It's been practically a month since I got the word on my next partner for the Nonprofit Blog Exchange. The email about my partner, Tutor Mentor Connection sits a the top of my inbox, and every now and then, I go see what Daniel Bassill has to say over there.
Nowadays, I am especially interested in Daniel's ideas, since the grassroots neighborhood organization I'm working for, West End Ministries, has from the beginning been dedicated to providing youth with activities, connections and a safe place to hang out. These days, we are in real trouble, too. The county commissioners, the United Way, and one other funder of our Boys and Girls club have dropped their funding and our club is threatened with being closed.
Daniel Bassill's dedication to the notion that it is through mentoring, throught connecting young people with those who can really guide them into the mainstream where the careers are located rings very true to me. I also like his ideas about leadership, and how it is through teaching leadership that we encourage our young people to step up to make contributions to the community and society.
I've also noticed that Daniel is a fan of the internet and of blogging. Me, too.
The nonprofit blog exchange does us all a big favor, getting these possibly not very similar pairs of bloggers together to read a bit of each others' blogs and comment on them. It gets me out of the box of simply techie sites and, in Tutor Mentor Connection's case, into a field that I knew little about but that actually touches my own organization's most critical need right now. Maybe the tutor-mentor model is more workable than trying to find suitable youth leaders who are paid to put on programming for young people in one building. The mentoring relationship breaks out of those walls. Or maybe this would be a catalyst to getting more funding for the club, by getting more people directly involved with our youth.
Well, at any rate, I'm going to send our program manager over to this blog and to Daniel Massill's various sites. We'll get not only a blog exchange but a good lively discussion at work out of this.
seeks to connect people who from around the world with information and networks that help support the growth of comprehensive, voluteer based tutor/mentor programs.
