32MayJune04BuildingBridgeOfHope

Building a Bridge of

Hope

BY AMY DURKEE

C

arol Banks is a diminutive woman with neat, shoulder-length hair. As she sits in her white sweatshirt and crisp blue jeans, it’s hard to believe that this youthful woman is the mother of three grown children and a toddler. It’s even harder to picture her driving an 18-wheeler for a living, as she did before her youngest was born.The more she talks, however, the easier it is to imagine this spunky mom maneuvering just about any situation life might hand her.

She has big news to share with her Bridge of Hope mentors on this warm October night. She just landed a job in medical billing at a local hospital and found a trustworthy woman to care for her for her 2-year-old. Come Monday, Carol will get a chance to start fresh.

Her mentors, Karen and Penny, are thrilled.They know that less than six months ago Carol was in a desperate situation—jobless, homeless, and hopeless.

After the birth of their daughter, Carol’s husband slowly became lost in alcohol and depression. Carol admits she was too proud to let her family and friends know that her husband was drinking the grocery money away.“I was looking for help with food and diapers through the phone book. I could ask strangers to help me, but I couldn’t ask my own family.”

When the child was 8 months old, Carol faced the fact that her husband had become abusive. Although she loved him, she realized she needed to get both her daughter and

herself out of harm’s way. They ended up at a “safe house” in Media, Pa., but Carol insists the place didn’t live up to its name.“We were in with hardcore street women,” she explains.

“I was afraid for my life and my valuables…I said to myself, ‘I’m already doing this at home!’” Defeated, she returned to her husband the next day.

Eighteen months went by before Carol was finally shaken from her stupor. One morning, in a rage, her husband threw a frying pan across the kitchen, and Carol went again to the phone book:“I called an 800 number and said,‘I have to get out of here. I’m strong enough today, but I might not be tomorrow.You’ve got to help me now.’"

The shelter she found this time was markedly better than the previous one. “Once I got there and knew I was safe, I just broke down.” She spent two weeks crying, then began to put the pieces of her life back together.At the shelter she was referred to Bridge of Hope, a nonprofit ministry that provides homeless single moms with 12 to 18 months of financial, spiritual, and practical support while they regain independence.

Carol applied immediately, knowing that such a program would give her the stability she needed to get herself established.

The Bridge of Hope application process, which includes a lengthy interview with the applicant to make sure she understands and is capable of the kind of commitment and goal-setting that will be required of her, took several weeks.

While Bridge of Hope staff members were ascertaining that

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Carol was right for the program, she reached her one-month maximum stay at the shelter, so she and her daughter became part of a local hospitality network which arranged for them to sleep on cots in various churches in the area.

Carol was desperate for a permanent solution to her situation. At one point, she recalls, her social worker admonished her to relax. Carol was indignant. “How can I relax?” she protested. “I’m sleeping in a church! I won’t relax until I have my own bed.”

In late July, two months after fleeing her husband, Carol was finally admitted to the Bridge of Hope support program.

They matched her with a mentoring group at a local Presbyterian church, and her mentors helped her move into her new apartment over Labor Day weekend.

Carol recalls the night she met her mentors for the first time.“It was really scary,” Carol confides.“I had never asked for help before; I’d always been my own back-up.They asked how they could help, but I thought,‘I can’t ask them!’ I didn’t want to seem needy.”

Somehow, Carol got up the courage to share her needs.

She was amazed as a roomful of strangers pulled out their calendars and started busying themselves with a solution.

Penny, whose kids are all grown, works as a special-education aid in a local school. She admits that she was hesitant to volunteer as a mentor.“I’m a private person. I wasn’t sure I could make the commitment or that I had anything to offer.”

But when she realized she could help by finding and refinishing second-hand furniture, she signed up. As it turns out, Penny has done a lot more than simply refinish furniture.

She organized Carol’s move, has helped with decorating, and even opened her home to Carol and her daughter for the week prior to their move.

Penny says being a mentor has really stretched her.“This is not something I normally would have done—inviting someone to stay with me—but it worked out!”

Bridge of Hope started in the late 1980s when two Philadelphia-area women—a public-health nurse and a shelter director—noticed that they were seeing the same families over and over again. It was clear existing services weren’t enough to stop the cycle of homelessness and poverty.What families needed was real support, and they were convinced it was the church’s job to provide it. The two were able to get their own church and a few others in their area involved, and what was to become the first Bridge of Hope affiliate was born in 1988.

The Bridge of Hope model is about empowerment, not charity. BOH relies on a three-way partnership between the homeless family, a trained, church-based mentoring group of eight to 12 people, and the local Bridge of Hope affiliate.

The affiliate provides temporary rental assistance and case-

management services while the mentoring group provides what Bridge of Hope staffers call a ministry of friendship.

Mentors help with logistics like childcare, furnishing a new apartment, and transportation, as well as offering spiritual nurture and emotional support; in other words, they become friends to the woman and her family. The homeless mom provides her own initiative and a willingness to trust others.

In its 15 years of ministry, Bridge of Hope has grown from one office to four affiliates and a new national office.

Over that time, the organization has helped move more than 160 families from poverty to self-sufficiency and facilitated in birthing a multitude of lasting friendships between oncehomeless families and mentors. Boasting an 80-percent success rate, Bridge of Hope is providing a cutting-edge model for ministry in the church.

Current affiliates are located in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and Executive Director Edith Yoder reports serious interest from groups in Colorado, Missouri, and Michigan.

Yoder sees trust as key to a participant’s success. Often, those in the program have been hurt so many times that they have learned not to rely on anyone but themselves.

Certainly Carol Banks can relate to this.“I probably wouldn’t be in this situation if I had asked for help before,” she realizes. “I now see that I can’t do everything on my own.”

Once the women dare to trust, they find that they can take some risks. Only a few weeks ago, both Carol’s work and childcare situations were far from satisfactory.“The work environment was very unprofessional,” she explains,“and my daughter’s daycare just wasn’t working out. I had to leave both, but without Bridge of Hope I would’ve been stuck.”

With the financial support from Bridge of Hope and the nurture from her mentors, Carol dared to step out in faith.

“I knew I didn’t have to stay in a bad job,” she says. Now, she’s looking forward to going to work again.

When asked if it’s depressing to work with homeless families, Cheryl Swartley, director of the BuxMont affiliate in Norristown, Pa., responds,“Not at all! We rarely get to see how resilient the human spirit can be.Watching what these women have been through and how they come out on top is amazingly hopeful.They aren’t charity cases!”

Bridge of Hope offers churches an inspirational model for evangelism. Mentors are encouraged to share the love of Christ with families and to welcome them into the faith community, while making it clear that church involvement is not a requirement for support.

Yoder leans forward as she says,“We need to learn to be invitational and make our faith something that others want. A lot of our moms come to us angry at God.They wonder how God could let this happen to them.That’s not an easy quesContinued on page 38.

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Building a Bridge of Hope continued from page 15. tion to answer.That’s when mentors can be the hands and feet of Christ. They can say, ‘We don’t know why this happened to you, but we don’t want it to happen again.’”

“I thought I was one of God’s lost children,” explains Carol.“How could I talk to him? I was so far down that I really believed this. But I started reading my Bible and praying again. I started coming back.” She remembers sitting in church one day, realizing,“God is cleansing me.”

Yoder reports that about 25 percent of their families integrate into their sponsoring churches. Many others return to churches they had attended in the past.

While the Bridge of Hope commitment ends after a year and a half, the friendships developed between the families do not.Yoder recounts the story of a young graduate of the program who now attends church regularly with one of the older couples from her mentor group. Many people in the church just assume that she is the couple’s daughter, unaware of how the original connection was established.

Another graduate still enjoys a monthly “girl’s night out” with some of Off the Shelf continued from page 35. side of the mountain, jarred free by an earthquake, had crashed down over it, killing hundreds instantaneously. I dug feverishly, but I could offer even less than a fat belly.The open blisters on my hands would uncover only mangled bodies; it would not bring any of them back.

Bergman admits her contributors, heroic as they are, do not change the world, but she clings to the plausible idea that there is a cumulative long-range hope provided by the collective humanitarian industry.As a Christian, I ask,“A

her former mentors. Others stay con- Postcards nected through occasional babysitting, continued from page 28. frequent phone chats, and email.

And then there are the risks inherent Carol, Penny, and Karen say it’s been much easier to develop their relationship at the very foundation of holistic minthan they expected. “It’s very comfort- istry: that we might do evangelism to the neglect of social ministry or vice versa; able,” says Penny.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s help in the that we might concentrate on individual change to the neglect of systemic change; sense that I’m needy,” adds Carol.

Penny thinks for minute, then holds that we might focus so much on the her hands together, chest-high, palms “doing” that we neglect the “being”; that down, her fingers aimed outward to we might spend so much time building illustrate her point. She says of their up individuals that we forget to build an relationship,“It’s like this. It feels smooth alternative community.

These and many others are the risks and even.”

“Exactly!” Carol exclaims. “It feels we run, but, as Helen Keller reminds us, it’s all part of the daring adventure even!”

Although BOH often links families of life—and holistic ministry. ■ to government services, affiliates receive no government funding. About half of their funds come from committed individuals; the other 50 percent comes from churches,businesses,grants,and fundraisers.

If you are interested in supporting Bridge of Hope or would like information on starting an affiliate in your area, you can reach them at www.bridgeofhopeinc.org or 866-670-HOPE. ■

“Loose the chains of

A freelance writer living in western New York, Amy Durkee is a regular contributor to PRISM. hope for what?” and diverge from the way these courageous colleagues often respond. My search for redemption of structures, and of souls, takes a turn toward the supernatural. The weakness exposed in the contributors is every bit as present in me. But I nonetheless have hope. It rests in a God that does care, and whose justice will, ultimately, prevail. ■ Steve Offutt recently completed service as World Relief’s country representative in El Salvador and is currently earning his doctoral degree in sociology at Boston University.

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injustice...”

–Isaiah 58:6

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Advocate for justice.

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World Vision is an international Christian humanitarian organization serving the world’s poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries.