Posts by Phillip DeVol:

‘Opportunity Atlas’ provides hard data to deepen community discussion

In Bridges and Getting Ahead we identify four causes of poverty.  One of the research clusters is about “Community Conditions.” The Opportunity Atlas can be used by Bridges trainers to deepen community discussions. Getting Ahead groups can investigate this information when they are in modules 4 and 8. People are…

National report: How are Getting Ahead graduates doing?

In the first 145 days, 43% of graduates reduced reliance on benefits! A growing number of Getting Ahead (GA) sites are using CharityTracker to celebrate the changes made by GA grads. Getting Ahead sites from 10 states reported on a total of 623 graduates. To arrive at a financial return…

Bridges Across Every Divide Podcast – Episode 4: There is nothing else, just us and the data

Phil DeVol: Having been in a position to watch Bridges Out of Poverty grow, and I wish I could say I was a visionary and all of this came about through my vision, but that would not be at all true, what I find is that Bridges is something that…

Bridges Across Every Divide: Background and facts

Philip E. DeVol and Eugene K. Krebs We have written a new book titled Bridges Across Every Divide: Policy and Practices to Reduce Poverty and Build Communities. Getting ahead is hard to do Poverty percentages have essentially stayed the same since the early 1970s. The middle class is declining. The…

Bridges Across Every Divide Podcast – Episode 2: Tomorrow is another day

with Gene Krebs Phil DeVol: How do we get people from the left and right into this? One of the things that we look at in the different aha! Process books is the four causes of poverty. It’s not just two. Of those four causes, there’s one that conservatives pay…

Getting Ahead facilitator trains healthcare navigators at Case Western

Dr. Heidi Gullett, who is featured in the following article, is a certified Bridges Out of Poverty trainer and a certified Getting Ahead facilitator. She teaches medical students and Family and Prevention Medicine residents at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is also the inaugural appointee to the…

Podcast: Getting Ahead – The high-octane fuel in Bridges initiatives

Phil DeVol moderates a panel of users of Getting Ahead Thank you everyone for joining us today. Our purpose is to describe the Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World series and to bring in speakers who are using these versions of Getting Ahead. I’m really quite excited to be able…

Podcast: Silos!

As people use our ideas and begin to develop the work in their institutions, before long it kind of gravitates into: “Maybe the different organizations in town that have been using this should come together and build a collaborative.” And that really means getting out of the silos. We talk…

CharityTracker year-end Getting Ahead graduate report 2017

Thanks to the many Getting Ahead facilitators and graduates who contributed to this report. Inputting the data is a massive amount of work! Some observations: The number of graduates in the database, now at 569, is growing impressively. We trust that the number of days between assessments will grow; it…

Podcast: TrueConnect means no more payday loans

Phil DeVol and Doug Farry Our topic today is predatory lending and what to do about it. Those of us who have learned directly from people in poverty and those who are struggling to get by and Getting Ahead investigators know that predatory lending practices are a poverty trap. Those…