A transition to success
In 2024, I was invited by the Sioux Falls, SD 211 hub, the HelpLine Center, to attend an information session about a framework called Transition to Success that sought to treat poverty as a social condition and a health concern.
I was fascinated by the idea that poverty is a treatable condition, much like diabetes or lead poisioning, and even more intruiged by the fact that someone had put together a model for addressing it like a health condition.
Most of my life, poverty had been presented as a moral failure, a result of someone not wanting to work hard enough, or save enough, or some other such belief. I didn’t grow up in poverty, but I experienced it when I visited family in Colombia, and I knew community members at home in Nebraska who felt it every day. And as someone who works with students, I see it every day in some way, with youth striking out on their own or older adults trying to upskill and find economic stability.
So when I was later invited to go through the training to become a coach in the TTS model, I dove in, hoping to use the tools and langauge provided by the model to help make my community a better place.
Although there are many components to this framework, one of the elements is something called The Map of My Dreams, a workbook that supports folks as they work through the steps of identifying dreams and barriers with a coach. I had to complete my own Map as I underwent training to be a coach in 2024, and then again as I wen through trainer training in 2025.
As someone who believes in the power of writing, I know there’s a lot of good juju in writing down one’s dreams, and I’ve enjoyed the process of dreaming on the page and thinking about the steps I need to take to get somewhere.
Today, I had a conversation with a college president (not the one at the college I attend nor the one I work for), and we got to talking about how for so many students today, it’s hard to think about the future when getting through Just.This.Moment is all that one can handle.
As I work on my doctorate, there are plenty of times that I can’t see the future and feel overwhelmed by the present, but I was reminded today that putting a goal on the page is a good way to set intention and have something tangible to work toward.
This feels particularly poignant to me as I begin a new endeavor, that of being a Initiator Fellow with the Initiative Foundation, based in Little Falls, MN. I’ll be writing about this regularly, so check back to learn more about the learning, coaching and transitions I’ll be experiencing as I dream a big dream and put it on paper, on the web and into practice in real life over the next couple of years.