Posted in Bridges, Circles Campaign, Community, Phil DeVol on Aug 24th, 2010 1 Comment »
Ruby Payne defines poverty as the extent to which we do without resources. The beauty of that definition is that it gives us (individuals and communities) something positive to do to get out of poverty or to help others out of poverty—that is, to build resources.
But that is not how resources are talked about in [...]
Posted in Community, Phil DeVol on Aug 16th, 2010 No Comments »
People who attend Bridges and Getting Ahead workshops will often tell our trainers and facilitators that they had an aha! moment. (Thus, the name of the company.) Looking back over my years of presenting, it occurs to me that there are at least two kinds of aha! moments.
One of these I call a “National Geographic” [...]
Posted in Community, In the News on Jul 13th, 2010 No Comments »
In my last blog I examined the way some of the interviewees in this Philadelphia Inquirer article revealed a prevalent mental model of people in poverty in the United States. But the article also briefly mentions another issue that I think it is vital to discuss further.
The question raised by the article is whether the [...]
Posted in Bridges, Circles Campaign, Community, Phil DeVol, Question/Answer, Strategies & Techniques on Apr 23rd, 2010 1 Comment »
Martin Miller recently asked an interesting question on a previous blog post of mine – I’d like to take the time to respond to it below. Martin asks:
Thank you, Phil, for sharing this perspective. I struggle personally with the “tyranny” of the mind and thought process and would appreciate more information on this topic. Why [...]
Posted in Circles Campaign, Community, Diversity, Phil DeVol on Nov 24th, 2009 No Comments »
To see what the Bridges team in Dubuque, Iowa is doing, read the premier edition of their newsletter, available here.
Those of you who attended the Bridges and Circles Conference in Florence, Kentucky in October probably remember the team from Dubuque. They were not—and are not—shy. I had the pleasure of visiting them in mid-November.
One of [...]
Posted in Bridges, Community, Diversity, Mental Models, Phil DeVol on Oct 10th, 2009 3 Comments »
Communities that use Bridges concepts to address poverty have a way of talking about poverty and prosperity that leads to direct action. The conversations that lead to the action includes people of all classes, races, sectors, and political persuasions.
I’ve seen this in action and know it to be true, but I didn’t really appreciate how [...]
Posted in Bridges, Community, Diversity, Phil DeVol on Sep 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
This is a story about the business sector buying into Bridges and employing Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-by World graduates.
On June 9, 2009, 90 people attended a meeting at Goodwill Industries in South Bend, Indiana, to hear about the Future Story Project; 20 businesses were represented. The event was organized by the St. Joseph County [...]
Posted in Bridges, Circles Campaign, Community, Phil DeVol on Aug 14th, 2009 No Comments »
The first community to develop a Bridges Steering Committee was Springfield, Ohio. The actions that group took to address predatory practices in Clark County, Ohio, sparked the imagination of other groups that wanted to organize themselves to use Bridges concepts to address poverty in new ways.
Bridges Steering Committees began cropping up across the nation. Now [...]
Posted in Circles Campaign, Community, Phil DeVol on Jun 23rd, 2009 No Comments »
There are more than 100 sites using Getting Ahead, and there are thousands of ideas and best practices to be shared. As more and more Investigators graduate from Getting Ahead and begin to move ahead with their lives, the barriers they encounter and the solutions they find are forming a learning explosion!
Wouldn’t it be great [...]
Posted in Community, Strategies & Techniques, Terie Dreussi-Smith on Jun 9th, 2009 No Comments »
A colleague (call him William) shared with me all of the resources he brought to the Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting for his son at a middle school. Although everyone at the table had his son’s best interests as their focus, William told me he almost unconsciously brought the following resources to the IEP meeting:
His [...]
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