Expanding Networks Supporting Inner City Youth

This is a presentation done in May-June 2011 by Interns from Illinois Institute of Technology. It is an example of the type of work youth in high schools and colleges throughout the country could be doing to help solve complex social problems. Social Network Analysis - Mapping growth of a Network Visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection Intern group and add yourself to this project.

Interns Map Growth of Network

During the May-June 2012 internship Mina Song and Chul Wan Park have been doing some very important work for the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Chul spent his six weeks learning to use Gephi.com Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools and create a set of maps showing how the network at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com has grown from three people in 2007 when it was created by Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L., founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, until May 31, 2012. The map below is one of many that you can see in Chul's report.

This map shows the 209 people who joined the Ning site by the end of 2009 and shows how some have begun to build networks of "friends". 

While Chul was learning to use Gephi and pulling data from the membership files on the Ning site, Mina Song was reading articles from the various Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blogs and web sites. She used these to create five new presentations introducing the Tutor/Mentor Connection and describing the four-part problem solving strategy. Then during the past week she created a final project describing the importance of expanding social networks for inner-city kids and demonstrating how the social network analysis maps created by Chul could be used to show the growth of networks to potential donors and partners.

Mina posted links to each of the presentations she did. Click here.

Chul and Mina are college students from Korea who have spent six months studying at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Tutor/Mentor Connection has had a partnership with IIT for several years in which interns join us each winter and spring and work on projects like the ones Mina and Chul have worked on.

Our goal is that students from high schools and colleges all over the world will join in this project. You don't need to be in Chicago to look at the ideas we share and develop your own presentations to show how these ideas might apply in your own community.

What the Social Network Analysis project shows is the power of network-building. If just one person in a community has an idea for solving a problem, that person can share that idea and invite others to join in. If the person is persistent, creative and able to acquire needed technology and financial support, the network of people working to solve that problem should grow.

Using maps and network analysis tools can provide transparency to the process and can be tools for bringing people together who share the same geography and/or are affected by the same problem.

We're really grateful for the work Mina and Chul have done this past six weeks and for the partnership with IIT that has connected us with these talented students.

If you'd like to get involved just join the http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com group or introduce yourself on Twitter or Facebook.

New Interns for Jan-Feb 2012

We have two new interns from IIT and Korea working with the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC this Jan/Feb. They are Song Mi Lee (Stella) and Sung Hee Jung (Jade). This graphic is from an introduction Jade created to show her experiences and her network.

Our goal with these internships is to share the thinking of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC with our interns so that they can then communicate our ideas in their own visual presentations to people in their own networks.

I support this process in this Korea-Chicago group on Ning (most of our interns have been from Korea, but others have come from China and India).

I'm also trying to find interns, researchers, partners and volunteers for this Social Network Analysis group. The graphic that Jade created shows her to be part of a network. The students who have been interns in the past six years are also potentially part of a network as are the students and volunteers who have been part of the tutor/mentor programs I've led since 1975.

If we can harness social network analysis tools we can create a better understanding of the growth of this network over a period of years and we can connect the members of the network to each other in a social problem solving platform where they can each help each other while drawing from all of the information and ideas that we have been aggregating for so many years.

If you'd like to join in or be a sponsor or help in other ways just introduce yourself in the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum.