Baltimore City Office of Sustainable Energy
This pilot program has a simple premise: to lower water consumption and bills through water conservation and efficiency interventions and to measure the results. The Baltimore City Energy Office proposes to continue a five-year partnership with Healthy Neighborhoods that began with energy-efficiency projects to offer low and moderate income homeowners free installation of aerators, showerheads, high-efficiency/low water flow toilet replacements, and potential plumbing alterations and leak repairs if appropriate. The pilot program will be offered to 150 homeowners and three large nonprofit facilities with a mission of providing housing and services to homeless and low-income households.
Arena Players Incorporated
Arena Players is the oldest continuously operating African-American community theater in the US. A comprehensive renovation of its theater facility will include upgrades to the main stage, a complete renovation of the second and third floors and exterior repairs and improvements. This grant provided support for staff project management.
Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance
Since its founding in 1992, Arts Education for Maryland Schools (AEMS) Alliance has worked to ensure that all of Maryland’s public schoolchildren have consistent and equitable access to high quality arts education. In Baltimore City, arts education is largely uncoordinated, with unevenly distributed resources and nonexistent or incomplete data. This grant will support a three-county pilot of the Artlook Data Map, a searchable database that provides information about arts courses at each school, the percentage of students enrolled, and the community arts partners who work there. Ultimately, Artlook will increase accountability and promote equitable opportunities for arts education in Maryland public schools.
The Urban Alliance Foundation, Inc.
Urban Alliance (UA), founded in 1996 in Washington, DC, is a national youth development non-profit that provides economically-disadvantaged young people with the exposure, opportunity, support and training needed to prepare them for lifelong economic self-sufficiency. Its core program matches high school seniors with paid, professional internships, jobs skills training, one-on-one mentoring, and ongoing post-program support. With previous Abell funding, Urban Alliance is now also placing career bound CTE 12th graders in internships and employment. This Abell grant will support strategic and implementation planning to expand Urban Alliance’s youth employment model into a systemic career readiness provider and workforce intermediary among Baltimore City Public Schools, the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development and employers.
Springboard Collaborative
Springboard Collaborative, initiated in Philadelphia in 2011, is designed to close the literacy gap by closing the gap between home and school. Now operating in 10 cities, Springboard offers summer, afterschool, and in-school programs that combine targeted reading instruction for PreK-3rd graders; weekly workshops training parents to teach reading at home; a rigorous coaching cycle for teachers; and an incentive structure that awards learning tools to families—from books to tablets—in proportion to their kids’ reading progress. Springboard’s Summer pilot in Baltimore increased reading levels for 330 students by 4.3 months in 6 weeks, and engaged 73% of parents in school and home literacy learning. This grant from Abell and funding from Baltimore City Schools will enable Springboard to launch its Afterschool Program in Spring 2019 for 900 low-performing K-3rd grade readers.