NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Jim Unruh is facilitating the Bridges Out of Poverty training being held in the Community Room at the Horizons Building in Hutchinson April 12.
"What Bridges Out of Poverty talks about is having folks have access to resources," Unruh said. "Resources could be food, it could be housing, it could be health care, it could be a job. It's the wide range. Each individual person, each individual family, has a different story, has different experiences. Part of our work is community folks meeting folks halfway in between and walking with folks. Relationships are a key part of transformation."
When a person is fighting for daily survival, they think about life differently than someone who knows where their next meal and their place to sleep is coming from.
"If you've been struggling to find resources for a prolonged period of time, it changes how you view the world," Unruh said. "It's a shift from what traditional middle class folks are thinking about, in terms of being future oriented, achievement oriented, that work, education and planning and managing is the way forward. If you're in survival mode, you are just thinking about the now. You are thinking about your key relationships, because you don't have access to things you need or resources, you have access to people and people supporting each other. That gets you into that survival thinking."
Unruh admits that four hours is not really enough to flesh out the concepts, but the goal is to create a hunger to learn more and to get involved.
"Once you introduce the ideas and create a visual of the direction and how people interact, it's based on folks having these a-ha moments," Unruh said. "I didn't realize that, but all of a sudden, it makes sense. On the 12th, I imagine there will be lots of folks saying, oh, yeah, now I get this. It makes sense to me."
The training is from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and is funded by a Community Pathways grant from Blue Cross, Blue Shield.
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