Give Forward

UPDATE: In anticipation of college basketball tournament season, Cabrini Connections is starting its own tournament. Each team consists of volunteers, students, staff, etc. and will compete to raise the most money before the championship game on April 5th. We will make cuts at the same time as the tournmanet, down to 8, 4, 2, and then 1. The winning team will receive individual trophies and a group gift certificate from Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants. For complete information, visit http://www.cabriniconnections.net/cabrini-madness.

Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection (CC-TMC) is a small organization with a big vision. We believe that there should be comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in every low-income inner-city neighborhood of Chicago, its suburbs, and every other city in the country. Such programs would be a benefit to your employees and their extended families, as well as to many of your customers.

Our PURPOSE is to provide an organized framework that empowers and encourages volunteers to give their time, skills, and support in seeking life-changing solutions for children who live in an educationally, disadvantaged environment. We use poverty maps, showing all areas of the Chicago region where such programs are needed.

Our strategy works on three levels:

• we mentor teens and volunteers at a Cabrini-Green area tutor/mentor program called Cabrini Connections
• through the Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) we mentor hundreds of organizations in Chicago and around the country that provide tutoring/mentoring services to thousands of inner-city and at-risk youth
• we also mentor and coach business, philanthropy, media, and other institutions to help them be more strategically involved with volunteer-based mentoring programs that aim to help youth move from poverty to careers

Since 1993 the organization’s Cabrini Connections program has provided mentoring-to-career support for more than 525 low-income, inner-city teens living in the Cabrini-Green area of Chicago. 58% of these teens have been in one-on-one mentoring for two or more years and 36% for three or more years. We will have 70 teens and nearly 80 volunteers enrolled in the 2009-10 program. We have been recognized in many ways for our work. For instance, we are featured on the Oprah’s Angel Network web site at http://oprahsangelnetwork.org/stories/555-cabrini-green-mentor-expands-networks-for-students

The Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC) was formed in 1993. Its goal is to help volunteer based tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections grow in all poverty neighborhoods of the city and suburbs. The T/MC has created an extensive database of Chicago area tutor/mentor programs, an Internet resource library that links Chicago programs to each other and to best practices from around the country, a year- round public awareness campaign, and a series of networking and training events that draw volunteers and donors to individual programs, while helping each program learn ideas that enable them to constantly improve.

All of this intends to draw visitors to maps of Chicago (http://www.tutormentorprogramlocator.net), volunteers, donors, media, parents,  etc. shop, like customers, to determine what neighborhood they want to help, and what tutor/mentor program in that neighborhood they will help, based on how the web site of that program shows what the do to help connect volunteers and kids.

Money raised through the cause that our volunteers launch in the coming year will help pay the rent, utilities, insurance, staff and other costs of operating the Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection programs and making their services freely available to our teens, and to others from throughout Chicago.