Archive

OSI grantee CLLCTIVLY posted video of a conversation, hosted by former Baltimore Ravens receiver Torrey Smith, with Baltimore Changemakers, including OSI Community Fellows Bree Jones, founder of Parity, and Brittany Young, founder of B-360, as part of the recent We Give Black festival. CLLCTIVLY, a grantee in OSI’s emerging Economic Justice portfolio, isdedicated to social change, […]

On Thursday, the OSI Community Fellows Network hosted a reception to welcome the 2022 cohort of OSI Community Fellows at Clay Pots, a Southwest Baltimore a nonprofit community hub and coffeehouse founded by 2009 OSI Community Fellow Dwayne Hess. Community Fellows Shawn James (2003) and Deborah Ramsey (2016) introduced the Fellows and the their projects […]

Members of Maryland’s Congressional delegation announced a $900,000 Federal grant to two Baltimore-based organizations founded by OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows that support Black women returning from incarceration and into the workforce. PIVOT, a workforce reentry program founded by 2019 OSI Fellow Emily Thompson and led by Executive Director Veronica Jackson, connects formerly incarcerated Black women with […]

This week, state health officials reported that opioid-related deaths in Maryland have decreased over the past year, even as such deaths continue to rise nationally. The decrease is reflected in the state’s Opioid Dashboard, which shows that in the 12-month period ending in June 2022, there were 11.4% fewer fatal overdoses in Maryland compared to […]

PBS News Hour featured 2020 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Troy Staton, founder of More Than a Shop, which brings a wide range of health services and other resources to barber shops and beauty salons, in its “Brief But Spectacular” segment. Watch it below or read the transcript here.  

BALTIMORE—Today, Open Society Institute-Baltimore, the only US field office of Open Society Foundations, announces the 2022 cohort of OSI-Baltimore Community Fellows. Among the 11 Fellows is the first recipient of the Lois Blum Feinblatt Mental Health Community Fellowship, named in honor of longtime mental health counselor and OSI supporter Lois Feinblatt, who passed away earlier […]

Unopposed State’s Attorney candidate Ivan Bates and his father, Henry Bates, Jr., joined a room of seniors at the Baltimore Unity Center for a panel discussion about flu and COVID vaccines, along with other issues, organized by The Empowerment Team and supported by OSI-Baltimore as part of the Baltimore Equitable Vaccination Initiative. Johns Hopkins hospitals […]

On Wednesday, OSI grantees Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition and Maryland Peer Advisory Council joined other harm reduction activists at an impromptu concert outside Emergent Biolutions manufacturing plant on Paca Street in downtown Baltimore to protest the cost of overdose-reversal drug Naloxone, also known as Narcan. “They won’t donate, they won’t make deals to lessen the […]

This Sunday, October 30th, OSI and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibit, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Wilkerson, author of the award-winning books The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) […]

OSI-Baltimore’s 2021 Impact Report is now available on the OSI website. The report includes a letter from OSI director Danielle Torain, a complete list of all OSI grants from 2021, a list of donors, and a breakdown how we spent our money in 2021. Check out OSI Impact Reports from previous years here.