Baltimore Kids Chess League, Inc.
Sponsored by the Abell Foundation and Baltimore City Public Schools since 2004, the Baltimore Kids Chess League (BKCL) offers an academic extracurricular program that serves more than 750 children from kindergarten to 12th grade in thirty schools. Teams practice weekly under the auspices of trained chess coaches and compete in novice, local, state, and national chess tournaments sponsored by the United States Chess Federation.
Baltimore Corps
Baltimore Corps supports Baltimore City’s social innovation sector by recruiting and deploying mission-driven young professionals to Baltimore City’s public agencies and social sector organizations. As the local Kiva Baltimore operating partner, Baltimore Corps works with entrepreneurs, small businesses, and micro-businesses, with an intentional focus on supporting Black-owned businesses. Baltimore Corps’ Kiva Baltimore program staff assist businesses at every step of the process to apply, fundraise, and repay loans through the technology lending platform. Kiva-Baltimore supports Black-owned small-businesses and micro-enterprises operating in Baltimore City through COVID pandemic-related challenges and beyond. Grant funds will be used to support staff costs to meet expansion needs and increased demand from small and micro-business ongoing advice and consultation and provide 25 microloans through the Kiva-Baltimore platform.
Attendance Works, Fiscally Sponsored by Community Initiatives
Attendance Works will partner with the Success For All Foundation (SFA) in Baltimore City to provide an integrated attendance mentoring strategy, paired with intensive tutoring to negate learning loss and narrow equity gaps. Training for at least 22 tutors on how to effectively respond to absences and promote attendance is modeled after the Success Mentors initiative in New York that successfully yielded reduced absenteeism of nearly two weeks (nine days of school) for around 60,000 students between the years of 2010 and 2013.
Asylee Women Enterprise
Asylee Women Enterprise (AWE) provides asylum seekers, particularly women and children with comprehensive services and community. This two-year grant supports AWE’s partnership with Luminus, which is a legal services organization that has been accredited by the Department of Justice, to provide comprehensive legal services to 40 AWE clients that reside in Baltimore City per year over two years.
The York Road Partnership, Fiscally Sponsored by GEDCO
For many years, the York Road Partnership (YRP) has worked along and across York Road to develop a long-term vision to improve the commercial corridor, reverse the long-term trend of disinvestment, and support adjacent neighborhoods. The corridor is currently characterized by high commercial vacancy and a lack of community-focused retail. Support for an “Invest York Road” initiative will create a crowdfunding tool to raise local, community capital for acquisition, renovation, ownership and leasing of vacant and under-utilized commercial buildings along York Road in Greater Govans.