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A former teacher, 2016 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Melissa Badeker, created an exchange for current educators to get the supplies they need. “We’re here to help the teachers,” Badeker says. “And whatever the teachers tell us they need, we do our best to make it happen.” 

In the U.S, nearly all arrested people are required to pay cash bail in order to be released from jail before trial, yet more than 3 in 5 inmates remain behind bars, unconvicted, because they cannot afford to pay.

2016 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Isa Olufemi, started his project, the Poet Pride Run Club at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School because he knows the cultural impact of organizing, educating and conditioning people through running and he wanted to offer those same growth opportunities to the students at Dunbar. He also hopes that his program will help strengthen the “Poet Pride” at Dunbar and change the perception of young black people in the community.

With his OSI-Baltimore Community Fellowship, Yahudah, 39, launched the Muze It Outreach Program, a musical and cultural education program that uses African drumming, hip-hop dance, performance and martial arts to teach children and youth the historical and cultural traditions of the African and African-American diaspora.