OUR STORY
Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) is a non-profit organization that for more than ten years, has focused on connecting rural communities with healthcare, education and market opportunities by building POVERTY CAUSED BY RURAL ISOLATION SHOULD NO LONGER EXIST.pedestrian footbridges over seasonally impassable rivers. Bridges to Prosperity envisions a world where poverty caused by rural isolation no longer exists. By innovating, educating, and inspiring members, isolated communities can have an improved quality of life.
The B2P Chapter at the University of Michigan is a student-based organization committed to providing students an opportunity to apply their engineering knowledge to design, plan, fund, and build these pedestrian foot bridges for rural communities in developing countries.STUDENTS APPLY ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE TO BUILD BRIDGES.The B2P Chapter at the University of Michigan is a student-based organization committed to providing students an opportunity to apply their engineering knowledge to design, plan, fund, and build these pedestrian foot bridges for rural communities in developing countries.
Our Parent's Story
Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) started in 2001 when founder, Ken Frantz, saw a picture in a National Geographic Magazine. The image showed men dangling precariously, using ropes to pull each other across a wide, high and broken bridge span over a portion of the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. Ken soon discovered that his brother, Forrest Frantz, had seen the photo and had the same thought: repair the bridge.
Within three months Ken, who owns a construction company, donated time, money and materials, enlisted eager family members, friends and his Rotary Club to support the inaugural B2P project. B2P's first bridge project, Sebara Dildi, repaired the bridge crossing along the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and represents a vision that continues to inspire a new generation of bridge builders today.
The Sebara Dildi project also established B2P's guiding principles that we have followed consistently ten years and nearly 100 bridges later: to work with local communities, honoring their local knowledge, utilizing and sharing locally appropriate technologies, and teaching the technical elements of bridge construction. B2P continues to work in partnership with local communities, international and local non-profit organizations, in-country and U.S.-based universities, and industry professionals to “Build to: educate, innovate and inspire.”
Many of B2P's design innovations have come from partnering with like-minded organizations working in rural footbridge construction. In 2002, B2P founding members, Zoe Keone Pacciani and Chris Rollins, worked in partnership with the Swiss organization, Helvetas (now HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation.) Helvetas is widely considered an originator of the concept that community bridge building programs are an effective means to reduce poverty.