Thanks to the efforts of two industrious students and support from the Springfield Marriage Resource Center, a new “Within My Reach” program is helping women build healthy relationships.

Launched by Cate Downing ’08 and Christina Irwin ’08 with assistance from Andrea Singer ’08, the program is intended to help women “develop smart communication skills, learn about conflict management and apply healthy decision-making processes to any type of relationship” Downing explained.

Forest Wortham, director of multicultural student programs, who assisted the students, envisions great things for the program, which has included multiple workshops.

“These types of workshops are important today because we live in a generation that communicates through bits, instant messages and texting,” Wortham said. “The program teaches people how to look at not only high-tech communication but also high touch. People need to learn how to communicate face to face.”