Bridge Over Troubled Water

Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ mission is to enable high-risk, runaway and homeless youth to achieve a healthy and productive adulthood through prevention, intervention, and education services. Serving 2,433 youth ages 14 – 24 each year, Bridge offers a comprehensive range of health, educational, career and housing services. Bridge is the only agency in the Boston area to provide a continuum of age-appropriate services.
Website: http://www.bridgeotw.org/index.html
*Although this organization focuses its efforts in Boston, people from Somerville can go here to use their services.

1.Can you tell me a little bit about the work you do in Greater Boston?
I started off as a tutor helping students for their GED requirements. When a teacher was out sick for awhile, I worked their as a teacher, so instead of working with individual students, I worked with a large group of students. I also help with college prep in terms of FAFSA forms, SATs, essay writing, and interview skills.

2.How is your organization dealing with the economic downturn? Is it affecting your organization? What about the population that your organization serves?
At least in the education group, the economic downturn has affected our supplies so instead of getting one book per student, we ask students to share their books. We’ve also been limited in “fun activities” like educational field trips and pizza parties. The economic downturn also affects who we help because there are definitely a lot more people that we are helping, ranging from people who sit on the streets with cups to people who just lost their homes because of foreclosures. With the downturn, we are obviously seeing larger amounts of people.

3.In your opinion, what is the main economic need in Somerville?
I think the strength of Somerville is the small businesses. So an economic need in Somerville would be to help these businesses out with possibly loan or interest forgiveness, which could keep these businesses stable, and in turn keep the area of Somerville stable.

4.We're trying to understand how people and organizations in Somerville are connected. What are the three most important partnerships you have -- OR -- the organizations you work most closely with?
a) Tufts Medical and Dental School because they provide the health services for the group.
b) Realtors in the area to try and find affordable housing.
c) Local government because they provide us funding.