Building and Bridging Diverse Neighborhoods in East Baltimore

The President’s Office of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, with involvement from the University’s Schools of Social Work, Medicine, Law, and Nursing, proposes to undertake a Community Building Initiative in East Baltimore. This Initiative will be a collaborative effort between the University, the catchment area’s community based organizations, neighborhood associations and residents, and the City of Baltimore.

The Initiative’s theme is “diversity as strength,” meaning that the area’s multiculturalism is an asset, even if not a fully realized one. The overall focus is to assist the community in acquiring and implementing key knowledge and skills, which in turn will help with cooperative community capacity building. The Initiative has an Education Outreach Component, a Community Engagement Component, and a complimentary set of Research activities. It includes all, or significant parts of, these neighborhoods in East Baltimore: Patterson Park, Jonestown, East Harbor Village, Upper Fells Point, McElderry Park, Baltimore-Linwood, Butcher’s Hill, Washington Hill and Dunbar-Broadway (see Appendix for map). Community members participate in, and are represented by, a range of diverse organizations and associations within these neighborhoods.

Rating Factor 1: Capacity of the Applicant and Relevant Organizational Experience

A) Knowledge and Experience

The Project Co-Directors will be Dr. Cheryl Hyde, Dr. Michael Lindsey, and Mr. Dick Cook. Dr. Hyde (MSW, PhD, Sociology and Social Work) has over 20 years of experience in community capacity building, diversity-related work and community based research. She is an Associate Professor at the School of Social Work, where she co-chairs the Management and Community Organization Concentration, and chairs the Master’s Program Committee. She is also the Assistant Director for Community-based Research of the Social Work Community Outreach Service. Her teaching, scholarship and community service focus on the areas of building social capital, neighborhood associations, collaboration and networking, multicultural organizational development, and community-based research techniques. For the past 3 years, she has been teaching a community based research course, where the community defines the research problem, and then she and the students assist the community learn what it wants through data gathering and analysis. Three years ago, a community in North Baltimore asked her to help them evaluate the Charles Village Community Benefits District. The evaluation that resulted assisted the District in its re-authorization efforts, and it has become the most quoted document by supporters and opponents alike. Two years ago, Dr. Hyde, with Dr. Karen Hopkins, ran a research course on “Best Practices of Community Based Agencies” with the East Baltimore Partnership (part of the proposed catchment area). Their students assisted community organizations in developing outcome based measurements for organizational planning and development. Last year, she led a student team in examining a resident mobilization effort in Jonestown (also in East Baltimore). Dr. Hyde serves on a number of social work journal editorial boards and is currently the President of the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration. Dr. Hyde will direct the Initiative’s research activities and assist with efforts at strengthening the diversity of the community.

Dr. Michael Lindsey (MSW, PhD, Social Work) will join the School of Social Work’s faculty in Fall 2004. He is currently completing a Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, W.K. Kellogg Community Health Scholars Program. In that capacity, he works in East Baltimore on effective intervention programs for high-risk African American males. His scholarly areas of interest include violence prevention among urban youth and community health assessments. He is a past recipient of an NIMH Dissertation Award for his work on social network influences on African American Adolescents. Dr. Lindsey will work primarily on the Leadership Development objective of this Initiative and assist with the research activities.

Dick Cook (MSW) is the current Director of the School of Social Work’s Community Outreach Service (SWCOS). He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Latin America, and has more than 30 years of experience working with diverse community based organizations, including the past 25 years in the target area with Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans and Ethnic Europeans. For the past 5 years, he has assisted community organizations in the area successfully tackle issues such as stopping real estate flipping, strengthening their organizational structures through Board and Staff training, and raising funds to continue their efforts. For past several years, he has assisted the Baltimore American Indian Center to move from a position of being $200,000 in debt and closing its doors, to one of eliminating its debt and raising more than $200,000, to renovating its building and raising $45,000 to hire new staff. Mr. Cook directed the COPC program in West Baltimore and will direct the community outreach activities for this project.

The Project Manager, Randa Deacon (MSW, MS economics), will dedicate at least 60% time to this Initiative. She has three years experience working on the West Baltimore COPC project and four years working in East Baltimore with the groups involved in this New Directions effort. She helped homeowners in the area, faced with relocation resulting from a major new development, move from a position of being offered $3000 for their property to being offered more than $70,000. She supported public housing tenants in the area in getting the City’s attention regarding their maintenance issues. And she has assisted several organizations in the area to develop more effective organizational structures. She will be based in the community and work with the community partners in developing their strategies and activities, and she will oversee reports and record-keeping for the project. She will also supervise a graduate Student Intern assigned to the project.

Andrea Judson (MSW, LCSW-C), part time Community Organizer on this Initiative, has worked for the past five years in the target area. She has helped groups in the area collaborate with each other in order to provide more effective services. She also has assisted tenants of one public housing project design and secure $100,000 to build a new playground to replace the one that was broken down and used by drug dealers; the new one is now the territory of parents and children in the community. Ms. Judson will oversee the community engagement activities and supervise several graduate student interns who be assigned to the Initative.

Faculty and Administrative consultants to the Initiative include:

· Terry Hickey (JD), School of Law, is founder of Community Law in Action (CLIA), a program affiliated with the Law School, which has provided training in street law for the past five years to some of the poorest communities in Baltimore including the West Baltimore Empowerment Zone, COPC project. Dr. Hickey and CLIA recently won a grant and approval from the Baltimore City School Board to develop an innovative high school focused on teaching young people skills and knowledge of community leadership. The Baltimore Freedom Academy has completed its first year with 100 students, and is relocating to the East Baltimore target area. Dr. Hickey and CLIA will conduct the Community Advocacy for Youth Trainings.

· Karen Hopkins (MSW, PhD Social Work), School of Social Work, Co-Chairs the Management and Community Organization Concentration. Her specialty is the field of management and organizational development, with particular emphasis on supervision, learning organizations, personnel development, and evaluation research. She has focused her classes on addressing real organizational problems and co-taught the community research course with Dr. Hyde that worked in our target area two years ago. She will assist with the organizational development and research aspects of the project.

· James Kunz (MSW, PhD Economics & Social Work), School of Social Work, has worked with Baltimore’s poorest communities from the time he was an MSW student and interned with the Maryland Food Committee, which helped poor communities organize around increasing the availability of food. Two years ago, Dr. Kunz led a community-wide project with Baltimore County’s Community Action Agency, involving hundreds of community representatives in developing policy papers on the county’s most pressing issues for the incoming County Executive. He will assist the project by working with community groups to help them understand the economic impact of various strategies and activities. He will be particularly helpful as the project develops strategies for affordable housing and in providing expertise in cost effectiveness measures.

· Mary Leach (PhD Mathematics), Office of the President, has chaired the Community Advisory Board of the West Baltimore COPC and served as a Board Member of one of the Village Centers. Along with a community representative, she will serve as Co-chair of this Initiative’s Community Advisory Committee. Dr. Leach also created and leads the Covering Kids Project, an effort to secure health insurance for uninsured children in Maryland. She will serve as the Liaison to the President’s Office on this project as well as advising participating community organizations on resource access issues.

· Megan Meyers (MSW, PhD Social Welfare), School of Social Work, has worked in the target area for the past three years, assisting groups in developing planning strategies and using available data resources to solve their problems. She teaches community organizing, social action and community economic development courses at the school. Her specialty is in the area of conflict resolution. Two years ago, she worked with Randa Deacon on an effort that produced a successful new community organization in East Baltimore, which then secured a substantial increase in the amount of money being offered for their homes. This past year, she led a successful workshop which trained 50 community residents in techniques of alternative dispute resolution. She will assist community partners in developing strategies for community building and will facilitate trainings on conflict resolution between various groups and organizations.

· Mitsuko Nakashima (MSW, PhD Social Work), School of Social Work, specializes in aging and cultural diversity. She currently is a Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar Fellowship. For this project, she will assist primarily with strategies to end isolation among the catchment area’s senior citizens.

· Larry Ortiz (MSW, PhD Sociology), School of Social Work, specializes in outreach to and political mobilization of the Latino population. He also has an interest in housing development and on the impact of policy on the local level. He will be assisting primarily with resident engagement activities.

· Barbara Sattler (RN, DrPH) School of Nursing, Director of the Environmental Health Education Center at the school. She is the Principle Investigator on a “Healthy Homes Initiative” working to eliminate lead hazards in Park Heights. She is also the Principle Investigator for Community Outreach on an EPA hazardous waste site grant. She has worked for the past 10 years with Baltimore’s communities most affected by environmental degradation. Over the past five years she has organized an environmental task force in South Baltimore which has worked to reduce environmental hazards. She has worked for the past three years in the targeted communities. She will assist the community partners in understanding the environmental health issues and what communities can do to protect themselves.

· Dan Schulze (PhD), School of Medicine, teaches Molecular Immunology. Dr. Schulze is the Faculty Advisor to a group of medical students who have organized themselves as the Baltimore Community for Medical Outreach, which provides voluntary health education to Baltimore communities. The committee will be available for health care workshops and community educational activities on topics the community requests. This will dovetail well with the work on environmental hazards.

· Steve Soifer (MSW, PhD Social Policy), School of Social Work, teaches economic development, community organizing and social action. One of his areas of focus is affordable housing, specifically the establishment of land trusts. He will assist the project in strategizing long-term affordable housing options.

B) Past Performance

Achievement of specific measurable outcomes:

Upon notice of the initial COPC grant, the Project Director was given 24 hours to get to a national COPC Conference in St. Louis. During his absence, the local newspaper contacted the President’s Office about the award. The resulting article made no mention of community partners, who became so infuriated with this oversight that the Project Director (upon his return) asked HUD about the process for returning the grant. In an effort to salvage the project, a respected city official was engaged to mediate. This process was successful, but it set the project timeline back by about six months. Despite this slow start, the project was able to meet and in many cases exceed it goals.

The “West Baltimore Empowerment Zone Initiative” was composed of University partners and four Village Centers in the Empowerment Zone – Washington Village/Pigtown, Poppleton, Harlem Park, and Sandtown. The following is a summary of the Goals, Outcome Goals, and Outcomes Achieved for the COPC Grant from 1999 to 2003 (includes 2 extension years):

· Goal 1: Increase the involvement, organization and mobilization of community residents and their resources to deal with problems or issues.

· Outcome Goal: recruit 200 residents to become involved in Village Center activities (e.g. community clean-ups, community fairs, safety patrols, neighborhood watches) by June 2000.

· Outcome Achieved: recruited 350 residents by June 2000.

· Outcome Achieved: recruited more than 4000 residents by December 2003.

· Goal 2: Increase community capacity to identify and respond to community issues.

· Outcome Goal: identify and involve 25 leadership prospects from the community by December 1998.

· Outcome Achieved: identified and involved 15 leadership prospects by December 1998.

· Outcome Achieved: identified and involved more than 100 leadership prospects by December 2001.

· Goal 3: Increase in employment and community development.

· Outcome Goal: create job seekers identification and placement programs by December 1998.

· Outcome Achieved: created the first job seekers identification and placement program in Washington Village/Pigtown by December 1998.

· Outcome Achieved: created programs in each of the 4 Village Centers by June 1999.

· Outcome Goal: place 200 applicants in jobs each year by December 1999

·