Archive

On Wednesday, OSI grantees Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition and Maryland Peer Advisory Council joined other harm reduction activists at an impromptu concert outside Emergent Biolutions manufacturing plant on Paca Street in downtown Baltimore to protest the cost of overdose-reversal drug Naloxone, also known as Narcan. “They won’t donate, they won’t make deals to lessen the […]

This Sunday, October 30th, OSI and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will host Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson in conjunction with the museum’s new exhibit, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Wilkerson, author of the award-winning books The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) […]

OSI-Baltimore’s 2021 Impact Report is now available on the OSI website. The report includes a letter from OSI director Danielle Torain, a complete list of all OSI grants from 2021, a list of donors, and a breakdown how we spent our money in 2021. Check out OSI Impact Reports from previous years here.  

Tomorrow, October 18th, Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez, the founders of longtime OSI partners and grantees Holistic Life Foundation (HLF), will release their debut book Let Your Light Shine. OSI has been a longtime supporter of HLF’s work to bring yoga and mindfulness to Baltimore City Schools, including the introduction of a new […]

This week the Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender (OPD), an OSI-Baltimore grantee, released it’s report on the first year of implementation of the Juvenile Restoration Act (JRA), which was passed by Maryland’s General Assembly in 2021. The JRA permits people who have served at least 20 years of a sentence for a crime that […]

Bree Jones, a 2018 OSI-Baltimore Community Fellow and founder of equitable housing developer Parity, recently gave a TED Talk about the organization’s mission to revitalize neighborhoods and increase homeownership without displacing longtime residents or spurring gentrification. Parity acquires and rehabilitates abandoned properties in West Baltimore and creates affordable home ownership opportunities. Watch the talk below […]

Last month, the American Political Science Association presented the 2022 APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement to Nykidra Robinson, CEO of OSI grantee Black Girls Vote and Professor Melissa Michelson for their work on the OSI-supported “Party at the Mailbox” campaign during the 2020 election. The citation reads, in part: The APSA Distinguished Award […]

Days after Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School (Mervo) junior Jeremiah Brogden was shot and killed in his school’s parking lot, 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 existing restorative practices program in all Baltimore City […]

On August 31st, Tiffinee Scott (above, third from the left) of the Maryland Peer Advisory Council, joined Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff and Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), for a meeting to mark International Overdose Awareness Day. A White House read out of the meeting is […]

On Saturday September 17th from 9am to 1pm, the Baltimore Entrepreneur and Leadership Network (BELN) will host an opportunity for emerging local entrepreneurs and leaders to get to know each other, learn about incubators, accelerators, fellowships and academic programs, and connect with financial and legal experts that can help them along in their work. OSI-Baltimore […]