Homeless Persons Representation Project, Inc.
Homeless Persons Representation Project (HPRP) provides free legal services to homeless individuals throughout the state of Maryland. This grant supports HPRP’s Homeless Youth Initiative, which provides direct representation to unaccompanied homeless youth on a range of legal needs, and advocates for policy solutions to youth homelessness in Maryland.
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.
Intercultural Counseling Connection
The Intercultural Counseling Connection (ICC) is a network of mental health professionals who partner with trained interpreters to provide pro bono therapeutic care and counseling to refugees, asylum seekers, and other forced migrants. With a cadre of about 30 trained therapists, the ICC serves over 100 individuals every year with trauma-informed and culturally competent 1:1 and group counseling sessions to address their psychological, emotional, and social wellbeing. This grant helped support ICC’s general operations, which prioritizes serving uninsured individuals who do not receive federal benefits or supportive services from refugee resettlement agencies and would otherwise lack access to appropriate mental health services.
Johns Hopkins University
Vision for Baltimore is an innovative citywide partnership designed to improve vision screening and follow-up care for Baltimore City public school students. Launched in 2016, Vision for Baltimore screened over 50,000 students during its first three years, provided approximately 9,000 eye examinations to students who failed the vision screenings, and provided more than 6,000 free pairs of eyeglasses to city students. Partners in Vision for Baltimore include the Baltimore City Health Department, which conducts the vision screenings, nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides eye examinations and eyeglasses in a mobile clinic that visits schools throughout the city, Baltimore City Public Schools, which provides logistical support to ensure that children can be screened and receive follow-up care, and Johns Hopkins University, which provides staff support to ensure that children are able to access the services and encourages students who receive glasses to wear them consistently. This grant provides operating support for year four of Vision for Baltimore.