Bridges Out of Poverty, Clark County, OH 2009 B.O.P. Registration Form In 2003, Clark County began to lay the foundation for an anti-poverty movement.  The Bridges Out of Poverty initiative started the work of communicating across socio-economic and racial lines for the purpose of building community and ending poverty.  The Bridges Out of Poverty framework (DeVol, Payne, Dreussi Smith) teach middle class citizens and service providers the hidden rules of poverty, which helps to open minds to the culture of poverty.  Through the Getting Ahead Curriculum (DeVol), families that are motivated to move out of poverty begin to investigate the impact of poverty on themselves and their community and design strategies to personally get ahead and contribute the development of a thriving community.    In both the Bridges Out of Poverty and Getting Ahead workshops, mental models of poverty are developed, the hidden rules of the middle class are explored and the difference between casual and formal registers of language are discussed.  Once a community begins to develop “bi-lingual” populations, both speaking and honoring the hidden rules of poverty and middle-class, the community can begin to work together to deal with systemic issues that are keeping people in poverty. To date, there are over 3,000 people in Clark County that have been trained in the Introduction to Bridges Out of Poverty and five classes of families have taken the Getting Ahead leadership training.  A Steering Committee of community leaders has been meeting for almost 6 years, supporting such issues as predatory lending reform and litigation, payday lending reform and foreclosure research.  The next phase of development for the initiative was to utilize the Bridges training to build an intentional community across race and class lines to fight and end poverty, one family at a time. (See the Circles page for more information on taking the theory of Bridges and putting it into action with families wanting to escape poverty.) Think Tank, Inc. offers a 1-day Bridges Out of Poverty training for interested parties in Clark County, OH four times per year.  For other organizations in Southwest Ohio who are interested in hosting a training locally, please contact Marlo Fox at marlo@thinktank-inc.org  for pricing and training arrangements.  Think Tank will come to your location and offer a customized Bridges Out of Poverty 1-day training for you and your partners. For more information on Bridges Out of Poverty or aha!Process please visit www.ahaprocess.com To schedule a training in your community contact marlo@thinktank-inc.org