About Bridge to Hope
On January 26, 2004, I met with Diane Casey-Lee, Executive Director of the Cape Cod Council of Churches as an intern from Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. The Council of Churches consists of a consortium of churches on Cape Cod. At this meeting, we discussed the potential of implementing a one-on-one mentoring program matching Christian women in the community with incarcerated women re-entering the Cape Cod Community upon release from the Barnstable County Correctional Facility in Bourne, Massachusetts.
After conducting a needs assessment, obtaining demographic information on the population of women in the Correctional Facility, researching other mentoring programs and locating private, county, state and national funding resources, I presented the outcome of my research to the Cape Cod Council of Churches Board of Directors’ meeting on March 2, 2004. The proposal was enthusiastically supported and a motion was made to accept and implement the mentoring program in the spring of 2004. However, the program was delayed until July of 2005 when we received $25,000 from Barnstable County to fund the pilot program – the Bridge to Hope: A Faith Community Partnership. We started with 6 mentors and 6 mentees.
On September 17, 2010, we celebrated our 6th year at our annual Bridge to Hope Celebration.
