Frequently Asked Questions
Who are we?
We are Bridge Beyond, a 501(c)(3) federal nonprofit corporation based in Pennsylvania. Our organization partners with college communities, specifically student volunteers, to help advocate, assist, and advance the efforts towards helping people who experience homelessness.
Why college students?
College students are a highly motivated, diverse, privileged group that is often in search of volunteer work. Many college communities are located within and around cities which are the epicenter of homelessness.
Bridge Beyond recognizes the potential of collaborating with college communities across the country. This is partly because there is a considerable under-utilization of the large number of college students in efforts surrounding homelessness. Additionally, college students have access to a vast number of resources, such as electronics and stable internet connection. This puts them in an ideal position to help address homelessness in the United States.
What is the relationship between metropolitan homelessness and college institutions?
We have noticed that the number of people experiencing homelessness is greater in metropolitan areas. Similarly, there is a large number of college institutions in those corresponding cities. This means that there is a greater amount of college students living in those locations. This can be seen when comparing the numbers in Figure 1 to the numbers in Figure 2.
Figure 1. The bar graph above shows the total city population (End Homelessness, 2017) in select U.S. metropolitan areas in 2016.
There is a sizable population of people who need help in these cities, and an even larger population of college students who are ready and eager to help.
As you can see in the Figure 2 below, the number of college students within these major American cities are far larger than the number of people who are homeless. For example, the ratio of people experiencing homelessness to college students is about one to 45. College students are an untapped resource to combat homelessness within the United States.
Figure 2. The double bar graph above shows a comparison of the total homeless population (End Homelessness, 2017) and college student population (Florida, 2016) in select U.S. metropolitan areas in 2016.
How and why did we start?
“It was a combination of volunteering at the Birmingham free clinic, working in an emergency department, and learning in the classroom that sparked a drive for me to want to become more involved in efforts surrounding homelessness. I was educated about numerous concepts such as our society’s unequal distribution of resources and how that affects already disadvantaged communities. I knew many students like me were eager to help. After having more conversations with them, we started to brainstorm ways that would allow students to become more involved with helping people who experience homelessness in a safe and streamlined manner for all parties involved.
With this goal in mind, I then recruited a diverse team of individuals with different professional and academic backgrounds to help bring this vision to life. The Bridge Beyond team has backgrounds in psychology, engineering, health care, computer science, and several other domains. The recruitment of individuals with such diverse backgrounds was crucial to the mission of this organization because I wanted to ensure that our approach was holistic in nature.” - Sharon Li, founder of Bridge Beyond 2020.
How do we fit in with the existing system?
We recognize that there are a number of other organizations that have been working extensively and have spent years establishing relationships with members of the community. Rather than producing parallel efforts with these pre-existing organizations, we are working towards utilizing the college student community to help fill in the gaps in efforts towards helping people who are experiencing homelessness.
In most professional fields, there are individuals with varying levels of expertise working together towards the same goal. For example, the collective contributions from physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in a healthcare setting ensures the most compassionate and effective care for their patients. We plan on working similarly by contributing a large number of non-expert individuals to assist community leaders with their goals of helping the homeless community.
We plan on doing this by streamlining the process of college students volunteering with the homeless community. There is always a need for more help, and there is a large college student population within cities who are ready and able to help. By utilizing the large college student community, we can help ease the burden for other organizations.
What are we doing now?
Our team is continuously educating ourselves on issues surrounding homelessness and the stories of those who experience housing instability.
We are currently in the process of having open conversations with community leaders who work closely with the population we are trying to serve. Not only are we learning more about the systemic issues surrounding the homeless community, but we are also gaining additional insight into how we can best support the institutions working with this population.
We are flexible and committed to doing everything within our power to develop our organization into an ally for other groups focusing on homelessness efforts and the homeless community itself.
What are we working on?
We plan to develop a basic, low-risk outreach program for our student volunteers to participate in. However, we understand the complexity of outreach efforts and do not want to cause any harm to our volunteers, other organizations, or the population we are trying to serve.
This is why we plan to focus on partnering with local volunteer groups and learn from these systems first. We want to aid other organizations and identify key areas where we can be complementary to their efforts. It is important to note that our version of an outreach program will be simplistic in nature, and the purpose of this project is to lessen the burden of other professional outreach teams.
Professional social resource navigators are burdened with limited resources and an ever-increasing caseload. We are in the process of creating a robust, flexible, and user-friendly online directory of resources and distributing this tool to the community. The Bridge Beyond Directory will be an invaluable tool for social resource navigators to connect individuals and families to the most suitable resource for their needs. Thanks to our college students, the directory will be frequently fact-checked and updated.
REFERENCES:
Florida, R. (2016, September 8). America's Biggest College Towns. Bloomberg.com. Https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/america-s-biggest-college-towns.
National Alliance to End Homelessness. (2017, September 1). Homelessness in the Most Populous U.S. Metro Areas, 2016 – Interactive Map. Washington D.C.