Working To Enhance The Quality Of Life
In Baltimore And In Maryland.
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) works with the Port of Baltimore, one of the City’s largest and most concentrated sources of emissions, to reduce air pollution associated with freight and cargo transportation. EDF’s capable science and policy staff bring data analysis and evaluation skills, environmental information sharing, and best practice emissions reduction and clean energy implementation from their work with ports across the country.
Energy Justice Network (EJN) supports grassroots communities threatened by polluting energy and waste technologies through grassroots strategy and organizing support, research, and innovative mapping. EJN believes there is an opportunity in Baltimore to make productive use of recycled glass through the development of a social enterprise model that will generate revenue and create jobs for its Glass Recovery and Sustainable Systems (GRASS) initiative.
In March 2020, An End to Ignorance launched a food rescue and distribution effort in Baltimore in response to rising levels of food insecurity at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Started as a small, neighborhood-based food relief effort in Greenmount West, the program has grown rapidly and now distributes 500-600 twenty-pound boxes of food and household goods through a network of community-based partners throughout the city. This grant provides general operating support for An End to Ignorance.
Baltimore Witness will bring the D.C. Witness model of criminal justice transparency to Maryland’s largest city. Rather than merely an arm of D.C. Witness, Baltimore Witness will be a Baltimore project with a standalone website that is driven, directed and managed by a Baltimore staff. By following violent crime cases, starting with homicide and non-fatal shootings and expanding to pretrial decisions, Baltimore Witness will provide unfiltered data to assist in devising better crime reduction policies for the City.
Located in Baltimore’s Midway neighborhood, the Compound is a 20,000 square foot multi-purpose cultural space on one acre of land that provides affordable housing to 10 working artists, affordable work/studio space to 24 artists and artisans, as well as two worker-owned cooperatives and two nonprofits, the Alternative Press Center and the Black Workers Center. Residents and tenants are part of the Baltimore DIY art and music scene and the Compound is known as a venue for innovative music and cultural events.
Community Wealth Builders (CWB) focuses on promoting and catalyzing community wealth building models and strategies in Baltimore City neighborhoods that have experienced historical disinvestment. The Maryland Neighborhood Exchange helps Baltimore neighborhoods to grow local, minority owned businesses and community wealth through investment crowdfunding via a virtual platform through which local investors and businesses can learn about crowdfunding and connect. It helps these businesses mobilize their customers, fans, and other interested residents to step forward and invest.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues, Civic Works created the Affordable Produce Delivery Program where participants pay $5 for a box containing a $15-$20 value for one week of produce. Civic Works Real Food Farm (RFF) will serve approximately 5,000 Baltimore City older adults and family members, a majority of whom are African American. The grant will cover partial salaries of the food distribution manager, the Food and Farm manager and one AmeriCorp member, as well as vehicle mileage, supplies and PPE, printing and copying and phone costs of client order intake.
Black Yield Institute promotes the concept of black land ownership and food sovereignty through the development of ghe Cherry Hill Urban Community Farm. The farm increases access to healthy, affordable food; fosters positive community activity on a vacant Housing Authority of Baltimore City site; offers educational, skill building, and leadership development opportunities; and promotes dialogue about food access, neighborhood development, and environmental justice. Grant funding supports staff costs, equipment and supplies to continue urban farming production.
Black Women Build – Baltimore buys abandoned houses, works with Black women to restore them and then sells the houses to the women at affordable prices. The organization instructs trainees in the carpentry, electrical and plumbing trades while they work on homes they may later purchase. Trainees do not earn a license in a trade, but they are equipped with skills that they can parlay into a construction job and into savings from the knowledge of home maintenance. Grant funds will be used as down payment and closing cost assistance to support three home purchasers.
Black Women Build – Baltimore buys abandoned houses, works with Black women to restore them and then sells the houses to the women at affordable prices. The organization instructs trainees in the carpentry, electrical and plumbing trades while they work on homes they may later purchase. Trainees do not earn a license in a trade, but they are equipped with skills that they can parlay into a construction job and into savings from the knowledge of home maintenance. Grant funds will be used as down payment and closing cost assistance to support three home purchasers.
