On Monday, May 12 The Chicago Community Trust hosted a series of dinners throughout the Chicago region where almost 10,000 people met new people and shared ideas for making the Chicago region a better place for everyone to live, work and raise kids.
Next Monday, May 19, I’ll be hosting a workshop at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference (http://www.tutormentorconference.org). This event is part of an on-going strategy of the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC), launched by Dan Bassill in 1993. Bassill started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in 1975. He started reaching out to peers to gather them for networking events, similar to the OnTheTable2014 events, in 1976.
Dan created the T/MC in 1993 to try to bring people together to network, learn, build trust, share ideas, and to create advertising-type visibility that would draw support to all city and Chicago suburbs. He created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011 help the T/MC grow in Chicago and to support the growth of similar intermediaries in other cities.
Over the past few years the idea of “collective effort” or people from many sectors working together to solve a community problem, has gained much visibility in non profit and public circles, fueled by articles on the Stanford Social Innovation Review web site. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact. This article constantly refers the need bringing people together to solve community problems, and that’s what Dan Bassill has been doing for over 20 years. In addition to organizing conferences, Dan maintains a web library with links to articles like this and his goal is that people from many sectors dig deeper into this information on an on-going basis so that ideas from many places can be used to support the growth of mentor-rich programs in Chicago area neighborhoods.
As a result of his professional mentoring, Dan has always encouraged me to attend and present in his Tutor/Mentor Leadership & Networking Conference to grow my career and skill sets. In the upcoming conference on May 19th, I will share my experience in developing and implementing my own blog, www.kellyfairthementor.com. I’ll discuss how my blog has helped me to expand my reach and resources for growing my mentoring program, Polished Pebbles (www.polishedpebbles.com), and how I’ve been able to use it as a tool to support the entire mentoring community!
If you’re concerned with the well-being of youth, the future of the workforce, and the social capital in the Chicago region, I encourage you to register and attend the Tutor/Mentor Conference next Monday. Dan and I and others look forward to meeting you. Register here: http://www.tutormentorconference.org/