When Mark Milligan and Bob Wahlgren first rented an apartment for a family experiencing homelessness, they didn't know that act of kindness would change their lives forever. Decades later, their vision is being carried out by thousands of people who were inspired by Mark and Bob's story to help others in need.
The History of Bridge Communities as told by co-founder, Mark Milligan:
The first meeting of Bridge Communities was conducted in July of 1988. It was held at my home in Wheaton around my kitchen table. While volunteering at a homeless shelter, I was moved by the number of families that relied on these services, especially when I noticed the same families repeatedly come back to the shelter. Seeing those same children returning time and time again really inspired me to take action.
At first though, I struggled with what I should do to address this issue of family homelessness in DuPage County, so I called a friend of mine, Bob Wahlgren. That afternoon, we decided we would rent an apartment and house a family facing homelessness there.
Our division of labor was that Bob would handle the administrative and I would handle the program. Back then, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but these early days of Bridge Communities became a time to establish who we were and what we valued.
In the following six years, Bridge Communities developed a three-month program for transitional housing, exclusively for families with children. This was a novel idea at the time when other transitional housing providers offered only three-week programs. After a little experience, we soon extended this to a two-year program.
At this time, we also started providing children with tutoring, the first of our Children’s Services programming, and began to build our first apartment building in Glendale Heights, which still houses Bridge families to this day.
The following years were very exciting for us. By June 1998, Bridge went from being an all-volunteer organization to having a staff of five, and over a five-year period, we grew to have 60 families in our program. Around this time, the idea of Bridge becoming a support unit for DuPage churches wanting to work with families facing homelessness originated, and with these new Program Partners, Bridge continued to grow.
These were our days of rock and roll. We owned 10 apartment buildings in DuPage County and were debt free.
Children’s Services was no longer just a tutoring program, but a comprehensive program exploring and working with all the concerns that children might have. To keep up with this new focus, the Children’s team grew from one person to three. The Employment team similarly grew from one person to three as they began more comprehensive efforts to not only find a client a job but teach them how to get the best job.
Every division of Bridge Communities grew and got better over these years, which brings us to our current staff that can provide truly comprehensive services to the families we serve.
Over the past decades, the greatest joy I have experienced with Bridge Communities is seeing the lives of the children in our program turn around: seeing them start to thrive and even go off to college.
Interested in hearing the stories of Bridge clients through the years? You can check out our 35th Anniversary Book here.