Black Women Build – Baltimore
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
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.
Banner Neighborhoods Community Corporation
Banner Neighborhoods provides low-income senior and disabled homeowners with home repairs and handicap modifications. Relieving homeowners of the cost and difficulty of completing home repairs and maintenance enables them to age in place and retain their community ties and social networks. The exterior house improvements, and in some cases tree and vine removal in yards, are critical to keeping senior’s home compliant with code, avoiding environmental citations and municipal fines that unpaid can lead to tax sale and loss of a home.
Baltimore Outreach Services, Inc.
Baltimore Outreach Services (BOS) operates a 40 bed shelter for women and children in South Baltimore, one of only three family shelters in Baltimore City. To support and stabilize families staying at the shelter, BOS offers case management, job training and employment support services, educational programming, health and mental health services, and transitional housing. In Fiscal Year 2020, BOS served 98 women and 145 children. This grant provides general operating support for BOS.
Baltimore Kids Chess League, Inc.
Sponsored by the Abell Foundation and Baltimore City Public Schools since 2004, Baltimore Kids Chess League (BKCL) offers an academic extracurricular program that serves more than 150 children from kindergarten to 12th grade in 21 schools. Due to Covid, BKCL has migrated to a new virtual format, using the innovative “Think Like A King” chess software to move students through chess strategy sessions, assigning a chess rating based on each student’s level of play, and effectively matching opponents with an equivalent level of chess skill. 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.