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I hope this message finds you and yours healthy and well.
When Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young created our office last summer, he charged us with radically improving the lives of Baltimore’s children and families by ensuring access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed and thrive. It’s a mandate we take to heart every day—especially now, in this time of uncertainty stemming from the spread of coronavirus. The needs of our children, youth and families have become more urgent as access to food and other essential items has become increasingly limited. As our partners, you know the work we do is high-touch, on the ground and engagement-driven: it’s about connecting with people and connecting them, in turn, to opportunities, resources and each other. We are forced to rethink how to do our work with social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
In this first Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success newsletter, we want to share with you what we are doing to help meet the needs of the community during the coronavirus pandemic. We hope you read it with an eye for letting us know where we’re getting the work right and where there are gaps. What else can we do to support our communities in this difficult and extraordinary time? How can we better leverage community assets to meet the growing needs? And how can we partner with you to collectively wrap our arms around Baltimore’s children, youth and families; to minimize the anxiety; to make sure families know where to turn for assistance; and to ensure we honor personal dignity and agency in our response?
Our work is impossible—and incomplete—without you.
Thank you for all that you do every day to lift up our children and youth and to help make Baltimore families whole.
—Tisha Edwards, Executive Director
 One of the first big changes we all experienced in Baltimore as part of the coronavirus pandemic was the closure of schools, which created a sudden disruption to the daily meals normally provided to students by City Schools. Since March 16, City Schools and city government have partnered to fill the daily meal gap for children and youth. City Schools operates 18 school-based meal sites, while the Mayor’s Office of Children & Family Success coordinates distribution of grab-n-go meals for children, youth and families at 42 rec center sites, 24 mobile meal sites and 11 community-based sites. One month into the emergency food response we have provided 529,281 meals for children, youth and families—just over a half-million meals (March 16-April 14).
Most of these meals are made possible through federal summer meal funds, which only allows meals for youth ages 18 and younger. We know the need among older youth and families is just as urgent, and demand for food assistance continues to grow as we settle into the “new normal” of staying at home. To that end, we are taking steps to round out the grab-n-go meals program with additional options to serve more people in need. During the week of March 23, for example, we secured funding to distribute meals to families at eight of the city’s public housing communities. Through a partnership with the Maryland Food Bank, we distributed 720 shelf-stable food boxes—7 days of food for families of 4—at nine rec centers in each geographic area of the city during the week of April 6. And we plan to do much more.
Get up-to-date meal information here. And please join us in thanking our partners for helping us to feed Baltimore: the Baltimore City Department of Recreation & Parks, the Baltimore City Department of Housing & Community Development, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, the Family League, City Schools and the 11 community groups that operate our community-based sites—Breath of God, City of Refuge Baltimore, Easterwood Rec, Emmanuel Wesleyan, Franciscan Center, Italian Cultural Center, Liberty Rec and Tech, Nazarene Baptist Church, Power House, Sister’s Saving the City and St. Veronica’s.
 Working with youth who squeegee to secure the opportunities and supports they need to move toward safer, more sustainable ways of earning income is the goal of the city’s Squeegee Alternative Plan. In recent weeks, we recruited 13 youth from the corners of Baltimore to participate in our emergency food response efforts. Youth distributed grab-n-go meals at the city’s public housing communities and they assisted with giving out 720 food boxes at rec centers. In both cases we were able to support youth in need of income and families in need of food—that's what we call a win-win. Stay tuned as we continue to share how we activate youth to serve the community and contribute to the city’s emergency response.
To keep our staff and communities safe, we closed our five CAP centers to the public on March 13. Although we no longer have staff onsite, we continue to accept applications online and through the mail. We appreciate your patience while we continue to process energy and water assistance requests, and we look forward to reopening our doors to Baltimore soon.
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 Young people are home and don’t know when they’ll go back to school. There’s a lot of information circulating about coronavirus and nobody knows how long this will last. It’s confusing and making many of us feel pretty anxious. So, we’re keeping a running list of things youth can do at home and outside to stay active, while keeping their brains busy and having some fun in the weeks ahead.
 The city has created the Baltimore City COVID-19 Response Fund to make it possible (and easy!) for everyone to help strengthen and support its crucial emergency efforts—from ensuring food access for families and supporting our neighbors experiencing homelessness to providing health care equipment, public health education and neighborhood outreach and small business recovery support. Please give and ask others to join you in giving. And know any contribution you make makes a difference in the lives of others. Thank you.
 While we look forward to hearing from you in the days and weeks ahead—about how we can be doing more and better and partnering with you—we ask you to please:
- follow us on social media
- Twitter, IG, FB: @bmorechildren
- direct people we can support to
- take good care of yourselves and stay healthy and safe
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