Archives

Grant Awards for Fiscal Year Ending December 31, 1999

Community Affairs

Association of the Baltimore Area Grantmakers / $3,000
The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is a membership organization of seventy foundations and corporate grantmakers founded to strengthen and promote organized private philanthropy. This grant pays membership dues.

Baltimore Community Foundation / $218,000
As the Baltimore Community Foundation continues to build a permanent, independent civic endowment to benefit current and future generations of Baltimoreans, this grant is helping to strengthen the organization's fundraising and grantmaking capacity. The Community Foundation raises, manages and distributes funds for charitable purposes in the Greater Baltimore region. So that the income provides a permanent source of grant monies for general or specific purposes, contributions from individuals, corporations or other foundations often are pooled and invested. In other instances, contributions are used immediately for a special project or current need in the community. Current assets are approaching $100 million, and this past year grants of $11 million supported the arts and humanities, education, health, housing, human services, and neighborhoods.

Baltimore Efficiency and Economy Foundation / $50,000
The Baltimore Efficiency and Economy Foundation (BEEF) was founded in 1998, to recreate an earlier Baltimore civic organization, the Baltimore Coalition on Governmental Efficiency and Economy, which conducted independent research on local government from 1928 to 1975. BEEF's mission is to conduct research into various aspects of City management, operations, fiscal and tax policy, but also to explore strategies for attracting new homeowners and businesses to the city. This grant provides support for research into the high costs of health care benefits for Baltimore City employees, a key issue given the City's projected budget deficits over the next five years.

Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance / $50,000
The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) is a joint venture, of eight local nonprofits, city agencies, and universities, to create a neighborhood information system that strengthens local community-building and policy-making efforts. The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is providing administrative support to BNIA during its startup phase, and will help the Alliance find a long-term home by the end of year two. This grant helps cover the start-up costs of BNIA, as it begins to tackle its primary tasks: to develop and analyze neighborhood-level data, provide technical assistance to users of the system, award community data partnership grants, and coordinate forums to develop city-wide indicators of community well being.

Citizens Planning and Housing Association (Committee on the Region) / $65,000
The Committee on the Region, based at the Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA) has become a focal point for education, alliance-building, and advocacy around regional issues in greater Baltimore. As a key member of the Baltimore Regional Partnership, the Committee on the Region has influenced this area's long-range transportation planning, worked successfully for the removal of sprawl-inducing projects from the state budget, and collaborated with state planning officials to seek federal transportation funds for demonstration projects. This grant will support the Committee's continuing work in transportation planning and policy, as well as their efforts to build momentum for revenue growth sharing among regional jurisdictions.

Greater Baltimore Alliance Foundation / $100,000
Now in its third year of operation, the Greater Baltimore Alliance (GBA) is a regional collaboration of business leadership and the chief elected officials of Baltimore and its contiguous counties, designed to present a united economic development front for the region in attracting, retaining and expanding private sector employment. Since 1997, GBA has helped the Baltimore region retain and attract more than 1500 jobs, along with more than $200 million of capital investment, as well as greatly heightening national and international awareness of the region among business leaders. This two-year grant provides general support to GBA, to continue to develop a comprehensive, coordinated approach among public and private sector leaders, to expanding opportunities for employment and investment in the Baltimore region.

1000 Friends of Maryland / $36,650
1000 Friends of Maryland is a network of organizations, government officials and private individuals, created to respond to sprawling patterns of development across the region, and the social, economic and environmental costs of sprawl. In only two years of official existence, 1000 Friends has proven an energetic force for public education, coalition building, policy development, and advocacy around key regional growth issues. 1000 Friends helped create the Baltimore Regional Partnership, a collaborative effort that advocates for better regional transportation funding, and promotes needed transportation projects and policy reforms. This grant supports a regional organizer, who is building support for the Baltimore Regional Partnership among individuals and organizations in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, and Howard counties. University of Maryland Baltimore County The Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis & Research (MIPAR) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), provides a mechanism for linking the analytical capacities of UMBC with policy makers in the region. MIPAR consults with government agencies, sponsors seminars and workshops, and serves as a source of policy and program evaluation for federal, state, and local agencies. With this grant, MIPAR will develop a coherent set of indicators to measure the most critical elements of Maryland's Smart Growth legislation. In phase two of this project, MIPAR will produce an annual Smart Growth report card, designed to help both policy makers and the general public understand to what extent Smart Growth is achieving its key objective: limiting sprawl.

Education

Children's Scholarship Fund Baltimore / $135,000
Created in 1998, the Children's Scholarship Fund Baltimore (CSFB) offers partial scholarships to children of low-income families in Baltimore City who want to send their children to private or parochial schools. Parents are expected to pay the portion of the tuition not covered by the CSFB scholarship. In 1999, approximately 20,000 children applied for 500 available scholarships, demonstrating the tremendous demand among parents for alternatives to the schools that their children currently attend. This grant included the second year of a four-year commitment of $500,000 in scholarship funds to CSFB. In addition, CSFB received $10,000 towards operating funding, to support the staff, who assist the scholarship recipients and their parents, and monitor the schools the children attend.

The Johns Hopkins University / $218,000
This grant, applied at the discretion of the University's President, supports the Goldseker Scholarship Fund, which this academic year is providing financial aid to fifteen undergraduates from the Baltimore metropolitan area.

Morgan State University / $218,000
At the discretion of the University's President, this grant supports the Goldseker Fellows Program, which currently provides graduate fellowships to 76 graduate students from the Baltimore metropolitan area. In addition, this grant provides funding for the acclaimed Morgan State University Choir, as well as the Lake Clifton-Eastern High School Finance Academy, a magnet program designed to motivate students to prepare for careers in finance.

Teach Baltimore / $108,543
Teach Baltimore recruits and trains university students to provide seven weeks of high-quality summer instruction to low-income elementary students. The program, designed to combat the 'summer effect' (the documented drop in student learning over the summer, which is a particular problem for students from low-income families) has a strong academic focus, small class size, and curricula integrated with school-year learning. This three-year grant provides funding for summer programs at three elementary schools in East Baltimore. At each school, university students, mentored by experienced teachers, instruct rising first and second graders, and work with those same children for three consecutive summers. A research team from Johns Hopkins University and Mathematica Policy Research is working with Teach Baltimore staff on a rigorous three-year longitudinal study of the impact of this program.

Village Learning Place / $195,000
The Village Learning Place in Charles Village is a former branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, which was closed in 1997, despite the determined efforts of a coalition of residents, educators, and business efforts to keep it open. The coalition then organized a tremendous grassroots effort to lease the library back from Baltimore City, and to raise public and private funds to reopen the facility as a community-operated educational and cultural center. This three-year grant supports the positions of a full-time program director and a part-time community outreach coordinator. The Village Learning Place contains not only a library (open 7 days a week) but also a computer-based learning center, and a walled garden, with plants that can thrive in an urban environment.

Human Services

The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore / $218,000
The grant continues support for the Morris Goldseker Foundation Aid and Education Fund. The purpose of the Fund is to assist new immigrants settling in Baltimore in their efforts to become independent and self-supporting.

Hampden Family Center / $25,000
The Hampden Family Center provides a range of educational, cultural, health and vocational services to the residents of Hampden, a working-class community with a rich history and vibrant commercial strip, but also high rates of unemployment and teenage pregnancy. The Family Center offers tutoring, GED and computer classes, smoking cessation and weight loss program, prenatal and baby care lessons, individual and family counseling, woodworking and summer arts classes, and after-school enrichment. To strengthen the organization, which is small but growing rapidly, this grant supports the hiring of a consultant, to help the Center's Board to exert more leadership in the areas of resource development and long-range planning.

Literacy Works, Inc. / $41,000
Established in 1990, Literacy Works coordinates, supports and promotes adult literacy services in Baltimore County, where 16% of adults do not have a high-school diploma, and 20% perform at or below a fifth-grade level on reading tests. The focus of Literacy Works is to increase learners' test scores, help them find employment or advance to a better job, and to encourage and enable parents to become more involved in their children's education. This grant provides start-up funding for a new literacy center in the Villages of Huntington, a low-income apartment complex in the Liberty Road corridor. At the Villages of Huntington center, Literacy Works is collaborating with Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, to link stronger reading skills to job training and placement.

Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training / $45,000
Created in 1993 to provide homeless and other veterans with range of housing, health and vocational services, the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training (MCVET) uses a military model of service that emphasizes individual accountability, self-discipline, organization and team work. MCVET has received national recognition for the role it plays in helping homeless veterans get off the streets and lead productive lives. However, federal funding for MCVET will decline in the years to come, and the organization is determined to find alternative sources of funding. This grant will help MCVET to implement a fundraising and marketing strategy, which is focused on developing a core group of consistent individual and institutional donors.

Maryland Regional Practitioners' Network for Fathers and Families / $45,000
Established in 1996 as a volunteer network, Maryland Regional Practitioners' Network for Fathers and Families (MRPNFF) is a group of over 170 individuals and organizations working in human services, who are trying to break down the barriers that discourage fathers from taking full social and financial responsibility for their children. Headed by the former deputy chief of police in Washington, D.C., MRPNFF has become a key source of expertise and resources for organizations seeking to start programs for fathers. This grant helps the MRPNFF establish itself as an independent nonprofit, with a small staff and an extensive network of volunteer members, as the organization expands its coordination, training and advocacy efforts.

South Baltimore Learning Center / $20,000
Over the past 10 years, the South Baltimore Learning Center (SBLC) has built up a substantial literacy program, which provides basic literacy training, tutoring, pre-GED and GED instruction, career counseling, and job internships to residents of South Baltimore. The organization serves a population with high rates of poverty (over 25%) and failure to finish high school (over 50%). SBLC's rapid growth, in both number of programs and people served, as well as a capital campaign to rehabilitate the building it occupies, has created the need for new expertise within the organization. This grant, along with state funds, supports a staff person skilled in financial and administrative matters, to manage such issues as cash flow, employee benefits, and donor relations.

Baptist Family and Children's Services / $30,000
Established in 1920, Baptist Family and Children's Services (BFCS) serves struggling families and children, through three program areas: foster care, family support, and training. This grant helps BFCS provide continuing education, training and support to faith-based providers of childcare and early childhood education. Congregations of any religious orientation can participate in the training, which focus on programmatic, not religious, issues. BFCS is using grant support to keep the costs of their training low, and also to provide consultation to organizations that want to strengthen existing, or to develop new, programs for children.

Beth Jacob Adult Day Care Center / $44,850
Located in the original synagogue building of the Beth Jacob Congregation, the Beth Jacob Adult Day Care Center is a separate nonprofit organization, designed to serve a mix of Orthodox Jewish, Russian immigrant, and African-American elderly clients from the surrounding neighborhoods. Participants receive medical care, and physical and cultural stimulation during the day, and return to their caregivers in the evening. This grant provides funding for programming to explore and celebrate the diverse backgrounds of the participants, and to help them get along despite significant religious, cultural, and linguistic differences.

Boy Scouts of America / $45,000
The Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts launched a program called Scoutreach in 1995, to work with boys in Baltimore City who could not otherwise afford to join the Scouts. Instead of relying entirely in volunteer leaders, Scoutreach hires college students to teach and mentor the boys in these troops. This three-year grant supports Scoutreach in the Latrobe Homes public housing site; the program tries to help the Scouts stay in school, advance academically, and resist illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Chesapeake Center for Youth Development / $20,000
Based in South Baltimore's Brooklyn neighborhood, the Chesapeake Center for Youth Development (CCYD) addresses the educational and development needs of high-risk youth. In the early 1990s, the organization reopened the diner featured in Barry Levinson's movie "Diner", and began a food service enterprise and job training program at the Hollywood Diner in downtown Baltimore. Through the LEARNing a Living program, CCYD employs students already involved in the juvenile justice system, and helps them develop social and marketable job skills. This grant will help strengthen and expand the program, in partnership with the Restaurant Association of Maryland.

Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake / $55,000
In recent years, Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake has responded to welfare reform by preparing clients for specific types of work through on-the-job training. Goodwill is unusually entrepreneurial for a non-profit, in that the organization finds ways to recoup the costs of training, by providing services that people are willing to pay for. This grant continues support for the position of Vice President for Business Development, who has been instrumental in the development of a telephone answering service, or call center. This center trains Goodwill clients in a highly marketable skill, and also handles actual business calls, which generate income to cover the costs of the training program.

Govans Ecumenical Development Corporation / $60,000
Govans Ecumenical Development Corporation (GEDCO) brings churches and community associations in the Govans area together to provide housing and supportive services for people with special needs. Since 1992, GEDCO has developed five different buildings, which house people with chronic mental illnesses or who were once homeless, as well as senior citizens with low and moderate incomes. GEDCO was the lead agency (in partnership with Presbyterian Homes, the YMCA, and for-profit developers) in coordinating and presenting a $35 million proposal to redevelop the Memorial Stadium site into an affordable retirement community. This grant provides predevelopment funding for this initiative, towards the costs of conducting a marketing feasibility study, coordinating a capital campaign, and hiring additional project staff.

Lighthouse, Inc. (Southwest Teen and Parent Consortium) / $50,000
In 1995, a group of concerned parents and teens in the Catonsville area of Baltimore County formed the Southwest Teen and Parent Consortium, to respond to a rising teen population, as well as increasing rates of teen crime and vandalism. Lighthouse, Inc. serves as the Consortium's fiscal agent and technical advisor. This grant supports the Consortium's ongoing efforts to bring together churches, schools, the County recreation department, youth organizations, as well as interested individuals, to provide much-needed recreational and educational activities for teens in Southwest Baltimore County. They are working to establish a permanent teen center, with space for professional staff, adult volunteers, and teens, and to expand their offerings to include hands-on training for young entrepreneurs.

Maryland Center for Arts and Technology / $100,000
The Maryland Center for Arts and Technology (MCAT) is an intensive job-training program that prepares lower-income individuals for specific jobs in those Baltimore industries where the demand for skilled workers is outpacing the supply. Key to MCAT's strong start is the cooperation of two corporate partners - Commercial Credit Company and the Johns Hopkins Health System - who select admission and performance standards, and oversee curriculum development and hiring of faculty. This grant supports part of the costs of MCAT's partnership with Johns Hopkins Health Systems, to train participants for full-time jobs (which pay between $7 and $14 an hour, and offer benefits) inpatient registration, billing, and collection.

Maryland New Directions / $70,000
Since 1973 Maryland New Directions (MND) has helped individuals in Baltimore enter the job market, advance in a career, or change careers. MND combines core job preparation programs with special support counseling, and offers its services to displaced homemakers, chronically and newly unemployed individuals, welfare recipients, and youth. Over time, MND became vulnerable to cutbacks or changes in government funding. This two-year grant supports the costs of a consultant to help MND assess its strengths and weaknesses, and determine how it can reposition itself, in what has become a highly competitive arena of organizations offering job readiness, training, and placement services.

Second Step / $40,000
Formerly the Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center, Second Step provides counseling and support services to victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. The services provided include a crisis hotline; hospital accompaniment for rape victims; shelter, supplies and legal services for people fleeing abusive situations; counseling and therapy; community education and prevention services; and reeducation of batterers. Currently, Second Step is supported primarily by federal and state government grants. This grant supports the position of development director and assistant, to help the organization reduce its dependency on government funding, and develop a solid base of individual and corporate donors.

South East Community Organization (Baltimore Caregivers) / $50,000
Baltimore Caregivers is a business created under the auspices of the South East Community Organization, to train low-income women as healthcare workers. Instead of focusing exclusively on the home health care market, as originally envisioned, Baltimore Caregivers has changed its training and placement of workers to take advantage of the more dynamic market of paraprofessional healthcare provision. Most of their employees work in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, and many have found positions in Baltimore County and Howard County. This grant provides support for Baltimore Caregivers towards payroll, overhead and transportation costs, as the business strives to reach break-even point, and become a self-sustaining worker-owned cooperative.

Neighborhood Development
Baltimore Regional Community Development Corporation / $71,000
Created in 1982, the Baltimore Regional Community Development Corporation (BRCDC) supports community development and affordable housing throughout the Baltimore region. With this grant, BRCDC will collaborate with the Main Street Program of the Charles Village Benefits District, to create a micro-loan program for façade improvements for small businesses, and provide outreach and technical assistance to those businesses. A BRCDC loan developer, based out of the Charles Village office, will market the façade-improvement micro-loan program to small business owners, and link those owners to other sources of capital and technical assistance.

Centro de la Communidad / $50,000
Centro de la Communidad serves the needs of the growing Latino community in Baltimore through three main programs: health prevention and education, social services and outreach, and employment and citizenship. The largest concentration of Latinos in the Baltimore area is in East Baltimore, along Broadway south of Johns Hopkins, and north of Fells Point. Centro de la Communidad received this grant to market the area near their offices on Pulaski Highway (north of Patterson Park) as a place for Latinos to rent or buy affordable housing. The Patterson Park Community Development Corporation will provide rehabilitated homes for purchase, as well as high-quality rental housing for rent, to qualified Centro clients.

Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Inc. (Mt. Vernon Cultural District) / $125,000
Housed at the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, Inc., the Mt. Vernon Cultural District brings together nine cultural organizations, the Goldseker, Baltimore Community and Casey Foundations, as well as the Baltimore Sun, to strengthen central Mt. Vernon and the neighboring Midtown district. This two-year grant supports the Cultural District's ongoing efforts to increase safety and cleanliness in Mt. Vernon, develop comprehensive plans for marketing, economic development and transportation, and create an agenda for public sector financing. The District will continue, through local media and educational activities, to increase recognition of the importance of cultural tourism as a major economic engine for both the city and the region.

Greater Homewood Community Corporation (Jones Falls Valley Planning) / $50,000
The Jones Falls Valley extends from the Inner Harbor to Baltimore City's boundary with Baltimore County, and contains an active waterway, a number of historically and architecturally significant buildings, and a surprisingly diverse array of small businesses. The Greater Homewood Community Corporation is working with AB Associates (a private land planning firm) and the Baltimore Development Corporation, to collaborate on a master planning process that would link the economic development of the Jones Falls Valley to its significant existing assets. This grant supports the planning process, a complex undertaking bringing community, government, nonprofit, and private interests together to strengthen the infrastructure for actual and potential economic activity in the Valley.

House of Mercy (Mercy Southwest Alliance) / $80,000
The Mercy Southwest Alliance is a coalition of seven non-profit organizations assisted by the Sisters of Mercy, a religious order with a history of service in Southwest Baltimore dating back to 1855. In 1998, the Alliance hired a community developer, to coordinate member organizations' efforts to reach out to community residents and local institutions. This two-year grant supports the work of the community developer, as well as a volunteer coordinator, on three initiatives: block stabilization, business development, and legal advocacy. The developer and coordinator work closely with the Mercy Southwest Alliance member organizations, as well as community leaders and volunteers, in implementing these initiatives.

Midtown Community Benefits District / $36,000
The Midtown Community Benefits District, which includes the Bolton Hill, Charles North, Madison Park, and Midtown/Belvedere neighborhoods, draws on residential and property tax surcharges to make its 150-block area cleaner and safer. Midtown has added a full-time community organizer to its staff, to develop a network of block captains, and a group of neighborhood walkers. This grant supports the costs of this organizer, who is part of Midtown's effort to reach beyond its original focus on reducing crime and grime, and to work for the long-term revitalization of four diverse neighborhoods that have tremendous assets, and also face difficult challenges.

Northwest Baltimore Corporation / $125,000
Over 60 neighborhood associations, institutions, businesses, and service agencies make up the Northwest Baltimore Corporation (NWBC), which provides information, technical assistance, and training to organizations trying to improve the quality of life in their communities. Over the past two years, NWBC has focused its economic development efforts on working with existing area merchants, as well as major stakeholders such as Pimlico Racetrack and Sinai Hospital. This two-year grant provides support to significantly scale up NWBC's capacity to turn its business districts around, by hiring a skilled staff person with experience in both public and private commercial development. NWBC is focusing on filling vacancies in their commercial strips with new businesses, and spurring the development of a major shopping center in a currently depressed area.

South Baltimore Family Health Center (Cherry Hill 2000) / $13,000
In 1998, Cherry Hill 2000 was established to stabilize a neighborhood menaced by high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime. To address economic development, Cherry Hill 2000 worked closely with Catholic Charities to revitalize the local shopping center, which now has a much-improved supermarket, several locally-owned businesses, and various government offices, including a branch of the Pratt library. Cherry Hill 2000 was also instrumental in helping the community receive a Hot Spots grant from the State of Maryland, to reduce drug dealing and related crime in the area. This grant allowed the staff to complete a plan for a youth services center, and to present the plan at a community forum. As a result of this planning, Cherry Hill 2000 expects to receive funding to begin renovation of the youth center in the year 2000.

Belair Edison Neighborhoods, Inc. (Belair-Edison Housing Services) / $30,500
Belair Edison Neighborhoods, Inc. (BENI), formerly Belair-Edison Housing Services, has worked for several years to revitalize the commercial heart of their neighborhood, on Belair Road in Northeast Baltimore. These efforts have grown in scope and effectiveness over time; last year BENI hired a consultant to study specific sites for potential development, and to create a marketing and financial package for those sites. This grant supports the position of business development coordinator, who is working to bring major new businesses to the commercial section of Belair-Edison, through negotiations with landowners, developers and potential tenants.

Citizens Planning and Housing Association (Resource Center for Neighborhoods) / $95,500
Since 1992, the Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA) has provided a tremendous range of services to Baltimore communities through its Resource Center for Neighborhoods. The Resource Center has built up an impressive infrastructure to provide community leaders with information, training and collaborative relationships that support community organizing and development efforts. This grant supports a particular aspect of the Resource Center's work, the Neighborhood Strategy Assistance Program, which works to build and market different assets of a neighborhood: especially image, real estate, physical conditions, and quality of life. With this grant, CPHA is coordinating staff and consultants to pilot the approach in two to four neighborhoods in Baltimore City.

Episcopal Housing Corporation / $45,000
The Episcopal Housing Corporation (EHC), incorporated in 1995, creates partnerships, and undertakes projects, with organizations that share their commitment to helping low-income individuals and communities change in fundamental ways. In the Collington Square neighborhood (East Baltimore), EHC has worked with several organizations to create the Collington Square Community Development Alliance. This grant is helping EHC, which has successfully created new housing opportunities in the area, to strengthen the community's organizational and planning capacities. EHC has hired an organizer who is working with residents and stakeholders to develop a plan for the Collington Square neighborhood, choose priorities, and implement the priority action items.

Harlem Park Revitalization Corporation / $30,000
A nonprofit housing development organization located in West Baltimore, the Harlem Park Revitalization Corporation (HPRC) has a broad agenda: to provide decent affordable housing to low and moderate income households; to offer housing counseling, rehabilitation, management and maintenance; and to address broader community concerns, such as education, health, public safety, and economic development. This grant provides funding for HPRC to complete a strategic land use redevelopment plan for the western portion of the neighborhood, an area currently devastated by crime and abandonment. The planning process is the first step in a long-range collaboration between HPRC and the Bank of America Community Development Corporation, which has already purchased numerous properties in the target area.

Maryland Center for Community Development / $30,000
Created in 1994 out of the merger of three non-profit housing organizations, the Maryland Center for Community Development provides technical assistance, quality standards, advocacy, and training for community development organizations throughout the state. As the organization has grown, so have the costs of maintaining its administrative infrastructure: primarily salaries, supplies, and consultants. This grant provides support for MCCD's core programs in housing counseling, housing development, and community economic development.

Neighborhood Rental Services, Inc. / $155,575
In 1979, Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) established Neighborhood Rental Services (NRS), to respond to the concerns of Patterson Park residents that NHS had no vehicle to assist low-income residents who needed quality rental housing. The basic mission of NRS is to rehabilitate problem properties around Patterson Park that could not be marketed to homeowners. Over time, NRS has become the third largest property owner in Southeast Baltimore, and was awarded this three-year grant to hire an asset manager, to ensure that the organization is acquiring and managing properties in a manner that increases the value of the NRS portfolio over time. After three years, with substantial technical assistance from the Neighborhood Reinvestment Coalition, NRS plans to develop a portfolio large enough to produce sufficient development and management fees to fund the asset manager position.

Parks and People Foundation / $48,000
The Parks and People Foundation has grown into a leading local advocate and provider of environmental education, park development and restoration, sports leagues and recreation programs, and urban natural resource management. The Community Forestry Program (CFP), which this grant supports, works with Baltimore City residents to plant trees along streets, in parks, and on vacant lots. CFP trains residents to keep the trees properly watered and pruned, and to keep the plots free of weeds and trash. The program not only cools and beautifies city streets, but can serve as a catalyst for increasing residents' participation in other revitalization projects in their neighborhoods.

Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore / $28,000
A dynamic training program for individuals who have drive, ambition, and a clear idea of what they want to achieve, but who need training and contacts to get their businesses off the ground, Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore (WEB) continues to grow and change. Recently WEB has created new partnerships (with neighborhood associations and public housing residents) and stronger ties to the corporate community. This grant continues support for WEB's Community Affairs Manager, who coaches trainees in incorporating Community Action plans into their overall business plans, and also works to connect procurement officers of major corporations to WEB graduates who are ready and able to provide services to those corporations. Also included in this grant is a stipend for a Microfinance Coordinator, who helps WEB graduates access and manage small loans.

Back to Top