Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for Children in Baltimore, Inc.
$29,000 / 2020 / Health and Human Services
Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Baltimore provides support and advocacy for children in abuse and neglect cases in Baltimore City’s Juvenile Court. CASA recruits and trains lay volunteers who work closely with children referred by the Juvenile Court to assess their needs and make recommendations to the Court regarding the child’s placement and needed services. Research on the CASA model suggests that children with CASA volunteers are more likely to be placed in permanent homes and less likely to re-enter foster care after they achieve permanancy than children without CASA volunteers. This grant supports a new volunteer recruitment campaign, with a particular focus on increasing the number of African American CASA volunteers.
The Literacy Lab
$75,000 / 2019 / Education
A replication of the acclaimed Minnesota Reading Corps, Literacy Lab embeds rigorously trained reading tutors in PreK classrooms and provides 1:1 tutoring in schools to children in Kindergarten through third grade. In 2019/20, Literacy Lab nearly doubled in size with 65 tutors serving an anticipated 1,155 children in 24 Baltimore City elementary schools. Literacy Lab tutoring participants are between 1.5 to 5 times as likely to be on grade level than students who started at the same grade level and received no tutoring. In addition, Literacy Lab’s Leading Men program annually employs and trains five recent graduates of color in Pre K classrtooms, preparing them to enter a career in education.
Johns Hopkins University
$450,000 / 2019 / Health and Human Services
Vision for Baltimore is an innovative citywide partnership designed to improve vision screening and follow-up care for Baltimore City public school students. Launched in 2016, Vision for Baltimore screened over 50,000 students during its first three years, provided approximately 9,000 eye examinations to students who failed the vision screenings, and provided more than 6,000 free pairs of eyeglasses to city students. Partners in Vision for Baltimore include the Baltimore City Health Department, which conducts the vision screenings, nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides eye examinations and eyeglasses in a mobile clinic that visits schools throughout the city, Baltimore City Public Schools, which provides logistical support to ensure that children can be screened and receive follow-up care, and Johns Hopkins University, which provides staff support to ensure that children are able to access the services and encourages students who receive glasses to wear them consistently. This grant provides operating support for year four of Vision for Baltimore.
Advocates for Children and Youth
$50,000 / 2019 / Health and Human Services
Advocates for Children and Youth (ACY) is an independent organization dedicated to promoting the interests of children and families in Maryland through research, policy development, community outreach, media relations, and government relations. ACY is one of the leading champions of policies in Maryland that advance the interests of children across a broad range of issues, including education, child welfare, juvenile justice and health care. This grant supports ACY’s child welfare program, which focuses on the needs of foster and homeless youth in Maryland.
Fund for Educational Excellence
$75,000 / 2017 / Education
Toward the Year 4 implementation of Baltimore’s Promise, a collaborative, city-wide, cradle-to-career initiative to improve child outcomes.
