Cabrini Connections Weekly eNews

September 15, 2010

Back-to-School Fund Raising
Appeal - Please help if you can.

Please use this form to mail your donation. DonationForm.pdf

You can also make a donation using PayPal.
donate-online1

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Front Page, Chicago Sun Times, October 1992

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Staff Contacts.

EL Da' Sheon Nix
Administrative Coordinator
eldasheon.nix@gmail.com
http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com

Bradley Troast
Assistant Program Coordinator
bradleytroast@gmail.com
http://cabrinipip.blogspot.com

Karina Walker
Tutor/Mentor Connection Research & Collaboration Coordinator
NUPIP Fellow for 2010-11 walkerkarina@gmail.com
http://tmcpip.blogspot.com

Dan Bassill
President, CEO (fund raising, events)
tutormentor2@earthlink.net
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com

Board of Directors
Ray Dowdle, Chairman
Schwarz Paper Source

Daniel Bassill, President, CEO

Mustafa Ozmeral, Treasurer
Reyes Holdings

Michael Hayes, Secretary
Chartis

* Ali Faraj, Verizon Business
* William Kane, Baker Hostetler
* Kurt Kittner, Jones Lang LaSalle, Americas Inc
* Karen Lobdell, Drinker Biddle & Reath
* Steven Miller, Envoy Mortgage
* Gabriel Rodriguez,Schiff Hardin LLP
* Victor Trotter, AEI Technologies, Inc.

Cabrini Connections Fund Raising blog. http://cabrinitmcfundraising.
blogspot.com

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CC, T/MC blogs:

http://cabriniblog.blogspot.com
http://cabrinipip.blogspot.com/
http://tutormentor.blogspot.com
http://tmcpip.blogspot.com

On the Cabrini Connections blog, read the blogs by student clubs.

Cabrini Connections on Facebook.
Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/
cabriniconnectionsTMC

Writing Club page - http://tinyurl.com/FB-writing-club

Follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/tutormentorteam

Read past newsletters
newsletter/earchive

Long Term Volunteers
Allen Tyson has been a tutor since 1970! Joyce Dunn first became a volunteer in the late 1970s.

Your donations help us remain a part of the lives of youth and volunteers from the past, and the future.

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Cabrini Connections
Tutor/Mentor Connection
800 W. Huron, Chicago, Il 60642

Contact Information

By Phone: 312-492-9614
By Fax: 312-492-9795

Cabrini Connections:
www.cabriniconnections.net

Tutor/Mentor Connection:
www.tutormentorconnection.org

Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection launches 18th year of service to Chicago

LINKING IDEAS AND PEOPLE TO HELP CHICAGO'S KIDS

This photo is me, Dan Bassill, with Tangela Smith Marlow.

When Tangela joined us in 1994, she was in 8th grade. Now she is a college graduate and a "super mom." During the June 2010 Year End Dinner, Tangela spoke of how being part of Cabrini Connections had a transformational effect on her life.

When I was meeting with six other volunteers to create Cabrini Connections in October 1992, the front page of Chicago's major newspapers mirrored the one at the left in calling for public response to prevent further violence like that which took the life of 7-year-old Dantrel Davis, who lived in the Cabrini Green area.

Because I had led the tutoring program at Montgomery Ward since 1975, I knew there was no master database of Chicago-area tutor/mentor programs. I thereby recognized that these full page editorials would not serve as effective "advertising" to draw volunteers and donors to the many organizations that were already working in Chicago's communities to help kids like Tangela connect with mentors, learning opportunities, and different futures than are generally modeled to youth living in poverty neighborhoods.

This meant that we would struggle to find resources to launch and sustain the Cabrini Connections program because city leaders, and media, would seldom be pointing at us as a solution that volunteers and donors should support.

Thus, while creating the Cabrini Connections program to help 7th graders coming out of the original Montgomery Ward/Cabrini Green Tutoring Program go through high school, we also decided to split whatever money we could find to create the Tutor/Mentor Connection. We built a master database of Chicago tutor/mentor programs and designed an ongoing marketing and advertising effort to help each program get the annual resources they need to keep youth and volunteers connected.

We have operated like a business, learning from what we do, and what other programs are doing, and applying any resources (volunteers and dollars) we could find to build our programs. If you visit our web sites today you will see the result of 17 years of effort.

When you look at Tangela and others who have finished high school and college with our support, we hope you realized that we are only able to stay connected because of the annual donations we have received from many different people.

Many of you have followed our progress since 1993. Some of you are among the 580 teens and 800 volunteers who have been part of Cabrini Connections. Others of you have been donors or have helped us get grants from corporations and foundations.

Still others reading this newsletter may have just joined Cabrini Connections or may have been added to our mailing list because we met you at a meeting or at a conference.

I hope you have been visiting our web sites and following our blogs to see our annual progress and the work we do to help teens like Tangela stay in school and move into jobs and careers. I hope you see that we have continued to respond to the SunTimes editorial demanding "action" from citizens of the Chicago region.

Read the history of Cabrini Connections at http://www.cabriniconnections.net/mission/history and you will see that lots of people contributed many hours of time and talent to create the organization that exists today.

View videos and meet our teens and volunteers:
http://www.cabriniconnections.net/video

Review our 2008-9 financial statements, and the 2009-10 yearbook.
http://www.cabriniconnections.net/about-us/annual-reports

I have not been alone in doing this work. Ray Dowdle joined our board in 1994 and became its chairman in 1995. He has served in that role ever since, and many of our donors and other board members have joined because Ray introduced them to us.

We thank everyone who has given time, talent, and dollars to help us with this work. It would not be possible without you.

Daniel F. Bassill
President
Cabrini Connections
Tutor/Mentor Connection

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Now we need your donations again to help us continue with this work in 2010-11.

Please use this form to mail your donation. http://cabriniconnections.net/images/PDF/DonationForm.pdf

You can also make a donation using PayPal.
http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate-online1

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Upcoming events and more ways to give

The 5th Annual Martini Madness, will be Oct 1, at The Store, on Halsted. Tickets are on sale now. Raffle tickets are available at Cabrini Connections. Donations and ticket sales can be made at http://tinyurl.com/Martini-Madness

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Workplace Fund Raising
Look for Cabrini Connections and Tutor/Mentor Connection in federal and state workplace fund raising books. We are listed with the Black United Fund of Illinois and with Community Shares of Illinois. Ask if your company allows you to write in Cabrini Connections for your workplace donation. Encourage co-workers to designate their own pledges of support.

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Alumni Fund
Join with other alumni and help raise $2500 in 2010 to support Cabrini Connections.
http://www.razoo.com/story/Cabrini-Connections-Alumni-Fund-2010-Campaign

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Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference
We have hosted this conference every six months since 1994, making it one of the earliest mentoring networking conferences in the country. However, we have never had much corporate or foundation sponsor support to build the conference to its full potential. Look at the sponsor levels and help us build this support.
http://www.tutormentorconference.org/sponsor.asp