Can you provide private sector stimulus funds?

Last week we celebrated our annual year end dinner with more than 200 parents, volunteers and students. It was the type of event that puts tears in your eyes and cements the commitment I have to keeping this program going.

However, while the government is making all kinds of money available through Federal Stimulus Grants, these dollars won't do much to help keep small programs like Cabrini Connections in business. They are funding 'add on' activities, rather than operating dollars that pay the rent and keep current people employed. While there will be a quick turn around, most of those spending time writing grants, won't get funded, and won't know results until September or later.

If you have a rent bill, or payroll, due this week, and don't have money to pay, a government grant won't help.

However, our volunteers, leaders, parents and alumni can help. If you can send a donation, even $5, please do. If you can introduce us to a corporate sponsor, or individual donor, who can make larger gifts, please take this role.

Last week's dinner celebrated work done every year since the fall of 1992 when Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection was created. Every year we have had to find volunteers and donors to help do this work.

If we are to continue into the future, more people will need to share in the responsibility of finding the money than just Dan and the Board. The word community was used often in last week's dinner. We are a community.

We need help from everyone in the community to find the dollars that keep Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection available to Chicago kids.

Got an idea? Email me at tutormentor2@earthlinknet or call 312-492-9614

It takes a village to raise a child. In every village there are bankers and investors.

I encourage you to read the Cabrini Blog and the Mapping for Justice Blog as well as the Tutor/Mentor Connection blog, to find stories of tutoring/mentoring and what Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection are doing to help volunteers connect with kids in well-structured, long-term programs, that lead kids through high school to college and careers.

The graphic on this page illustrates that it takes people from many different business, civic and social sectors to help kids grow up. We take this for granted in more affluent communities where community wealth and human capital gives kids momentum and social and emotional support as the grow up. As Mike illustrates in his Mapping for Justice articles,kids in poverty don't have these same positive supports and have many negatives that other kids do not face.

While these other blogs show how people can use their time and talent to help tutor/mentor programs help kids, this blog focuses on the dollars that need to be invested by many different people, at Cabrini Connections, and many different places, to make sure tutor/mentor programs are available and have the flexible resources to meet the different and constantly changing needs of kids and volunteers in each of these programs.



I use this front page from a 1992 Chicago SunTimes editorial following the shooting of 7-year old Dantrel Davis as a constant reminder that unless everyone accepts this as their own responsibility, nothing will change for kids living in poverty neighborhoods of Chicago.

Please send a donation today. Consider becoming a sponsor for one of the events we organize, such as the July Golf Benefit, or the Tutor/Mentor Conference. Support the Lawyers Lend A Hand which funds tutor/mentor programs. Or give directly to one of the other programs in the city.

Keep giving. Use the web sites and blogs to remind you of why you are giving and what your money is being used for.

It takes the bankers and investors in a village to keep the economy going.