Adopt a Block, Inc.
The Compassion Commission program teaches 300 young people ages 11 to 25 to look beyond their lives and be a positive influence to low-income inner-city children and adults. This is achieved through a weeklong series of activities focused in East Baltimore that provides an experience that fosters leadership, promotes volunteerism, and develops an interest in the welfare of others. Adopt A Block will acquire, renovate, and donate a formerly vacant Baltimore City home to a family led by a resident leader in the community in East Baltimore.
Adopt a Block, Inc.
Adopt a Block distributes over 300,000 pounds of food a year to more than 45 shelters, soup kitchens, pantries and partnering agencies in Baltimore City. Adopt A Block has weekly scheduled pickups with corporate partners and secures items that are donated by individuals, typically within a 24-48 hour turnaround window. A box truck will be purchased to facilitate the collection and distribution of items to partners and individuals served by the organization.
Improving Education, fiscally sponsored by Strong City Baltimore
Founded in 2015 by Jarrod Bolte, a former Baltimore City Schools teacher and administrator, Improving Education set out to change the way schools work to improve outcomes for children. Improving Education will focus on up to 20 elementary schools using a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to assist teachers, administrators, and community providers in redesigning instructional and support mechanisms to improve early literacy outcomes for students from K through second grade. Working with 125 reading teachers and 3,500 students, Improving Education’s literacy protocols have become a cornerstone for school innovation and early literacy instructional design in City Schools. Improving Education expects to increase the number of students in grades K-2 meeting grade level reading proficiency by 20 percentage points from the beginning to end of year.
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, Inc.
ICIC will bring Inner City Capital Connections (ICCC) to Baltimore, a business technical assistance program started in 2005 to help urban entrepreneurs better position themselves to access capital, increase revenues, grow their businesses and create jobs. The program specifically targets companies located in areas with high rates of poverty and unemployment, and they accept businesses that draw 40 percent of their employment from economically distressed communities. Grant funds will be used for stipends and travel of business school professors and finance professionals providing the training in Baltimore City.
Waterkeepers Chesapeake
Waterkeepers Chesapeake is a coalition of nineteen independent programs working to make the waters of the Chesapeake and Coastal Bays swimmable and fishable. As an affiliate partner with the Indiana-based Clear Choices Clean Water organization, Waterkeepers Chesapeake will launch a community education and behavioral change campaign to highlight the effects densely populated areas have on water quality. This grant provides programmatic support for the launch of Clear Choices Clean Water Baltimore.