• In Baltimore, Healing Trauma Is Now Official Policy

    Tuesday, December 13, 2022
    In the year since Donna Bruce started working at the Baltimore public library’s Penn North branch, she has connected more than 400 visitors to housing programs, food assistance and substance abuse recovery options — and saved a man from dying of a drug overdose by administering the emergency treatment Narcan. Poverty is pervasive in the [...]
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  • How Baltimore’s MOMCares is working to close the gaps in Black parental health

    Monday, December 12, 2022
    -Ana Rodney is a 2019 OSI Baltimore Community Fellow.- While pregnant with her firstborn, Ana Rodney looked forward to a nine-month journey that culminated with a joyous return home from the hospital with her baby. Then reality hit, and Rodney found herself suffering alone. ...From the pain, Rodney created MOMCares, an organization that provides doula [...]
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  • Mindfulness program empowering students expands beyond Baltimore

    Monday, December 12, 2022
    -Holistic Life Foundation is an OSI-supported program.- A program aims to empower Baltimore students by teaching the techniques of “yoga, meditation, breathwork and self-love.” The nonprofit Holistic Life Foundation, which runs the classes, partnered with university researchers to study the impact on kids’ well-being. A student-turned-educator tells NBC News’ Rehema Ellis that the program changed [...]
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  • Brief But Spectacular – Troy Staton

    Thursday, November 03, 2022
    -Troy Staton 2020 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow.- Troy Staton is a Baltimore barber and founder of “More Than a Shop," a network of barbershops and beauty salons that organizes a host of community services from free Wi-Fi to overdose prevention training. A victim of gun violence, he shares his Brief But Spectacular take on how transforming [...]
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  • At concert outside Baltimore plant, musicians protest Maryland pharmaceutical company’s Narcan prices

    Friday, October 28, 2022
    -OSI grantees Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition and Maryland Peer Advisory Council were among the groups leading this event.- By Cassidy Jensen Joined by harm-reduction advocates, local musicians performed outside a Baltimore drug manufacturing facility Wednesday afternoon to protest the price of the overdose-reversing drug Narcan sold by pharmaceutical company Emergent BioSolutions. Demonstrators parked a flatbed [...]
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  • ‘You can’t exercise a right that you don’t know you have’: Coalition seeks voting access for Marylanders awaiting trial

    Friday, October 28, 2022
    -Life After Release is an OSI grantee.- By Shannon Clark LARGO — Thousands of Maryland residents will not cast a ballot in this year’s election because they are behind bars. They have not had their voting rights taken from them. In fact, they have not been convicted of a crime. But because they are in [...]
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  • Building a skatepark in West Baltimore is all about equity and the right to have fun

    Wednesday, October 05, 2022
    -Stephanie Murdock is a 2010 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow.- By Stephanie Murdock and Sosii Brown. The future of Baltimore should be rooted in providing young people with productive things to do. But Baltimore has a tremendous problem when it comes to skateparks that serve not only skateboarders but youth who enjoy BMX, roller skating and riding [...]
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  • Map guides way on the the Jones Falls Trail

    Wednesday, October 05, 2022
    -Janet Felsten is a 1998 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow.- By Jacques Kelly. Over this past summer I learned about something that surrounded me throughout my years in Baltimore: the Jones Falls Trail. It all began when Janet Felsten handed me a foldout map one Saturday at the Waverly Farmers Market off Greenmount Avenue. She told me [...]
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  • ‘Time for action is now’: Groups, Baltimore leaders push for change amid recent violence in schools

    Wednesday, September 14, 2022
    -City Councilman Zeke Cohen, leaders of the Baltimore Teachers Union, and several city schools students held a rally outside City Hall calling on district leadership to implement the OSI-initiated and -supported restorative practices program in all Baltimore City schools.- By WMAR Staff BALTIMORE — Parents, teachers and local groups are shouting out against violence in schools. In [...]
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  • Baltimore officials, including teachers, want more conflict resolution in schools after Mervo High shooting

    Wednesday, September 14, 2022
    -City Councilman Zeke Cohen, leaders of the Baltimore Teachers Union, and several city schools students held a rally outside City Hall calling on district leadership to implement the OSI-initiated and -supported restorative practices program in all Baltimore City schools.- By Lea Skene Days after a student was gunned down outside his northeast Baltimore high school [...]
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