When Tali Ajimal applied to study at Ryerson University, she was living at a shelter, working several jobs, and carrying the trauma of abuse. She didn’t get in.

It’s easy to imagine what could have happened to her. “She would have gotten a job and tried to survive,” says O’neil Edwards, program director at Spanning the Gaps – Access to Post-Secondary Education. It would have been almost impossible to find the time to upgrade her courses, and her university dream would have ended there. So Edwards picked up the phone.

Ajimal remembers that phone call well. “He said, ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’ The bad news was that I didn’t get into my program. The good news was that I qualified for a new program that I could start in September.”

Ten years ago, Ajimal joined the first cohort of Bridges to Ryerson, one of the programs offered by Spanning the Gaps, a Ryerson University initiative designed to reach out to communities that are underrepresented in the university. Founded on the belief that education can help break cycles of inter-generational poverty and social exclusion, Spanning the Gaps is one of the ways Ryerson is working with the community beyond the campus.

Each year, the Bridges to Ryerson program welcomes 70 students. On a part-time basis through Ryerson’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, the students complete three or more courses in foundational writing, reasoning and math skills they’ll need to succeed in university. Meanwhile, Edwards’s team provides fullon, holistic support to help students stick to their goal.

Students are exposed to different learning strategies and, for those who have a learning disability, a specialized instructor shares tactics that have been shown to work. Often, they’re getting the one-on-one encouragement and mentorship that they didn’t receive in high school. The courses build in difficulty and intensity over the year, explains Janice Pinto, case co-ordinator for Spanning the Gaps. “The students are put under stress so the next time they feel this, they’ll think, ‘I’ve felt this before, and I overcame this.’”