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.
Bon Secours Baltimore Health System Foundation
Funding from the Abell Foundation will support Bon Secours Baltimore Community Works’ Returning Citizens program, which is designed to help 100 returning citizens break the cycle of incarceration. All program participants will receive behavioral health assessments and financial education; 70% are expected to complete TYRO, an intensive, five-week life skills course; and 65% will be placed into jobs, occupational skills training or higher education programs.
Baltimore’s Promise, Fiscally Sponsored by Fund for Educational Excellence
The Grads2Careers initiative seeks to establish a pathway for City Schools graduates who are not enrolled in four-year colleges or universities into well paying, high-demand, and high-growth occupations in the city and region. Phase I saw the 18-21 year old population served by Grads2Careers meeting the targets of 70% enrollment, 70% completion, and 70% or more participants being placed in job or enrolling in college. On a systems level, the initiative seeks to build capacity at the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, City Schools, and with occupational skills-training providers as these various entities work together to better serve the 18-21 year old population seeking to enter the workforce directly after high school.