Bridge Communities Receives Grant from The J.R. Albert Foundation

July 5, 2011 - PRLog -- Bridge Communities, the largest provider of transitional housing for homeless families in DuPage County, received a $20,000 grant from The J.R. Albert Foundation to fund “Bridging the Gap Between Healthy Eating and Busy Living,” a nutritional workshop series for its client families.

“We know that our families lack nutritional information, but they certainly do not lack motivation,” explains Vicky Joseph, Bridge Communities’ Naperville Community Outreach Coordinator and the program’s creator.  “So if we are able to present healthy options and institute this program component on a regular basis to families when they enter Bridge’s Transitional Housing Program, there is a better chance they can adopt the meal preparation into their goal plan in order to make it part of their daily living.   It’s about giving them access to nutritional information, healthy food, and quick, easy ways to prepare it.”

Through the grant, 20 homeless families in Bridge Communities’ Transitional Housing Program will benefit from pro-bono nutritional lectures by a registered dietician, an educational piece for children, ingredients to use in the meals, and special gifts at each session, which will include items like spices, take away containers, cutting knives, cookbooks and recipe binders.  In all, participants will attend four five-hour classes where the preparation, cooking, lectures, and lunches will take place.

Bridge Communities has already conducted two pilot nutrition workshops in Naperville, both of which were well attended and received positive response.

Jennifer Scott, who attended the pilot programs, raves, “I thought it was awesome.  I learned a lot about eating healthy and about making food really quick.”  She adds, “I learned about expiration dates and choosing fresh fruits and healthier cooking oils.  We used to go through so much vegetable oil!  Now I’m baking more, and I’m using more olive oil.  We’re eating more wheat bread, and I even bought wheat flour.”

“Our aim is to have a positive life-long impact on our families’ physical and financial health,” stresses Joyce Hothan, Executive Director of Bridge Communities.  “By the time our client families have completed the program series, the information taught will be reviewed and reinforced with the goal that it all will become a part of their daily living.”

That goal is already becoming a reality for Jennifer Scott.  “I have acid reflux,” she shares.  “Now I don’t have heartburn nearly as much because of the changes I’ve made in my diet.”

The J.R. Albert Foundation is a private foundation established in 2007, in Kansas City, Missouri, which makes grants in the United States to support health and nutrition research and programming.

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Bridge Communities, Inc. is a dynamic, grassroots, nonprofit organization committed to transforming the lives of homeless families in DuPage County through partnering with talented, resourceful individuals and groups in the community. Its program of transitional housing, mentoring and supportive services empowers the families to increase life skills and earning power to promote self-sufficiency, sustain permanent housing, and to break the cycle of poverty within the family unit. What began by co-founders Mark Milligan and Bob Wahlgren when they decided, in 1988, to begin to help homeless families, has now become a powerful current of change in the lives of hundreds of extremely low to low income at-risk families.