Building Bridges A Southeast Iowa Initiative

10/16/2026

💰🙏 Faith & Finance: More Than Just Money!

In our Faith and Finance classes, we’ve been learning that our relationship with money is often connected to so much more than what’s in our bank account!

❤️ Relationships & Money: Exploring how money impacts our relationships and the choices we make.

🧠 Understanding Our Decisions: Looking at the values, attitudes, and experiences that influence how we handle money.

🎯 Identifying Our Priorities:Taking a closer look at what matters most to us and how our financial decisions reflect those priorities.

💪 Overcoming Financial Obstacles: Most recently, we’ve started discussing the challenges that stand in the way of our financial goals and exploring ways to overcome them.

Our journey is about more than learning how to manage money. It’s about growing in awareness, strengthening our relationships, aligning our choices with our values, and building a stronger financial future.

✨ When we understand the "why" behind our financial decisions, we can begin making choices that move us toward the life we want to build!

10/13/2026

🍂🍁Lots of amazing things happening!!

👻🎃 Safe Alternative Trick or Treat is back for our October community service project! We are gratefully accepting candy donations: please drop off donations Monday - Thursday from 9am-1pm at the Maple Leaf Center, Monday - Friday 8am-4pm at Harmony Bible Church in Burlington, or M/W/F from 8am...

10/09/2026

A sincere thank you to Thrive Iowa for hosting and organizing the Des Moines and Louisa County Collective Impact Meeting. We greatly appreciate your leadership and commitment to bringing community partners together to strengthen collaboration and support families throughout the region.

Our very own Tim Svoboda, Executive Director of City Hope Foundation, shared an impactful message from Ecclesiastes 4:12.
Tim reminded us of the strength found in community, especially during difficult times, and the importance of lifting one another up.

We are grateful for Thrive as a resource for Des Moines County and look forward to working together to strengthen our community, walk alongside our neighbors, and help families find stability.

Together, we are stronger. A threefold cord is not quickly broken!

10/09/2026

🍂 Staying Ahead 🍁October Meeting Recap!🍂

We had a wonderful night at our October Staying Ahead meeting filled with good food, laughter, learning, and connection!

👩🏼‍🎨We kicked off the evening with a delicious dinner provided by Monti's' family and friends group" . They are such a joy, serving food up with lots of 💕. A huge thank-you for sharing a meal with our families! 😋

🤗Our families love to have fun, so we jumped right into an exciting team-building game featuring seven fun challenges! There was plenty of laughter and friendly competition. Check out the pictures below to see the fun! 🤣

We were also honored to welcome Battalion Chief Luke W. II Griffis with Burlington Fire Department who shared a valuable presentation on CPR. We are grateful for his time and for helping our families build important, potentially lifesaving skills.💯💪🏼

🍀📚👩🏼‍🏫🖍️Meanwhile, our kiddos had a fantastic evening with their 4-H group! They enjoyed hands-on STEM activities, competitive games, receiving their Book of the Month Club books, and spending quality time with their mentors.

🎃Another beautiful evening of building relationships, learning together, and creating memories! This is what community is all about. 💫

10/05/2026

❤️ Support the amazing ministries of City Hope serving our neighbors right here in Southeast Iowa 2 ways:
1. The free way; share, share, share, together we reach more!!
2. Grab your group, club, family and coworkers and buy tickets and join us for this fun night!!

❤️❤️❤️ Loving our neighbors!

09/27/2026

🌟 We’re Off to a Great Start! 🌟

Workshop 18
Getting Ahead
Faith and Finance
Bridges Bible Study
Bridges Kids

We kicked off our workshops this week, and what a wonderful beginning it was! ❤️

Ms. Melissa welcomed everyone with a delicious breakfast of pancakes and all the fixings. 🥞
❤️ Our leadership team welcomed our newest classmates, shared encouragement and wisdom, and reminded them of the impact that showing up, doing the work, and becoming connected to the community can have on their lives.

We spent time getting to know one another, building relationships, and playing some games.

👦🏽👧🏿👧🏼Our kiddos were busy too! 🧡 They created their own class constitution, practiced social-emotional skills through hands-on activities, and even built a robot! 🤖

We were also excited to have Ms. Mary from the ISU Extension and Outreach Office join us and spend time with our kiddos.

We are so excited to see what this workshop brings! We have some amazing families joining us, and we can’t wait to watch the growth, connections, and exciting things that unfold in their lives.

Here’s to a great season of showing up, doing the work, building relationships, and growing together! 💛

09/27/2026

🎉 Workshop #18… here we go! ❤️

We are just getting started, and already there have been moments that remind me why we do this work.

One of the most touching moments for me was hearing one of our participants share that she hasn’t felt like being around a group of people and that this was the first time in a long time she felt ready to do something outside of her home.

Her words were a beautiful reminder that every single one of us has a need to feel seen, valued, welcomed, and like we belong. ❤️

Those words stopped me in my tracks.

Sometimes we think we are just gathering people in a room. We’re having a meal, learning, talking, laughing, making connections, and getting through a class.

But what we are really doing is creating a place where someone feels safe enough to step back into the world.

A place where someone realizes, “I matter. People see me. I belong here.” ❤️

That is what community can do.

So as we begin Workshop #18, I’m feeling incredibly grateful for every family who has said yes to this journey. We don’t know all the stories that will unfold over the coming weeks, but I have a feeling there will be plenty of moments that remind us just how powerful showing up, being seen, and walking alongside one another can be.

Workshop #18, we’re so glad you’re here.
Let’s see what happens when we do this together. ❤️

09/20/2026

❤️ Thank you Ms Pam for joining our resource fair and sharing the great things you are doing in our community!!

09/20/2026

❤️ What a wonderful way to kick off this year’s Bridges workshops! ❤️

We started the year with a Resource Fair and Dental Clinic, bringing our families together with so many amazing community partners who are working every day to make a difference in our community!

Our evening was filled with new connections, helpful resources, lots of learning, and plenty of laughs! We are incredibly grateful to each of our partners who took time out of their busy schedules to come spend the evening with our families and share about the incredible work they do.

🌟 A HUGE thank-you to our community partners:

• ADDS – Mary
•Build a Bed– Larry
• Child Care Resource & Referral of Southeast Iowa – Tabitha
• City Hope Medical Clinic – Craig
• Community Action of Southeast Iowa FADDS – Joy
• Cradle Of Hope Pregnancy Resource Center Cradle of Hope – Pamela
• DAP – Jen
• Iowa Primary Care – Shelly
• IowaWORKS Accelerate – Jesse
• IowaWORKS Vocational Rehabilitation – Jody & Quincy
• Local Union 91 Sheet Metal Workers– DJ Avery
• Safe Families – Sydney
• Southeastern Community College – Amy
• Young House Behavioral Health – Eric

🦷 And what a blessing our dental clinic was!
Through the I-Smile Silver team, 16 of our Bridges families were able to receive dental visits. We are so grateful for the opportunity to connect our families with services that support their health and well-being!

💚 Our Bridges kiddos had a fantastic night, too!
Miss Mary from ISU Extension & Outreach - Des Moines County ISU Extension and Outreach, along with our wonderful Bridges Champion volunteers, kept the kids busy with STEM activities, social-emotional learning, and lots of fun and games! We love watching our kids learn, explore, build confidence, and make new friendships.

🍽️ And, of course, our meal team served supper with a smile! We are so thankful for the wonderful hospitality and care they show our families each week. ❤️

None of this happens without an incredible team behind the scenes. We are so thankful for our staff, volunteers, leadership team, community partners, and everyone who helped make this night possible.

This is what Building Bridges is all about- bringing people together, building relationships, connecting families to resources, and creating a stronger community together. 🌉❤️

We are just getting started, and we can’t wait to see what this year brings!