Archive

Last week, Cheryl Casciani, the outgoing chair of the Baltimore City School Board, published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun highlighting the progress made during her tenure and the ongoing struggles. Karen Webber, director of OSI-Baltimore’s Education and Youth Development program, shared the op-ed and thanked Casciani in a tweet. “Well done Cheryl,” she wrote. “Thank […]

Last Saturday, the Maryland Peer Advisory Council (MPAC), a grantee of OSI’s Addiction and Health Equity program, hosted its first Advocacy and Leadership Program Fellows Day, a celebration of the first cohort’s completion of the program. The two-dozen participants in the program’s first cohort (pictured) met weekly starting in early spring and participated in sessions […]

Open Society Institute – Baltimore is proud to present our 2018 Impact Report, which celebrates 20 years of confronting our city’s biggest challenges. Alongside the resilient, passionate people of Baltimore, OSI is still fighting, still pushing, and still making transformative, lasting change to ensure justice for all. The cover features students from Baltimore Dance Crews […]

On Tuesday, the Baltimore Museum of Art hosted an opening reception for Slavery, The Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, a new exhibit co-presented by the BMA and OSI-Baltimore. Joe Jones, Vice Chair of OSI-Baltimore’s Advisory Board, spoke on behalf of OSI, thanking the artists for bringing their work to Baltimore and […]

The July issue of Baltimore magazine includes a feature on Fluid Movement, the performance art group founded by 2002 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow Beatrix “Little Trixie” Burneston, that has performed in Baltimore’s public pools and festivals for 20 years.  As the story describes, Little’s OSI Fellowship helped her establish the group so that it would live […]

News website Newsy posted a story about efforts to Ban the Box (below) – remove questions about criminal convictions from initial job and school applications – in Maryland, featuring Monica Cooper, Founder and Executive Director of the Maryland Justice Project, an OSI-Baltimore grantee.  

Last week, the Positive Schools Center, a University of Maryland School of Social Work institution supported by OSI-Baltimore, held a new round of restorative practices training. The trainees this time were primarily the staff of another OSI-Baltimore grantee, the Holistic Life Foundation, which teaches mindfulness, yoga, and related practices to students in Baltimore City Schools. […]

On Thursday, June 11th, CASA and CASA in Action honored outgoing OSI-Baltimore Director Diana Morris at their annual Justice Awards Night, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and the Center for Popular Democracy. In a video (below) created for OSI-Baltimore’s 20th Anniversary last year, CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres talked about […]

Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard will receive the NAACP’s prestigious Spingarn award at the Baltimore-based organization’s national convention in Detroit on July 24th. The Spingarn, established in 1914 by NAACP Board Chairman Joel E. Spingarn, is awarded “for the highest or noblest achievement by a living African American during the preceding year or years.” […]

This week, a stunning new exhibit, Slavery, The Prison Industrial Complex: Photographs by Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, co-presented with OSI-Baltimore, opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art. For more than 30 years, Calhoun and McCormick, photographers who were both born and raised in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and were previously Open Society Foundations […]