not involved in gangs, drugs or any other violent groups. They were simply young people caught in the crossfire of a dangerous environment.

So what do organizations such as Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection do about all this violence? I believe the first thing we do is more of the same of what we have done: Provide a safe place for our kids to come to after school, encourage them to choose other life paths than gangs, drugs and crime, encourage the creation and success of other tutoring and mentoring programs throughout the city, and in general, continuing to spread the gospel of tutoring and mentoring.

However, we do acknowledge that in light of an especially violent month, with our kids on edge, there is even more that can be done. Two positive things that are being done are the creation of an essay that the kids can write on their solutions to stopping the violence. There will be an essay contest with a prize for the student with the best essay.

We are also starting a music club, where kids can especially hone their creativity in rapping and producing rap songs with positive messages. In fact, the first project that the kids will work on is creating songs about combatting the violence that is going on right now.

Of course much more can be done as well and we're continuing to search for new ways for the kids to be able to express their fear and anger about recent events in a creative, positive way and not in a violent, negative way. In the end, hopefully the kids will realize that it's much better to channel their energies in creating art and dialogue, rather than destroying lives.

Finally, I thought this editorial by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times was especially interesting on issues of race and gender that we grapple with every day.