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For Ajimal, the support was transformative. She left home after her stepfather sexually assaulted her and her mother told her she was lying. “I didn’t trust anybody,” Ajimal remembers. But the Spanning the Gaps staff kept calling Ajimal and checking in. They helped her write the letter to financial aid that explained why she didn’t have parental support, something that brought back painful, intense emotions. They showed her “tough love,” as she described it, when she made the decision to take work shifts instead of attending her classes. “I started to trust them. I felt like they genuinely cared about my success. I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

From trauma counselling to helping with housing to addressing learning disabilities, the Bridges program takes an intense, 360-degree approach to helping students succeed. Given what their students are facing, the strategy is necessary, says Edwards. The students are often the first in their family to attend university. For many, their parents are working two jobs and the students may also be working to support younger siblings. In some cases, they have children of their own. “If you’re a single mom, your energy is going into surviving. You can’t focus on anything else,” says Edwards.

To add to the challenge, many students are also battling trauma and anxiety. “Our students exhibit a lot of the same traits as post-traumatic stress,” says Edwards. More than half of the students have learning disabilities, which are sometimes only diagnosed after they’ve been assessed by specialized educators at Ryerson.

SPANNING THE GAPS GRADUATES ARE “INCREDIBLE ROLE MODELS.”