History

Beginnings

Cabrini Connections was created in aftermath of the Dantrell Davis killing in Chicago in October 1992. Davis’ death was the catalyst for a city-wide media campaign to ‘stop the killings’. The media ran feature articles profiling after school programs in the area working to keep children safe during non-school hours.

Research showed that:

• More than 200,000 school-aged children in the Chicago area could benefit from comprehensive mentoring-to-career programs
• The areas of the city most desperately in need of school reform and after school programs tend to be in the same areas plagued by poverty, violence, and segregation.

Unfortunately, the media’s attention to the events and research findings was short lived and focused on only a few neighborhoods.

Daniel Bassill saw a leadership void in the wake of the media attention, and decided to fill it with two organizations:

• Cabrini Connections - An organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring program for teens in the Cabrini Green neighborhood.
• Tutor/Mentor Connection – An organization dedicated to connecting all tutoring/mentoring programs in the city, generating a flow of money, visibility, and volunteers to help each program grow to its full potential.

Dan Bassill, the founder of both Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection, started his career in 1973 as a volunteer with the Montgomery Ward Tutor/Mentor Program serving 2nd - 6th grade youth in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. He became a leader of that program in 1975 and from then until 1990 he used his advertising and development planning skills to increase the volunteer program to connect more than 300 pairs of youth and adults. This growth was also stimulated by the networking that the leaders of the Ward program did with the leaders of other programs operating in Chicago. Dan began building a database of these leaders in 1976 and started a series of lunch and learn sessions which became the inspiration for the Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Cabrini Connections

Cabrini Connections is a grassroots non-profit organization founded to address the large number of children who live in educationally disadvantaged environments and thus fail to obtain the basic skills and experiences necessary to compete for employment in the global economy of the 21st century. The organization was founded on the theory that after comprehensive, volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring, and school to work programs make a significant difference, encouraging young people to finish high school and enter the work force.

Since its inception, Cabrini Connections has created opportunities for inner city children. By recruiting quality volunteers, the organization provides quality tutoring and mentoring to teens living in the Cabrini Green area of Chicago. Since January 1993, more than 400 youth have had anywhere from one to seven years of tutoring/mentoring.

View the 1965 to 1992 timeline of the Montgomery Ward/Cabrini-Green Tutoring Program

View the 1992 to 2007 timeline of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection

How do we measure our impact?  Metrics used to evaluate Cabrini Connections.

Tutor/Mentor Connection (T/MC)

In 1994, after a year or so of planning and research, Cabrini Connections launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection. The Tutor/Mentor Connection was created to provide long-term support for existing and new tutor/mentor programs in the Chicago area.