George F Bartan's Page

George, I led a volunteer-based non-school tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975-2011 where workplace volunteers connected with youth in one-on-one weekly tutoring/mentoring sessions as well as group learning. Volunteers provided most of the leadership, organizing, coordinating, etc. It's from this that my own believe aligns with yours. The Internet provides a wealth of examples that are in place all over the world. If volunteers can have access to these examples they can borrow ideas they like and apply them in programs that they are part of.  While I'm certain this is happening in different places, I don't know of any central web platform that is bringing volunteers from different tutor/mentor programs together to stimulate their involvement in building and sustaining more effective non-school learning programs.

Hi George, thanks for connecting. I've been on Classroom since its first year and while I see a lot of good ideas shared among educators I don't see much focus on non-school hours and opportunities to connect youth with volunteers in organized non-school programs.  I also don't see much focus on collaboration, collective actions, and work that would help each of the non profits and small businesses operating in this sector get the ideas, talent, dollars needed to build and sustain long-term connections with kids, and to have services available in more places.  If  you agree we could make an effort to draw people into that type of collaboration or we could use other on-line forums for that purpose. I host one at http://tutormentorconnection.ning