Archive

David Miller, a 1999 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow and a member of the Fellows Advisory Board, has just released a new children’s book Chef Toussaint, about a 9-year-old master chef who turns his grandmother’s recipes into award-winning dishes. He is the author of several other children’s books, including Khalil’s Way; Brooklyn’s Finest: The Green Family Farm; […]

On Monday, 2016 OSI Community Fellow Debbie Ramsey and her granddaughter Ghadir Smallwood appeared on the NBC game show The Wall. Debbie started Unified Efforts, an out-of-school program aimed at reducing summer learning loss, as part of her Fellowship. Debbie and Ghadir, who also volunteers with Unified Efforts, appeared on the show to kick off […]

In a big win for Baltimore City schools this week, the Maryland House of Delegates voted to override the governor’s 2020 veto of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the historic education equity legislation that includes recommendations from the Kirwan Commission Report. For the last several years, OSI’s Education and Youth Development program, along with grantees […]

Some of OSI’s Community Fellows and alumni ended 2020 on a high note. Below is a short roundup: In mid-December, the Baltimore Sun ran a feature on Troy Staton, of the 2020 Community Fellows cohort, and his project, More Than a Shop, which he launched in 2017 out of his Hollins Street barbershop to help […]

WYPR’s On the Record with Sheilah Kast continues its tradition of featuring the newest OSI Community Fellows. The interviews with the 2020 cohort kicked off on December 23rd with Isaiah Johnson and Elizabeth Finne. Isaiah’s project, The Greenmount East Leadership Project (GELP) aims to provide kids between 10 and 19 with positive activities and role […]

The Baltimore Furniture Bank, co-founded by 2019 OSI Community Fellow Damien Haussling as a way to help connect those coming out of homelessness to essential furnishings free of charge recently moved into a new, larger space. Haussling sits amid recent donations in the Furniture Bank’s new warehouse space.   Haussling got the idea to collect […]

Today, the Baltimore Sun featured Ashley Minner, an American Studies professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a 2008 OSI Community Fellow, who spoke about the project she is working on that will create an archive of the history East Baltimore’s Lumbee Indian Community. Minner is an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe. […]

  OSI would like to highlight some of the events and projects the Community Fellows are hosting or facilitating this season: This Sunday, November 22, Building Our Nations Daughters, Inc (BOND), the organization founded by Ateira Griffin (2020) will be providing no-contact delivery of full Thanksgiving baskets to single-parent families in need in Baltimore City […]