PCs for People
Based in St. Paul, MN, PCs for the People also operates in Cleveland, OH, and Denver, CO, and is expanding to Baltimore. The organization will launch its efforts to increase educational opportunity and achievement, career readiness, and employment by providing low or no-cost refurbished computers, mobile internet access for $25/month, technological training, repair and troubleshooting services to low income residents in Baltimore City. This grant provides support for local launch staffing and related costs.
NPower, Inc.
In 2016, with support from the Abell Foundation and others, NPower replicated its IT training program for low-income young adults in Baltimore. NPower’s core training program provides students with 16 weeks of hands-on classroom instruction in hardware and software. The academic portion focuses on teaching fundamental IT skills, including networking, cloud computing, coding and service management. Following the classroom instruction, students earn their CompTIA certification and have the option to take additional certificate exams. NPower participants then enter a seven-week paid internship at a local employer, working four days per week, while one day is spent in professional development activities in the classroom. In the coming year, NPower plans to enroll 200 low-income young adults into training, graduating 160 and placing 136 into employment.
Neighborhood Housing Services of Baltimore, Inc.
Neighborhood Housing Services of Baltimore (NHS) serves 800 households annually through its homeownership counseling and financial coaching programs. NHS deploys down payment assistance awards, raises additional capital toward an ongoing revolving DPA fund, increases access to affordable homeownership for borrowers that face challenges accessing traditional affordable mortgage products, and attracts new home buyers to Baltimore City. This grant provides support for staff positions associated with deployment of those funds, housing counseling, and financial coaching, and targeted community outreach.
Mentoring Mentors, Inc.
Mentoring Mentors Inc. is a youth wholeness mentoring program promoting social, emotional, and intellectual development in addition to physical wellness for 6th through 12th grade African-American youth in the West Baltimore Windsor Hills area. Founded in 2015, Mentoring Mentors’ uses a “Near-to-Peer” intergenerational triad model, where young professionals and college students mentor program alumni in high school who, in turn, guide middle school students at Windsor Hills Elementary/Middle School. Mentoring Mentors enables the mentees, known as “legacy builders,” to receive support services afterschool within their own community to address and overcome adversity.This grant is a capacity building grant in support of staffing to a promising community leader.
Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland, Inc.
This grant supports a joint effort by Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland, Moveable Feast, Benefits Data Trust, and Health Management Associates to design and test a new nutrition services model that will enable health insurers and other health care providers to contract with community based organizations to provide nutritional services for patients. The project seeks to capitalize on increasing interest in, and opportunities for, the health care sector to partner with community organizations to meet non-medical needs of patients that have significant impacts on health, often referred to as “social determinants of health.” Food insecurity, and lack of access to nutritious food, is one of the major social determinants of health in Baltimore City.