Archive

“As each house that a participant works on becomes a home, the community grows stronger and more connected.” 2018 OSI Community Fellow Shelley Halstead started her organization, Black Women Build-Baltimore to help Black women gain skills and thrive.

“When you give someone healthy food, you nourish their entire person, not just their body.” 2017 Community Fellow Matt Burke’s Baltimore Free Farm Food Rescue is helping close the gap of food insecurity for many underserved communities in Baltimore and giving more people access to healthy food.

2015 OSI Community Fellow Brian Gerardo uses hip-hop dance to strengthen relationships with students in Baltimore City, giving youth an opportunity to develop leadership skills while expressing themselves through dance.

“I try to bring people into the same space from different backgrounds, different cultures, different perspectives,” 2016 Community Fellow J.C.. Faulk says of his organization Circle of Voices/An End to Ignorance. “I believe that you have to create discomfort in order for there to be change.”

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.

Baltimore Youth Kinetic Energy Collective (BYKE) was founded in 2014 by OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow, Evelyn (Chavi) Rhoads, to give young people a safe place to learn bicycle mechanics, practice respectful safe ridership and build community. Rhoads used her fellowship to grow the collective, opening a dedicated repair and training shop in the Oliver neighborhood.

Holistic Me is an after school program for Baltimore City students helping them manage stress and anxiety by introducing the concepts of yoga, mindfulness, meditation, centering and breath work.