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ABOUT
BRIDGES TO PROSPERITY
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Founded in 2001, Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) has worked with communities in 20 countries to safely connect more than 1,000,000 people to healthcare, education, and economic opportunities by building pedestrian footbrdges over impassable rivers.
As part of this mission, the Bridges to Prosperity University Program engages students from colleges and universities around the world, providing resources and opportunities for students to take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to the real world problem of providing essential infrastructure investments in communities suffering from rural isolation. To date, B2P has worked with over two dozen universities from four different countries on bridge projects across Latin America and Africa.
2017 UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE
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The 2017 B2P University Conference will focus specifically on educating university teams on how to effectively complete a B2P bridges and on promoting collaboration and innovation amongst university teams. The goal of the conference is for attendees to leave empowered to effectively complete a B2P project from the initial planning and fundraising phases all the way through construction and inaguration of a bridge.
To most effectively meet this goal, the conference will be divided into two tracks, one focusing on operations while on campus and one focusing on operations while on site. These tracks will include sessions for builders of past bridges to compare lessons learned and best practices as well as hands-on construction exercises to allow students who have not yet built a bridge to get first-hand experience on how a B2P bridge is constructed.
THE HOST
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The 2017 conference will be hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame has been involved in human development for much of its 175-year history and has become a center of excellence with scholars working in a broad array of disciplines focusing their research on development work around the world.
In particular, the conference will partner with the recently created Keough School of Global Affairs. The Keough School's commitment to Integral Human Development within Notre Dame's larger mission of placing scholarship in service to the common good will be a guiding principle of the conference.
THE ORGANIZERS
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The conference is being organized and led by the B2P University Program Ambassadors in consultation with Notre Dame faculty and staff. The Ambassadors are a group comprised of past leaders from various university teams serving as mentors to the current university teams. These Ambassadors have seen the effect that bridges can have on communities that suffer from rural isolation and are excited to pass on knowledge to another generation of enthusiastic bridge builders.
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