Happy Holidays from Cabrini Connections!

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Give Hope this Holiday Season

The graphic in this holiday appeal was created by a volunteer who lived in Indiana when she did this project for us. It illustrates how volunteers and interns from many places are helping us share ideas that support the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.

Each year we must find donors to support our efforts so we have a place for students, interns and volunteers to connect. Please send a donation or become a benefactor.

Please read our 2010 Holiday Appeal Letter and forward it to others who might help.

University Partnerships Wanted

Willow and Jenny were interns at Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection from late June to early August, 2010. They can from China, via a program hosted by Hong Kong Baptist University.

Read the article about university partnerships written by Bradley Troast. If you would like to work with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection just email tutormentor2 at@earthlink dot net

Interns tell story in Chinese and Korean

Today is the last day of a seven-week internship for Jenny and Willow, who came to us through a program with Hong Kong Baptist University. Earlier this spring, two students from Korea, via IIT, were interns.

One of the ways this year's interns have helped us is by creating videos, in Chinese and Korean, to translate our message to people who don't speak English.

Jenny/Willow Video


Chuck/Mingsang Video

Find more videos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection


We'd like to recruit interns and volunteers with Spanish, French and German language skills, and more volunteers from Korea and China. If we can convert Tutor/Mentor Connection ideas into different languages, more people will be able to use them, and more people from different parts of the world will add their own support to creating and implementing these strategies.

Thank you Willow, Jenny, Chuck and Mingsang!

International Connections

This photo shows interns from China and Korea who are helping Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection by sharing their time and talent with us this spring and summer.

Meet Jiwon Seo and Minsang Lee, both from Korea, and Liu Chong and Willow Yang Liuqing

Conference video created by Interns

The Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference was held in Chicago on May 27 and 28, 2010. Our student interns from IIT and Korea, Minsang Lee and Jiwon Seo, took many photos. This presentation was created by Minsang Lee.


Find more videos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection

Network Building: Role of Interns and Volunteers

This blog shows how interns from many colleges and universities have been helping Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection communicate its message to people who can respond as volunteers, leaders, technology support, donors, etc., helping our organization, but also helping any other tutor/mentor program in Chicago, or in other cities.

This graphic is one that illustrates this concept, and which may be converted into an animation by a future intern.



One of our recent interns was Jordan Merlo, a student at Loyola University. She just completed a 12-week intern, which was part of a class assignment. She had to write a final paper, which is posted here on her blog.

Our goal is that hundreds, or even thousands, of students in high schools, colleges and universities all over the world are writing blog articles like Jordan's, with the same goal, and the same topic. That will draw the daily attention of millions of potential volunteers and every day, and change the flow of philanthropy from one where non profits are all seeking food (funding) like fish in a bowl, to one where people who can help (volunteers/ donors/ etc.) are searching the Internet using systems like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to choose what city, what zip code, then what program, they want to help.

Jordan is just one blogger you'll find on our Ning site. In addition, if you visit the Cabrini Connections blog, you'll find links to blogs written by our own staff and volunteers.

Finally, if you visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection site, you'll find a long list of bloggers that we follow, who write about learning, fund raising, collaboration, and even tutoring and mentoring.

New project - posted by Li Li, from University of Michigan

This is a screen shot from a flash animation project created this week by Li Li, a graduate student from the University of Michigan. She was part of a one-week Alternative Spring Break Program.

Interns from IIT - Great Work!

Eunsoo Lee (KuDo - front right in photo) and Jawon Koo (Peter - front left in photo)are finishing their final week as interns with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection. They have been working to create flash animation interpretations of ideas expressed in essays on the Tutor/Mentor Connection site. This Collaboration Goals essay was what they started with. They had to learn flash when they got to our site in late January. They've done that and created these projects in less than six weeks.



You can view the projects they created on this section of the Tutor/Mentor Institute site.

Eunsoo has been keeping a blog, and he says "I hope they don't forget me." We won't. Your project will be on our web site for people from all over the world to see. You're profile will stay on the Ning site, so you can continue to stay part of Cabrini Connections from where ever you go in the world.

Peter has started a second project, which will be posted here when completed.

It's amazing how much these students can do in so short a time. It shows how students from throughout the world could be creating projects like this in an effort to help educate volunteers and donors and public leaders on where and how they could help high poverty youth get the help they need to move to jobs and careers.

If you'd like to get students from your college or high school involved, just introduce yourself on the Tutor/Mentor Connection Ning site.

The others in this photo: Front, Toni Pullen (left); Nicole White (right). Back, from left: Bradley Troast, Daniel Bassill, El Da'Sheon Nix and Mike Trakan.

Interns using visualization to help communicate ideas

Below is a map created by Emily Gunn, an intern from Loyola University in Chicago, who is working with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection. You can see this map, and the story Emily wrote here.

At the left is another project, being developed by Eunsoo Lee, an intern from Korea, by way of IIT in Chicago. Follow his work here. (Open this link and find a PowerPoint showing the steps in the graphic at the left. You can also see this at this link).

This is a third project that is in development, based on the graphics in the "Collaboration Goals" pdf. Jawon Koo is working on this and you can follow his project development here.

This type of work can be done by teams of students from high schools and universities in all parts of the world. If you'd like to work with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection just introduce yourself with a post on this blog.

Learn more about Cabrini Connections

Find more photos like this on Tutor/Mentor Connection


E Wilson has joined us as a second intern from Loyola University in Chicago. You can read her introduction, and follow here blog articles on our Ning site.