The following is from Diane Awbrey, BridgesICT coordinator.

As I reflect on the past six months, I see a strengthening of hope and a net of support growing across Wichita, Kansas. The BridgesICT initiative, part of HopeNet Wichita, is barely one year old yet has been busy spreading the word about the Bridges Out of Poverty model and how it can help move people toward stability. And we’ve been watching it happen!

In 2023, there were three Getting Ahead classes offered in Wichita during the entire year. In 2024, that number rose to 10 classes. Now, at the beginning of 2025, there are as many as 15 Getting Ahead classes on the horizon. These classes are not just the work of one agency or organization. Instead, they represent the intertwined commitment of schools, banks, churches, and a variety of nonprofit agencies working together, with the help and encouragement of BridgesICT.

Recently, we have also seen many Getting Ahead graduates begin to participate in the movement and give back in their own ways. Over a half-dozen Getting Ahead graduates have trained to be Getting Ahead facilitators. Others have started their own business, been hired in jobs that bring stability to their family, joined the BridgesICT team, or returned to college to pursue higher education.

HopeNet’s vision of putting a Getting Ahead class in each of the top 10 poorest zip codes for the next 10 years has flourished and grown into a much larger vision for the city. Although 2025 will see at least one Getting Ahead class in six of the poorest zip codes (and as many as three to five in some of them), the Bridges model in Wichita has moved well beyond Getting Ahead. We want to surround our graduates with a safety net of informed people and businesses who understand the challenges of poverty and want to walk with them toward stability.

By the end of 2024, BridgesICT had trained seven Bridges Out of Poverty trainers. These trainers held nine full-length Bridges Out of Poverty workshops and four one-hour presentations, so that over 600 people were introduced or reminded of the significant work they can do to help their neighbors and fellow Wichita residents stabilize. We have more workshops scheduled throughout 2025. As a result of those sessions, BridgesICT has had in-person appointments with over 100 agencies, community service providers, and city officials who want to partner with us. HopeNet, the backbone organization for BridgesICT, is rapidly creating a “net” of hope, which is implied in its name!

Most recently, BridgesICT has begun to build the Staying Ahead aspect of this comprehensive community model. In November 2024, we recruited “empowerment navigators” to learn to walk alongside the Getting Ahead graduates who requested more personal help. Robin, Shelby, and Dana will meet with recent Getting Ahead graduates to continue their journey together. These navigators were trained in the Bridges model, as well as other topics, such as how to ask powerful questions, how to model healthy boundaries, what trauma-informed care looks like, and how to use Thrive Lights to help Getting Ahead graduates engage in the process of realizing their future story. We look forward to training many more navigators this spring.

Thrive Lights, a self-assessment tool provided to Wichita by Stand Together, will be a powerful part of the Staying Ahead program because it will link graduates, navigators, and other service providers together to work with the same set of assumptions and results as a graduate moves toward stability. The goal of Staying Ahead is not only to create a navigator network but also to identify already existing classes and opportunities provided across the city by other Wichita agencies and organizations that can continue to speak into the lives of Getting Ahead graduates. We can’t wait to watch this network of hope develop this year!

At the birth of BridgesICT, in 2023, we had one funder who offered $5,000 to get us started. By the end of 2024, money had been raised through eight funders that filled out our initial budget. In addition, more than a dozen local businesses, churches, individuals, and organizations provided funds, food, and facilities for the growing number of Getting Ahead classes across the city. These monies go directly to making the program available to Wichita’s most vulnerable. In 2025, the budget has quadrupled, and the giving has kept pace. We look forward to adding staff to help coach new Getting Ahead teams, recruit Staying Ahead class providers, expand the reach of Thrive Lights, and recruit and train individual empowerment navigators. The bigger and stronger the net, the more hope for everyone!

As you can see, BridgesICT is thriving, much like we hope to see all who participate with us thrive as well.