Archive

The Baltimore Community Foundation (BCF) has named Shanaysha Sauls as its new CEO, replacing outgoing CEO Tom Wilcox, who led BCF since 2000. Sauls previously served as CEO of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women and former chair of the Baltimore City school board. Open Society Institute-Baltimore worked closely with Sauls on reducing suspensions […]

The children attending Unified Efforts‘s week-long Winter Break Camp spent time at Clayworks in Mt Washington creating clay pots and painted tiles to raise money for the Burundi Project, which funds a full-time doctor for the Kamenge clinic in Burundi. The students worked with artist Sam Wallace to create the “table full of love.” The […]

The Maryland Daily Record reports today that the use of cash bail in Maryland has declined since a new Court of Appeals rule, asking courts to prioritize non-monetary conditions for pretrial release, went into effect in July: In the six months since Maryland’s retooled bail rule went into effect, nearly 60 percent of criminal defendants […]

Patrick Gaspard, the president of Open Society Foundations and former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, has made multiple media appearances over the past week to discuss the impact of President Trump’s racist and derogatory comments aimed at immigrants and the countries they left. On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (starting at the 1:10 mark), Gaspard, who is Haitian-American, […]

The application for Open Society Institute-Baltimore’s 2018 cohort of Community Fellows is now available. Complete the online application or download it here.  Applications are due by 5:00pm on Monday, March 5, 2018. Learn more about the Community Fellowships program, the 2017 cohort of Community Fellows, or see a list of all past Fellows. For those applying using […]

In response to allegations that the bail-bonds industry has illegally bribed Maryland lawmakers, the Coalition for a Safe and Justice Maryland held a press conference in Annapolis today urging legislators not to accept donations from the industry, to return 2017 donations, and to reject any legislation put forward or promoted by the industry. (Read the Sun’s […]

Recently, OSI grantee, Behavioral Health System Baltimore (BHSB) has been working with Maryland Public Television on a digital television series that features the OSI-funded Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. This three-part series will be released over the next several weeks. Part one is on MTP’s website now. BHSB also highlighted the work of Baltimore Police […]

Recently, 2013 OSI Community Fellow Lanaea Featherstone announced that her foundation, The William & Lanaea C. Featherstone Foundation along with the Consular Section of the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, D.C. will debut the Featherstone College Scholarships, an innovative $20,000 fund designated to increase Baltimore’s Latino enrollment and promote higher education. Ten Latinx students will […]

Do you know an awesome Baltimore City Public Schools Principal? Nominate them for the Heart of the School Awards. It only takes a few minutes. The Heart of the School Awards, managed by OSI grantee Fund for Educational Excellence in collaboration with Baltimore City Public Schools, is a community-wide celebration of the dedication, innovation, and leadership of the […]

In 1998, Open Society Foundations (OSF) officially opened its first–and still only–U.S. field office, Open Society Institute-Baltimore. Throughout 2018, we’ll use the logo above to mark this momentous year and host events and discussions about our history, our present, and our future (click here to receive updates). Twenty years ago, the idea was to hire a […]