Making The Connection

Exactly how many dodgy bridges Indiana Jones has had to cross in his adventures only he can say. And just how many dodgy bridge-crossing moments have been dramatised on screen are even harder to count. It’s all very familiar. One false step. A loose plank. A rope cut. An outstretched arm. A lunge to safety.

Certainly Ken had never given the shooting or locations of these scenes a second thought. Why should he? They were, after all, a world and a reality away from his successful construction business in Virginia. Sure, he had built bridges before. He had even made one to connect the dream island on the York River in Gloucester County where he had moved with his family. Retirement on the horizon and after nearly a decade of living there, Ken’s thoughts were turning to what his legacy would be. It was March 2001.

Few make a conscious decision early in life to become a philanthropist. Even those – young or old, rich and successful, or not – that become one, rarely expected, and rarely wanted to be labelled as such. And still don’t. Yet somehow, as philanthropists, they become more, so much more, than generous givers to many causes. So often, stories of philanthropists are stories of people taken completely by surprise, as if two parts of their brain make a connection for the first time.

In Ken’s case, an oil change did the trick. Waiting for his car to be serviced, he flicked through the pages of a National Geographic magazine. A picture of a man suspended in mid-air clinging to a rope caught his eye. At either end of the rope stood an arch of a broken stone bridge; far below, the steady flow of Ethiopia’s Blue Nile River. Groups of men on each side held and hauled the man across. He was not the first. Nor would he be the last to make this dangerous crossing laden with food, goods to trade and other vital supplies, connecting villages. Not all crossings would end with an outstretched arm, a lunge to safety.

It didn’t take Ken long, the time it took to drive home in fact, to decide what he was going to do. He would fix the bridge in Ethiopia, the one in the picture, the one he now knew had been deliberately destroyed by Ethiopians determined to stem the tide of Mussolini’s troops, the one that hadn’t been rebuilt for over 60 years, the one called the Second Portuguese Bridge, the one that would make a philanthropist of Ken Frantz.

Before his wife, Cheri, opened the door and asked if there was anything unexpected at the garage, Ken had started to think about the other bridges he could fix. Dotted around the globe, there simply had to be other dodgy, dangerous bridges on which isolated rural communities depended for their very survival. He would fix them too.

Wasting no time, he called his brother Forrest who, by extraordinary coincidence, had seen the same photograph and had also pondered how the Ethiopian bridge could be rebuilt. Ken contacted associates, friends and family to ask for their support. With Forrest he created a non-profit which he named Bridges to Prosperity.

From the beginning, Ken and Forrest determined that they would tackle the Second Portuguese Bridge from the bottom up, meaning that the first part of the project would be devoted to talks with village elders on both sides of the river. They in turn would be instrumental in guaranteeing government approval.

Blessings given, permits granted, the not inconsiderable task of assembling and transporting a 25-strong team with 25,000 pounds of concrete, steel and equipment to the bridge site could begin. The last 26 miles of the journey, aided by 25 donkeys and 50 porters, had to be made on foot. With every step Ken knew that he didn’t just want to stop people risking life and limb on a bridge crossing. He wanted people to prosper. Making the connection with trade, with economic benefit, with access, with self-sustaining communities, mattered.

The Second Portuguese Bridge over the Blue Nile was the first. More than 20 years later, in 2022, Bridges to Prosperity completed its 400th bridge. Of the 400 bridges, 100 have been built in Rwanda, more than 50 in Bolivia, others in Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Zambia and, of course, Ethiopia. Bridges to Prosperity estimates that, overall, it has now created new safe access for more than a million and half rurally isolated people worldwide. It’s only a matter of time before they number two million.

But exactly how many lives around the world will be safer, better, richer, happier, healthier; how many dodgy bridge crossings will become history; how many other philanthropists Ken will inspire; how many connections will be made; that will be a surprise.


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