The Breaking Through (BT) initiative of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation seeks to prepare low-skilled adults, adult learners who are below college-level in reading, writing and/or mathematics, often lacking a high school diploma, and frequently low-income, to be successful in college and the labor market by strengthening and expanding policies and practices within community colleges. The initiative also strives to promote public policies at the state and federal levels to improve outcomes for low-skilled adults and develop community college leaders who support and promote these educational opportunities. At the start of the BT initiative, six leadership colleges were selected to receive demonstration funding to expand their initiatives locally and ten learning colleges received funding to engage in peer learning, encouraging community college practitioners to learn from one another, with special emphasis placed on helping learning colleges to jumpstart new initiatives for low-skilled adults. This brief summarizes major findings from the first year of a two-year evaluation of the original 6 community colleges engaged in the BT initiative, drawing on multiple data sources including documents produced by the sites, semi-annual reports, observations and interviews conducted during professional development meetings, and field notes obtained during site visits between October 2006 and February 2007. (Contains 2 footnotes, 2 figures, and 1 table.)