Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Chesapeake Climate Action’s “Rebuilding Baltimore’s Workforce” initiative will advocate for a domestic Marshall Plan to create new jobs for unemployed and newly unemployed residents in Baltimore City. The initiative builds on their track record of success in creating local jobs and job training efforts that address the global crisis of climate change. Massive urban investments to weatherize low-income homes, plant trees, and train workers for the solar and wind power and cleaner transportation jobs is intended to restart the economy and provide living wage jobs.
Chesapeake Bay Foundation
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) initiated oyster gardening efforts as a nature-based solution to pollution with the knowledge that a single adult oyster can filter and clean up to 50 gallons of water per day and oyster beds provide essential habitat for fish and other Bay creatures. The oysters will be grown on a novel solar powered and automated production system on a floating platform to replenish native oyster populations at Fort Carroll. CBF will provide a complementary environmental education and oyster gardening workshops to teachers and community members on the restoration challenges of the Chesapeake Bay.
Catherine’s Family and Youth Services
Catherine’s Family and Youth Services (CFYS) serves families, youth, and seniors in Park Heights and other communities in Northwest Baltimore. CFYS provides a range of services, including a free after school and summer program for neighborhood youth, a food pantry, school supply drives, clothing distribution events, and referrals to other agencies for additional services. This grant supports CFYS’s emergency food distribution program, which provides prepared meals for 500 – 1,000 people each week through a partnership with World Central Kitchen and Breaking Bread restaurant, a Black-owned Baltimore restaurant. In addition, CFYS supplements the prepared meals with donations of meat, produce, bread, nonperishable foods, baby supplies, paper goods and cleaning supplies.
CASA de Maryland, Inc.
The Baltimore Welcome Center provides employment placement services for day laborers and low-income workers who begin to assemble early in the morning in the hope of being selected for jobs in construction, landscaping, home improvement, sanitation, and other day-to-day, physical labor-intensive jobs. In the coming year, CASA plans to place workers in 1,700 daily jobs, 40 temporary/seasonal jobs, and 35 permanent jobs; to provide 50 people with legal consultation on immigration, employment, or housing matters; to provide 500 people with basic financial education/counseling, and 300 low-income households with free tax preparation services; and to educate 200 eligible Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) about the naturalization process.
BUILD
Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) is a broad-based coalition of faith institutions, schools and neighborhood associations that collaborate to make Baltimore a better place to live, work and raise a family. This grant supports BUILD’s COVID-19 Emergency Food Program. Launched in April 2020, the program provides weekly deliveries of food to 1,250 families in East Baltimore who have been adversely impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic. BUILD is working with four East Baltimore churches, and housing developer ReBUILD Metro, to identify families in need of food assistance and deliver weekly boxes of produce and nonperishable foods. In addition to providing food for families struggling with food insecurity, the program provides part-time employment for the drivers who deliver the food, most of whom are residents of the communities served and in many cases receive food assistance themselves.