Open Society Institute – Baltimore
Open Society Institute (OSI) – Baltimore : Audacious Thinking For Lasting Change
It is completely legal to discriminate against people who have a criminal record by denying them housing, employment, and voting rights. This type of discrimination locks people out of the opportunities that promote healthy and enriching lives.
At any given moment, countless Baltimore youth are facing harsh realities accompanied by fading dreams. Since coming to this city, I have had many conversations. They have included everyone from the young man being raised by a single mom, now a dad himself to the young lady seeking approval from a “too busy mom” to […]
May is Foster Care month. It is our hope that during this month, as a community we will be thinking of innovative ways to give our foster youth the tools they need to become contributing and successful members of society. The difficult issues that youth transitioning from the foster care system face is something we […]
Baltimore lives among the ugly ashes of slavery, Jim Crow, and a so called “nonviolent” civil rights struggle. To meet the demands of the future, Baltimore, in its entirety, must be brought together as a whole, healed, and thrust forward. Murder and mayhem nor the fear of either can continue to rule the day. Baltimore […]
During their heyday, Enron had a policy of firing 25% of their workforce every year. Supervisors completed annual evaluations, employees were ranked, and those staff members at the bottom were asked to leave. The corporate philosophy was that if the poorest performers were replaced by others more capable, over time the organization would be more […]
On Martin Luther King Jr. day this year, 600-700 job seekers showed up at St. Frances Academy Community Center for its ninth annual job fair. Unemployed from around the city went to refresher classes, prayed before their noontime lunch, and then presented resumes prepared earlier in classrooms upstairs from the job fair held in the […]
The trajectory that led me to Baltimore is a fairly common one; I came here to go to school. Baltimore and I got off to a bit of a rocky start. But over the course of my graduate school program, I fell hard for the honesty, quirkiness, and history of Charm City and decided to […]
Sociologists, anthropologists and scores of human development experts have raised the question of nature verses nurture. Does the environment or the DNA determine the success or failure of a person? As it stands, growing up in Baltimore poses a myriad of challenges to speak to the variability of either position. Could a social experiment offer […]
Complaining about public transportation is almost a national pastime. While not quite cocktail party chatter, transit often comes up in conversations “around the water cooler” and invariably the discussion descends into who has had the worst experience. And also invariably the conversations end with at least one “why don’t they just…” Unfortunately, water cooler conversations […]
Have a holiday tale to tell? Our friends at the Stoop Storytelling Series are seeking storytellers for their live holiday radio shows at Center Stage. Email info@stoopstorytelling.com with your story idea. Learn more about The Stoop at stoopstorytelling.com.
OSI-Baltimore has permanently closed. It has been our honor and privilege to partner with and serve the Baltimore community for the past 25 years.
This website is available for historical purposes. It is no longer being updated.