Nearly $400,000 in Baltimore Community Fellowships Awarded to Eight City Residents to Work with Underserved Groups
EDITORS’ NOTE: Names, projects, and contact information for the new Baltimore Community Fellows can be found at the end of this release.
BALTIMORE—A young woman who grew up in foster care will train current foster youth to advocate for themselves. A vegetable gardener will work to preserve the city’s green spaces. These are two of the eight people selected in the 10th class of Baltimore Community Fellows, as the program celebrates a decade of supporting nearly 100 local social entrepreneurs and innovators to achieve their dreams to improve the city.
Each of this year’s fellows will receive $48,750 to work full-time for 18 months implementing creative strategies to assist underserved communities in Baltimore. As the fellowship program enters its 10th year, this year’s new class brings the total number of Baltimore Community Fellows to 94—the great majority of whom are still actively working in the city, continuing to bring their energy and ideas to social change.
The Class of 2007 fellows will take on a wide variety of projects, including a mentoring and support group for young women in the Sandtown neighborhood, renovation of a youth center that employs youth to be positive role models to younger children, cross-cultural and leadership training for Baltimore’s low-wage day-laborers, and a free, quarterly grassroots newspaper—The Indypendent Reader—intended to engage community leaders in an intellectual forum to solve problems. One fellow, an after-school art teacher, will create an art program and teach art classes for children at the new Pimlico Road Arts and Community Center as well as create workshops for adults in that low-income community to foster intergenerational sharing and mentoring.
“Our new fellows are passionate, committed individuals with diverse interests, but each has a realistic vision for improving Baltimore,” said OSI-Baltimore Director Diana Morris. “Their projects will make an important difference in communities across the city during the 18 months of their fellowships and beyond. By building a corps of nearly 100 social activists, OSI is capturing and maximizing the ideas and resources of individuals dedicated to building new opportunities to Baltimore communities.”
Fellow Shantel Randolph, 25, who “aged out” of foster care four years ago, will teach Baltimore youth in foster care how to advocate for themselves and for improvements to Maryland’s child welfare system. Randolph already has been working with about 15 students at Baltimore Freedom Academy and would like to expand her program, called Foster Youth Incorporated or FYI, to at least four other high schools to help as many as 75 youth build their self-esteem and self-sufficiency skills for successful employment and adulthood.
“By creating a safe place for foster youth to express themselves, they can creatively strive toward maintaining a stable, balanced life after high school,” says Randolph, who works as an office clerk for Baltimore County.
Fellow Miriam Avins, 42, is an editor-turned-vegetable gardener who persuaded the city to demolish a burned-out house next door to hers after she moved to Baltimore several years ago. In its place, she and her neighbors in Better Waverly created a large, organic, cooperative garden that became a source of community pride. Avins envisions creating Baltimore Green Space: A Land Trust for Community-Managed Open Space to preserve community gardens and other neighborhood green spaces. Both the city and private owners could transfer properties to the land trust, which then would own the open spaces.
“When city residents have gone to the trouble to turn a vacant lot into a place of beauty and community-building, they have equity in the property that should be recognized and protected,” Avins says. “Baltimore Green Space will be a way to do that.”
Fellow Ashley Milburn, 62, an artist and art teacher, will undertake a community arts project about the “Highway to Nowhere,” which is Route 40 between Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., and the West Baltimore MARC Station. The development of the highway displaced thousands of residents and more than 700 homes, schools, hospitals and small businesses before its completion in 1979. To Milburn, the highway is “a metaphor for the cultural disenfranchisement of black urban communities.” He plans to use storytelling, historical documentation, exhibitions, celebrations and community art to help people imagine reuniting the communities separated by the highway as well as to create opportunities for public art along the highway corridor.
“In my work as a community artist, it seems that the thing that hurts us will cure us,” says Milburn, who recently completed a master’s degree in the community arts program at Maryland Institute College of Art. “Perhaps this could become something that will help reunite the community.”
This is the 10th consecutive year that the Baltimore Community Fellowships program has offered grants to as many as 10 area residents to design and undertake projects that help make life better for Baltimore’s underserved and marginalized community members.
Open Society Institute-Baltimore launched the Baltimore Community Fellowships in 1998. The program has received support from OSI-Baltimore and several other foundations and individuals, including the Cohen Opportunity Fund, the Gloria B. and Herbert M. Katzenberg Charitable Fund, The Hoffberger Foundation, The Foundation for Maryland’s Future, The Commonweal Foundation, and Arnold and Alison Richman.
A six-person committee selected the eight finalists after an extensive process, including peer reviews, site visits and interviews.
2007 Baltimore Community Fellows
Miriam Avins – Freelance Editor
Miriam will establish Baltimore Green Space, a land trust for community-managed open space. The trust will preserve community gardens and other green spaces to protect residents’ sweat equity in their neighborhoods and encourage the creation of new green spaces.
Kristina Berdan – Teacher
Kristina will guide Youth Dreamers, a group of students who are running their own youth center. Kristina will engage middle and high school youth in experiential learning as an advocacy tool to help them maintain their nonprofit project and develop quality after-school programming for the youth center.
Paige Fitz – Accountant
Paige will nurture GEMS–Finding Jewels in Youth in the Sandtown community of West Baltimore. GEMS works with young women ages 13 to 25 to build character, improve life skills, and develop education and career goals.
Ashley Milburn – Artist
Ashley will launch the “Highway to Nowhere” project as vehicle to reunite divided west Baltimore communities displaced and disenfranchised by construction of the dead-ended Route 40 highway. He will utilize storytelling, historical documentation, exhibitions, celebrations, and art projects as tools to reunite the communities.
Irene Muñiz – Social Worker/Community Organizer
Irene will work to promote social and economic justice among low-wage workers. Irene will facilitate dialogue across race, language and cultural differences to help low-wage workers improve their working conditions and economic stability.
Deborah Patterson – Artist
Deborah will establish the ARTEnriches program for youth ages 5-18 in the Pimlico community of northwest Baltimore. Drawing from art history and a classical approach to instruction, she will teach children to create work to enrich their lives as well as their families’. Deborah will also create workshops for adults, to promote intergenerational sharing and mentoring.
Nicholas Petr – Carpenter
Nicholas will use his fellowship to strengthen the Indypendent Reader, a grassroots media project. The quarterly publication is a forum for community leaders to solve problems and to share the analysis with a larger audience.
Shantel Randolph – Office Clerk
Shantel will establish Facing our Future, an advocacy organization for youth in foster care and “aging out” of the system. Shantel will help the youth prepare for self-sufficiency, change stereotypes, and advocate for improvements in the foster care system.
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