Feel Good Friday - Bridges to Prosperity

The start of a new year is a great time to think about building new connections and metaphorical bridges. It’s also a great time to learn about an organization building literal bridges, Bridges to Prosperity.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Kigali, Rwanda, Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) “partners with communities, governments, private sector, research and technology, and other stakeholders to help plan, prioritize, assess, construct, and manage transport access for rural communities around the world.”

Why bridges? According to info on their website, “almost a billion people around the world don't have safe transportation access to critical resources like health care, education, or employment due to an impassable river.” This lack of connectivity affects more than 1 in 7 people living in rural areas and is a root cause of poverty. B2P believes that “connection is the foundation to opportunity” and that’s what inspires their work.

It starts by building better data. As CEO Nivi Sharma explains in this TedX talk, 60% of rivers and waterways in Africa are not mapped making it difficult to know where a bridge might have the most impact. Working with data scientists and deep learning models, they’ve been able to map waterways and can now predict travel paths and travel times.

Next, B2P works with local communities, governments and foundations to build footbridges, also known as trail bridges, in areas where they’ll have the most impact. Right now work takes place in Rwanda, Uganda, and Ethiopia with plans to expand into Zambia and Kenya. This 1 minute overview video shows many examples of the bridges that have been built.

Trail bridges are an effective solution for rural communities where people mostly travel by foot, bicycle or small vehicle. They’re easy to build, maintain, and replicate in addition to being cost-effective, durable, and safe. By connecting people to educational, health care and economic opportunities, B2P impacts households across multiple dimensions.

Since they began, they’ve built over 600 bridges providing more than 2.5 million people with safe access to the resources they need. In the areas surrounding the new bridges, farmer profits increased by 70% because they were able to take their crops to market, household incomes increased by 30%, girls’ attendance at school is up by 200% and vaccination rates increased by 45%. That’s a lot of prosperity!

If you’d like to help Bridges to Prosperity reach their vision of “a world where poverty caused by rural isolation no longer exists” there are a few ways to do so. Make a donation and help amplify their message on social media. Follow on them Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.