OSI Awards Nearly $500,000 in Fellowships to City Residents Working With Disadvantaged Groups

A historian determined to help Baltimore’s Indian community reconnect with its heritage and a public health expert who will help refurbish city health clinics to make them more inviting and accessible are two of this year’s Open Society Institute-Baltimore fellows.

This is the seventh consecutive year that OSI has offered 10 area residents almost $500,000 in grants to design and undertake projects to help make life better for Baltimore’s underserved and disadvantaged.

The 2004 fellows will be officially recognized during a luncheon ceremony October 28th at the Belvedere Hotel. The featured speaker for the event will be Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City . Mr. Canada has been hailed for his far-reaching efforts to provide educational, recreational and leadership opportunities to thousands of at-risk children and their families in Harlem .

The fellows and OSI representatives will be on hand for the announcement and will be available for interviews.

The fellows will receive $48,750 each to work full-time for 18 months implementing creative strategies to address pervasive social problems in Baltimore ’s underserved communities.

More than 200 Baltimore residents applied for the fellowships. A six-person committee selected the final 10 after an extensive process, including site visits and interviews.

The Class of 2004 fellows will take on projects ranging from improving education for juvenile offenders to documenting the stories of Marylanders who go without health insurance. Another fellow will work with Latina immigrants to help them learn about labor and human rights while another will team businesswomen as mentors with at-risk girls in the Baltimore public schools.

“These are all people with a vision of a dynamic, prosperous Baltimore that is successful because it welcomes and provides opportunities for all of its residents,” said OSI-Baltimore Director Diana Morris. “Each of the Baltimore Community Fellows has identified a specific way he or she can shake up the status quo and bring greater economic and social justice to our communities. The fellows have the passion and expertise to implement their ideas and create positive change in our distressed neighborhoods.”

Fellow Nancy Lewin, who has worked in public health efforts for several years, was discouraged at the poor appearance of many Baltimore community health centers. These centers provide crucial healthcare services for low-income Baltimoreans but are often dingy and uninviting.

During her fellowship, Lewin will work to improve the physical conditions of three Baltimore community health centers, two on the Westside and one in East Baltimore. Lewin will team with staff, clients and others in the community to develop ideas for improving the appearance and accessibility of the centers. Ideas may include new carpets and paint, better signage, benches out front or awnings to keep clients out of the weather while they wait to enter or leave the buildings.

“The population that is served by the health department is so vulnerable and has such great health needs,” Lewin said. “But these clinics make the department look like the provider of last resort. We need to make the clinics more inviting and accessible.”

Another fellow, Stan Markowitz, developed his proposal after serving for years as a volunteer at the Baltimore American Indian Center in Fells Point. After going through difficult financial times, the Center is poised for expansion thanks to state funding to create a cultural center to celebrate Baltimore’s rich Indian heritage.

Markowitz, a retired professor of American and Indian history, will lead a steering committee formed to establish the new cultural center. He is confident that preserving Baltimore’s Indian culture will generate pride in the city’s Indian community—a community hit hard by drug and alcohol abuse and other problems.

“It can be provide a tremendous sense of pride in the Indian community,” Markowitz said. “That in and of itself can be a tremendously positive thing.”