Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Bridge Over Troubled Waters provides effective and innovative services to runaway, homeless and high-risk youth ages 14-24, helps youth avoid a lifetime of dependency on social services, guides youth towards self-sufficiency, and enables youth to transform their lives and build fulfilling, meaningful futures.

Bridge’s innovative services follow a continuum-of-care model, where team members welcome youth in and offer support “where they are at.” As youth build their trust in the organization and their confidence in themselves, they move along a path to self-sufficiency and take advantage of various programs designed to help them strengthen their mental health and wellness, complete their education, find themselves careers, and work towards living independently.  These services, our team, and our mission are all focused on taking youth the whole way.

In the late 1960s, a dedicated group of women, teachers who were members of the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Boston, began reaching out to disaffected, troubled, and often drug-involved youth on the Boston Common and in Cambridge, which had become gathering places for young people who had no place else to go.

At first, the Bridge founders provided sandwiches, cold drinks, and non-judgmental conversations that turned into supportive counseling, referrals to health care, psychiatric services, a way back home if possible, and planning for alternatives when going home was not an option. Yet, by 1970, it was clear that traditional services weren’t going to work for this new and growing homeless population. Bridge Over Troubled Waters was formed, under the pioneering leadership of Sister Barbara Whelan, Sister Marie Keough, and Sister Barbara Scanlon.

Collaborating with a group of physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital, Bridge organized a volunteer-run mobile medical van to bring emergency and preventive health care to the streets. They were at the forefront of a national movement to develop innovative programs and practices to reach the most vulnerable, high-risk youth and provide the age-appropriate continuum of care that could enable them to transform their lives and grow into fulfilled, self-sufficient adulthood.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters became – and after more than 50 years remains – a national model and program incubator for youth development services that are effective in helping the most troubled and vulnerable homeless youth to turn their lives around.