Fellow Blog Post – Week 7

July 24, 2024

This week, I began working on Bridgeway’s annual report for the 2023-2024 fiscal year and I started by mapping out the content that I wanted to incorporate into the report.

I decided to dedicate a two-page staff profile that highlighted our Crisis Stabilization Program manager and the program itself. I want this portion to feature a major success story that the program made possible with a student who was experiencing high levels of detrimental behavior that included self-harm. They are now able to live more independently and attend classes at Bridgeway with fewer behaviors. I also left the room to include pages that would highlight our Giving Tuesday campaign which raised over $18,000 for our Bridgeway Academy Market (B.A.M). The market is located on the lower level of our building and is a space where staff and students can come for food and snacks. The program is run by students and allows them to practice occupational skills by working at the cash register and preparing the food. Unfortunately, our Food Service Manager stepped down from their position, and the Market has not been open during the summer season. However, I have set up a meeting with Emily Walker, a transition specialist for Bridgeway Academy’s Applied Program, who has been acting as an interim supervisor for B.A.M. to ask for updates about the program and its plans for the future. Bridgeway’s segment on Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid was also another spotlight from the previous year that I plan to include in the report. The Viewpoint production team reached out to Bridgeway to film a segment raising awareness for the organization. I thought this was an amazing story because it also raises awareness for students and adults living with developmental disabilities as well. I want to feature this experience and include the finished segment in the report with a QR code. Lastly, I wanted to highlight other unique programs at Bridgeway such as the Young Men’s Club led by one of our speech therapists, Henry Newberg, whom I have featured in another previous blog post. I’ve also made room to showcase our Bridgeway theatre group which is led by another speech therapist, Alexa Reck. Though I don’t know much about the program, I have reached out to her to hopefully get more insight into what it is and the positive impact it has on our students.

I’m still brainstorming the design of the report as well as how I want to write about the programs. I feel that I am hitting a writing block, but I know that I want to include as much human interest as possible and I hope my writing will showcase that throughout the report.

I am also in the process of finishing up our Charity Regatta social campaign. Though the campaign did not generate as much money as I hoped, I’m still happy about the engagement we got from viewers on our social media platforms. I’m also happy we were able to highlight places, programs, and teams at Bridgeway that we have not highlighted before.

Bridgeway’s Summer Program is also coming to an end which is so bittersweet because being able to interact with the kids has become one of my favorite parts of the week. We wrapped up Community Week where students were able to decorate the front of the building with sidewalk chalk art. We had guest visits from the Columbus Fire Department and it was so fun watching the students interact with the firefighters. I was also able to take pictures of the visit and loved how the photos came out. I will include a couple down below!