The Urban Alliance Foundation, Inc.
The Urban Alliance Foundation (UA) was founded in 1996 in Washington, D.C. with the goal of providing young people with meaningful work experiences and access to better jobs. The overarching goal of the Urban Alliance is to equip youth to successfully transition to the working world by providing paid internships, mentoring from an adult professional, case management, trainings focused on college and career skills, and post internship wrap around support. This current Abell Foundation grant will support their CTE program focused on providing internship placements in the area of construction. In partnership with employers, the Urban Alliance CTE program prepares high school seniors for careers in construction and related industries through sector-based internships, industry training, professional mentoring, and case management.
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.
Safe Alternative Foundation for Education, Inc.
The SAFE Center youth facility opened in 2015 in order to provide West Baltimore middle school students with 1,250 hours of supervised, afterschool, weekend, and summer programming annually. Focusing on learning opportunities in the areas of literacy, STEAM, and health and fitness, the SAFE Center works primarily with students from Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School. The current Abell Foundation grant is designed to address the challenges with remote learning by establishing an in-person learning pod for 22 middle school students. This learning pod provides students with access to the resources they need to attend school on-line as well as receive assistance from SAFE staff who can provide classwork assistance, monitor work completion, and provide a structured learning environment for the students.
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.
Baltimore Kids Chess League, Inc.
Sponsored by the Abell Foundation and Baltimore City Public Schools since 2004, Baltimore Kids Chess League (BKCL) offers an academic extracurricular program that serves more than 150 children from kindergarten to 12th grade in 21 schools. Due to Covid, BKCL has migrated to a new virtual format, using the innovative “Think Like A King” chess software to move students through chess strategy sessions, assigning a chess rating based on each student’s level of play, and effectively matching opponents with an equivalent level of chess skill. Teams practice weekly under the auspices of trained chess coaches and compete in novice, local, state, and national chess tournaments sponsored by the United States Chess Federation.