Unfortunately, Covid caused us to temporarily stop offering our Getting Ahead and Bridges Out of Poverty classes. However, this past summer we had Getting Ahead up and running, (masked and socially distanced). Although the class was small, we had two of our Pathways graduates attending along with several Pathways parents. All were excited about the material and by the end of the 8-week (36-hours) course, four of the graduates had enrolled in Health Coaching with Carilion Clinic, held on-site at PCC. One student started journaling throughout the course and spoke at graduation, a big step for her! She also started going to her community neighborhood council and became active in its work. On October 20th we began a Getting Ahead Support Group for all graduates and we look forward to watching them grow and building more resources for their future stories.
Bridges Out of Poverty Workshops started back up in October with participants from Carilion, FSRV, Boys & Girls Club, and PCC, including some PCC board members. There were lively discussions and lots of participation with hands-on learning activities. We are gearing up for another workshop on November 4th and 5th. Eventually, we plan to be doing site visits for the partner agencies in our collaborative, through the United Way of Roanoke Valley, helping them apply Bridges concepts to their institutions, starting with a client “walk-through”.
Currently, we have trained people from 30 different agencies in the Roanoke area with a total of 168 graduates!
-Susan Frank, Resource Coordinator