The Bridge Challenge sprang from Nido de Esperanza, a nonprofit that helps low-income moms in Washington Heights, and was based by Holly Fogle, the spouse of a enterprise capitalist, Jeff Lieberman. The couple additionally run the Monarch Basis.
Early within the pandemic, Ms. Fogle stated, Nido’s places of work have been flooded with determined calls. “I had mothers calling saying, ‘Now we have no diapers, no money, no method for this child and we’re scared to go away our residence,’” she recalled.
Nido distributed $150,000 in help to 100 households, and Ms. Fogle, a onetime finance main, grew to become a believer in what she referred to as the “return on funding” of direct help.
For Maureen Gardner, 35, the Bridge Challenge got here alongside when she was six months pregnant, not working and had simply realized that the lady she had been subletting her Harlem residence from apparently had been pocketing her $1,500 lease checks.
“Once I referred to as the administration workplace they have been like, ‘We don’t know who you might be, we don’t know who this girl is,’” Ms. Gardner stated. She was advised she owed hundreds in again lease.
As a result of she receives meals stamps for her and her son, Garrett, who was born in September, and has not been paying lease whereas her tenancy stays disputed, Ms. Gardner has been in a position to save practically $5,000 from her Bridge Challenge funds.
“When it’s time to depart, I’ll have the cash to go away,” she stated.
She additionally made a purchase order that some would view as a luxurious however that Ms. Gardner sees as a strategy to shield her and Garrett’s well being: a $430 washer that lets her keep away from her constructing’s laundry room, the place many tenants don’t put on masks. “My child doesn’t even have photographs,” she stated.