St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore, Inc.
Promise Housing is a new program of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore that will serve unaccompanied homeless youth in Baltimore City. Part of the federally-funded Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, Promise Housing will provide 25 units of rapid rehousing and 23 units of permanent supportive housing, coupled with housing search assistance, case management, employment support services, and other services tailored to the needs and interests of the clients. This grant provides flexible financial assistance to remove financial barriers to housing and employment faced by Promise Housing clients.
STEM Champions of Baltimore Inc.
Over the past seven years, STEM Champions of Maryland has developed as a staging ground to prepare 375 students in 32 middle and high schools throughout the city for competition in numerous STEM based events as a part of the National Science Olympiad competition, the largest broad-based STEM competition in Baltimore. STEM Champions of Maryland trains teacher coaches to provide robust curricula and materials for each of the 18 Science Olympiad activities. STEM Champions also brings over 200 STEM professionals and volunteers together to work with teachers in afterschool practices and to facilitate the annual Citywide Science Olympiad competition.
Tahirih Justice Center
The Tahirih Justice Center represents immigrant women and girls seeking protection from gender-based human rights abuses, including domestic violence and sexual assault. Tahirih provides free immigration and family law services and social service coordination to about 290 women a year and their families. This grant provides general operating support to Tahirih’s Baltimore Field Office.
The Compound
Located in Baltimore’s Midway neighborhood, the Compound is a 20,000 square foot multi-purpose cultural space on one acre of land that provides affordable housing to 10 working artists, affordable work/studio space to 24 artists and artisans, as well as two worker-owned cooperatives and two nonprofits, the Alternative Press Center and the Black Workers Center. Residents and tenants are part of the Baltimore DIY art and music scene and the Compound is known as a venue for innovative music and cultural events. The Compound will renovate four adjacent rowhouses to expand and create 16 new affordable live/work spaces.
The Literacy Lab
The Literacy Lab employs a professionalized tutoring workforce that provides one-on-one, small group, and whole group literacy interventions to 690 students annually. A replication of the acclaimed Minnesota Reading Corps, Literacy Lab embeds rigorously trained reading tutors in PreK classrooms and provides 1:1 tutoring in schools to children in Kindergarten through third grade. Literacy Lab tutoring participants are between 1.5 to 5 times as likely to be on grade level than students who started at the same grade level and received no tutoring. Approximately 20% of participating students will achieve literacy benchmarks and end the school year on grade level.