Stimulus Package for Cabrini Connections and similar programs

As our elected leaders are debating how to spend $800 billion, I want to encourage you all to read El Da'Sheon's Blog about TEAMWORK.

While El Da' Sheon uses a sports apology to talk about the roles many people need to take to help kids in poverty connect with tutors/mentors who help them through school and into jobs, I sometimes use a military anology.

I wrote about the graphic above in an article last summer. It shows how generals use maps to determine where the enemy has strength, and how this triggers a planning process that not only distributes troops to where the enemy is located, but builds a supply chain to make sure our troops are well fed, have good weapons and training, and are replaced by others after one year on the job.

The infantry on the front lines of a tutor/mentor program are the men and women who volunteer time to be here each week working with our kids. However, without a sophisticated support system, or supply chain, these volunteers, and our students, will not have the on-going support they need for many years to go from 7th grade through 12th grade then through college or vocational school to the point that our volunteers can help them find job interviews .... IF they are still connected.



We use maps to illustrate that Cabrini Connections is just one program in a huge city where hundreds of programs like Cabrini Connections need to be supported by well trained staff and well equipped facilities.

In this graphic the red dot represents the members of the team that El Da'Sheon is writing about. Every day you can pass on messages to the people in your network that tell them how important it is to support volunteer based organizations, and how they can provide big and small donations, to help Cabrini Connections and other programs do this work.

If you think of this in contest of the Stimulus Package in Congress, support for a program like Cabrini Connections keeps people employed, builds future workers and reduces the costs of poverty, and can create new jobs if additional money can be found to pay for the extra people Cabrini Connections and hundreds of other programs need to support the troops in existing programs, or to create new programs where more are needed.



One painless way to build this support is to create a workplace fund raising campaign in your company or organization, or to select a tutor/mentor program like Cabrini Connections if you already have such a campaign.

In workplace fund raising your contribution comes out of your pay check each week. Thus, if you pledge $1 dollar (still less than coffee at Starbucks!) that weekly contribution adds up to $52 dollars at the end of the year. If one thousand people do this, that is serious support that can help us stay in business and innovate new ways to influence what kids do.

This is a group activity, but it takes each of us to be the CHANGE, or the leader, who says "if it is to be, it is up to me."

Help us find this stimulus for tutor/mentor programs.

Donate now at http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate/donate_online.asp