Welcome to Bridges Peterborough
We are ordinary citizens, passionate about challenging current ways of addressing poverty.
We question the way resources are allocated.
We question the power and advice of “poverty professionals”.
We are changing the conversation about poverty and privilege by making concrete differences in people’s lives.
Bridges Peterborough is a series of emerging social innovations
that have been and are being created to enhance opportunities for the
broader community engagement, connection and awareness.
Responding to rising levels of poverty levels, increasing precarity in employment, rising opioid addictions, and a lack in housing that is unaffordable, Bridges Peterborough believes that local people and community can help manage these issues by building relationships with each other, sharing resources, leveraging assets, and ending stigma.
By creating humble yet vital group initiatives like Neighbours Network, Bridging Teams, the Ambassador Program and social enterprises such as the Company of Conversation Changers, we’re aiming to pilot a different and sociocratic-like Model through Bridges Peterborough that is based in community connection, social innovation, and the international anti-poverty framework, Bridges Out of Poverty.
With a vision of changing the conversation around poverty, the scaling-out of this Model brings together volunteers from middle- and upper-income groups or resourced-citizens, to work in solidarity with those living on lower incomes or under-resourced citizens, to grow relationships, decrease social isolation, and increase prosperity opportunities.
Recognizing that poverty is more complex than economic status, our model's vision is to equip people with new relationships and resources that increase social and economic participation in the community, resulting in increased family and community stability and societal change in how we view poverty.