Back in 2016, ninety-nine girlfriends’ first-ever grant recipient was PDX Bridge. It’s an innovative nonprofit that “bridges” young people coming out of foster care, homelessness and the juvenile justice system – and sometimes all three – from high school through the first year of community college. As of this year, PDX Bridge has guided almost 300 students into Portland Community College and Mt. Hood Community College – impressive, since 50 percent of this group typically does not even graduate high school.
“That first grant was really important,” says Emily Froimson, executive vice-president of the national organization Achieving the Dream, now the umbrella for PDX Bridge. Emily, impressed by the group’s scrupulous grant-giving process, became a ninety-nine girlfriends member herself in 2017. “The grant helped us set up a citywide initiative that brought together over three dozen partners – such as social service agencies, alternative schools, community colleges, New Avenues for Youth – to build communication, get everybody in the same room, and keep these students from falling through the cracks,” she explains.
The Covid-19 pandemic has heightened students’ unmet needs, for example offering remote services, providing refurbished laptops and funds for food and housing as jobs continue to be lost. “Our students have a real risk of disengagement, of not feeling like they belong in college,” says Emily. “They typically have not done well in traditional schools, and they require more assertive outreach. They are fragile, and over the last decade the support systems have become increasingly fragile. We are expecting more need.”
As part of Achieving the Dream, PDX Bridge works with individual students and community colleges themselves. Recognizing that community colleges are America’s most accessible gateway to better economic opportunity, Achieving the Dream is a network of more than 277 institutions of higher education and other non-profit and foundation partners that champions “evidence-based institutional improvement.” The agency, founded in 2004, describes itself as “the most comprehensive non-governmental reform movement for student success in higher education history, dedicated to helping more than 4 million community college students in 44 states and the District of Columbia have a better chance of achieving their dreams.”
Statistics never tell the whole story, though, so let’s look at one Portland student. She used a $500 student support gift from Achieving the Dream to help with move-in costs so she, her partner and their 18-month-old son were able to leave the shelter where they were living and rent their own apartment. She hopes to work in the medical field and will continue her education at PCC with the support of the agency’s Future Connect scholarship.
That’s a dream on the way to being achieved, and a bridge to a different life. Seeded four years ago by ninety-nine girlfriends.
— Heidi Yorkshire