Archive

On Sunday at the Baltimore Book Festival, OSI-Baltimore hosted a session called “Literature for Social Justice,” which focused largely on ways Black girls are criminalized in schools. OSI Advisory Board member Alicia Wilson welcomed the audience to the Literary Salon stage and introduced poet, educator, and 2015 OSI Community Fellow Brion Gill, author of a […]

On Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens presented OSI Advisory Board member Veronica Cool, CEO of Cool and Associates and past chair of the Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, with this year’s Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award. The awards recognize the contributions of Hispanic leaders in each NFL market. Cool donated her $2,000 prize for the award to OSI-Baltimore. […]

Yesterday, Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard participated in the Powerhouse Roundtable on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss allegations against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. After other panelists compared the current allegations to Anita Hill’s testimony about Clarence Thomas, Gaspard said, “We are now at a point where the pendulum is […]

Next Saturday, September 29, Johns Hopkins University’s Social Innovation Lab, in partnership with Open Society Institute and Baltimore Corps, will host an “Impact Bootcamp” for “for people who want to gain or enhance the skills essential for launching and leading a community project, nonprofit, or mission-driven business.” The Bootcamp is a condensed version of the […]

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh cited a New American Economy report that ranked Baltimore number two in the nation in immigrant integration and suggested that the city is stronger because of its support for immigrant communities, through the Safe City Baltimore initiative and other means: Our high score on legal support […]

On Friday, Scott Nolen (above, fourth from the left), director of Open Society Institute’s Addiction and Health Equity program, joined Rep. Elijah Cummings, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, and others to discuss “Opioids and People of Color” at the 48th Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Nolen also joined Rep. Cummings […]

Yesterday, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen announced that she will step down from her position to take over as president of Planned Parenthood. Dr. Wen has been a steadfast partner of the Open Society Institute, working together on distribution of life-saving overdose-reversal drug Naloxone, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program (LEAD), and many […]

Last month, the Department of Justice released six new and revised Baltimore Police Department policies, created as part of the city’s consent decree with the DOJ, which required reforms within the BPD. Today, the department extended the period for public comment on the new policies to September 28th. Anyone can review the policies at the […]

Holistic Life Foundation, a longtime Open Society Institute grantee that brings yoga and mindfulness to Baltimore City Schools, recently completed an OSI-funded curriculum that they are rolling out to several City Schools this school year. They just released a 60-second video, below, that highlights their work and is part of continuing efforts to re-frame perceptions of […]

A new story in the Maryland Daily Record reports on the dramatic reduction on the use of cash bail in Maryland (“With cash bail down and releases up, stakeholders turn attention to pretrial services“). Perhaps most notably, while the use of cash bail dropped from around 40 percent of criminal cases in 2016 to about […]