Bridges Community Sector Training

Bridges training will open your eyes to the challenges of poverty around you and equip you with the resources to cultivate sustainable success in your community sector. Bridges was co-created by people from generational poverty, educators, nonprofits, healthcare institutions, and community organizations, and provides a family of solutions that tackle the problems of poverty. Join other leaders passionate about making a difference in our community; you’re not alone in addressing the challenges of poverty.

Bridges Out of Poverty:

This seminar gives staff and volunteers a common language, understanding, and tools to prevent and alleviate poverty. Participants increase awareness of how economic class impacts life experience, resources, and stability. Customer service and teamwork in business and community settings are improved. This seminar is based on the book Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and Communities, a collaboration between Ruby K. Payne, Philip DeVol, and Terie Dreussi Smith.

Framework for Understanding Poverty:

This seminar gives in-depth information to help understand how economic class affects behaviors and mindsets. Participants can develop stronger relationships with their students to impact behavior and achievement and identify several key instructional strategies that meet the needs of the under-resourced learner. This seminar is based on the book A Framework for Understanding Poverty: A Cognitive Approach by Ruby Payne.

Workplace Stability:

Business executives, managers, supervisors, and human resources personnel gain the tools to improve employee retention and reduce employee turnover while accessing the hidden talent in their organization. This training provides the knowledge and tools to:

• Recognize the range of factors that create instability for employees,
• Understand the connection between instability, employee performance, and profitability,
• Identify the most effective techniques and tactics for increasing workplace stability,
• Create an action plan best suited to your business, its culture and employees, and
• Network with other business interests to share resources and training.

Tactical Communication (First Responders):

This seminar educates first responders (law enforcement, fire, or other emergency personnel) and representatives from other community sectors on economic class. Participants are trained on the hidden rules, mental models, language registers, and driving forces in poverty, middle class, and wealth. This enables first responders to stay safe while increasing call efficiency and effectiveness. Participants learn how Tactical Communication Training has impacted the relationship between first responders and the Toledo-Lucas County community.

Understanding and Engaging Under-Resourced College Students:

This seminar gives higher education faculty and staff the common language, understanding, and tools to increase the retention and graduation of under-resourced students. The focused professional development moves faculty and staff through a transformational process by first understanding the “what and why” of under-resourced college students and then developing “how-to” teaching and program-design strategies to help students succeed.

Bridges to Health and Healthcare:

Bridges to Health and Healthcare provides a fresh opportunity to reach new levels of mutual respect and cooperation among patients, providers, communities, and governments, with matching health outcomes improvement levels.

Healthcare providers will learn to:

• Engage and better serve individuals across the economic spectrum
• Reduce costs while achieving more successful patient outcomes
• Communicate complex medical information more clearly
• Design services to account for increasing diversity within communities
• Increase effectiveness within successful, patient-centered care initiatives

Public health organizations, communities, and governments will learn to:

• Reduce the health-disparities gap and improve outcomes for all, especially those at risk
• Build sustainable neighborhoods and communities coordinated with all stakeholders
• Engage all stakeholders in planning new practices for healthier communities
• Increase community social capital and cohesion linked to improved population health
• Provide collective-impact models to drive population research at the community level