Twelve Additional Community-Based Organizations to receive $600,000 in ARPA Dollars to Support Violence Prevention in Baltimore
Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement continues to accept applications for funding for grassroots organizations doing work in community violence intervention, re-entry, community healing, youth justice, and victim services
BALTIMORE, MD (Friday, July 29, 2022) — Today, Mayor Brandon M. Scott and the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) announced another round of recipients of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars targeted at improving public safety outcomes to community-based organizations (CBOs). The distribution of awards totaling $600,000 is directly aligned with the Scott Administration's charge to co-produce public safety with the Baltimore community. This funding is in addition to the $17.9 million already allocated to Baltimore CBOs and is part of the $50 million ARPA investment that Scott allocated to the public safety agency last year.
“We know that we cannot cure the violence plaguing our city with the tactics and one-off efforts of the past,” said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. “We rely on the partnerships with Baltimore’s community-based organizations to aid us in our public health approach to violence reduction and are proud to offer this support as we forge ahead in this work to produce meaningful, sustainable public safety outcomes for all Baltimoreans.”
Year to date, MONSE has announced $725,000 in competitive grants to organizations engaged in community violence intervention, victim services, youth justice, community healing, and re-entry work. All applications are evaluated by community grant reviewers with professional and/or lived experience in these areas. Broken down by focus area, MONSE has announced the following allocations thus far:
- Community Healing: $175,000
- Community Violence Intervention: $200,000
- Re-Entry: $150,000
- Victim Services: $75,000
- Youth Justice: $100,000
The median award amount is $50,000.
This funding, in part, will continue to support the cultivation of the city’s Community Violence Intervention (CVI) ecosystem, from 10 to at least 30 contracts with community-based organizations engaged in outreach, mediation, violence intervention, hospital-based violence intervention, life coaching, mental health support, and most notably for this round of awards, victim services.
MONSE is taking on work that is brand new to City government, including dedicated victim services for survivors of gun violence while also expanding and optimizing pre-existing services including anti-intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and anti-human trafficking.
Awards to House of Ruth, My Covenant Place, and TurnAround Inc., outlined in the chart below, represent specific partnerships that MONSE is working to establish for Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)-prevention-related work. Specifically, the agency has offered these organizations one-year awards to increase emphasis on offender-focused approaches, such as abuser intervention programming (AIPs) for offenders and abusers. MONSE is actively looking to sponsor programs and/or organizations that are designed to help change the behaviors of those who have repeatedly used violence toward their intimate partners and/or family members.
“MONSE is partnering with CBOs on work that has never been done before in Baltimore in strategic, coordinated efforts to build public safety,” said Director Shantay Jackson of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. “These dollars belong to the community and we are working diligently to ensure that the folks who are on the ground have what they need to continue to administer these lifesaving services.”
As outlined in the agency’s budget presentation to the Baltimore City Council Ways and Means Committee on June 6, 2022, MONSE has a goal of reaching at least 100 individual victims served by grants.
A list of this round of community-based organizations and institutions to receive grants is as follows:
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Organization
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Grant Amount
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Grant Timeframe
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Project Description
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Category
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National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA)
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Single Year
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The mission of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA) is to help create a society in which all persons who come into contact with human service or correctional systems are provided an environment of individual care, concern and treatment. NCIA is dedicated to developing quality programs and professional services that advocate timely intervention and unconditional care.
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Re-Entry
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Brown Girl Wellness, Inc.
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$25,000
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Single Year
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Brown Girl Wellness, Inc. will use narratives from women and children as a tool to prevent domestic violence. The primary objective of this project is to give victims of violence a voice. Through sharing their voice, victims regain their power through visual and auditory storytelling. Moreover, they have the opportunity to serve as ambassadors against violence to help other women and children.
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Youth Justice
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$25,000
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Single Year
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The mission of The Youth of The Diaspora (YOTD) Program is to provide a culturally relevant, youth centered, and social justice focused outlet to high school students in Baltimore City. This is done through a series of weekly workshops focused on exposing students to global Black history, community organizing techniques, civic engagement, and community healing methods.
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Youth Justice
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We Rise, A Non-Profit Corporation
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$25,000
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Single Year
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We Rise! works to bring economic stability to youth and families by providing workforce structure and mentoring support to empower young people to become economically self-sufficient. The We Rise! mentoring component program primarily focuses on providing services to youth referred by the Department of Juvenile Service.
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Youth Justice
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The Kerry Kares Foundation
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$25,000
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Single Year
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The Mission of the Kerry Kares Foundation to strengthen the Baltimore community by investing human, financial, and community resources to improve the educational and social opportunities for its youth and elderly.
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Re-Entry
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Michele's Haven, CDC, Inc.
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$25,000
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Single Year
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Michele's Haven's vision is to inspire success by transforming one life at a time and to help our communities become more welcoming to formerly incarcerated individuals and to better ensure their success beyond incarceration. Their mission is to promote the development of individuals in achieving their full intellectual, social and spiritual potential as responsible citizens of their communities and society as a whole.
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Re-Entry
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Let's Thrive Baltimore Inc.
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$100,000
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Single Year
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Let's Thrive Baltimore's (LTB) mission is to provide overall community support, strategies, and awareness for families impacted by trauma to reduce violence in Baltimore, with a primary focus on getting youth off the streets, diverting them away from violent crimes through a community participatory approach, education and collaborating with partners to provide wrap-around services for teens and their families. LTB promotes healing and teaches conflict resolution to stop teen violence and prevent school to prison pipeline.
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Community Violence Intervention
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Ballet After Dark fiscally sponsored by Bmore Empowered
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Single Year
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Ballet After Dark provides Baltimorians with innovative ways to heal their traumas. Their mission is to provide somatic interventions, trauma-informed care, dance therapy and other holistic methods to encourage survivors of various levels of violence to heal their bodies using movement. Ballet After Dark helps survivors reprocess, rebuild and reclaim their lives following sexual and domestic trauma.
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Community Healing
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Catholic Charities of Baltimore-Esperanza Center
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Esperanza Center, a program of Catholic Charities of Baltimore, is a comprehensive resource center whose mission is to welcome immigrants by offering hope, compassionate services, and the power to improve their lives. Their Social Services team, which houses the Victims of Crime Program along with various other case management programs, is focused on providing standardized high-quality, trauma-informed case management services in a client's native language.
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Victim Services
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MONSE Discretionary Grants - Intimate Partner Violence Prevention: Abuse Intervention Programming
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My Covenant Place’s local project, the Alpha Project, focuses on serving individuals who are court ordered to take classes, at the request of an employer or for personal reasons. They are a certified and court approved program that offers abusers domestic violence, anger management and parenting classes. The Alpha Project requires attendance for 24 weeks and an intake to be completed in order to be a part of the program.
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House of Ruth’s Abuse Intervention Program is known as the Gateway Project. This program is known to not only increase the safety of victims impacted by violence, but hold offenders accountable by teaching non-violent, relationship skills. Certified and court approved, their program consists of an offender being accepted first and then required to attend 90-minute group sessions for a total of 28 weeks.
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TurnAround: Offers a certified, 26-week abuse intervention program, that is typically court ordered for individuals.
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MONSE continues to accept letters of interest for funding for organizations engaged in community violence intervention, victim services, youth justice, community healing, and re-entry work. Organizations may learn more and submit a letter of interest at the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement's Funding Portal. Grant applications in MONSE's five areas of focus will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis based on funding availability.
MONSE is also accepting applications for Community Grant Reviewers to review grant requests. Any community members who are interested in co-producing public safety and/or are subject matter experts in MONSE's five funding priorities are encouraged to submit an application through MONSE’s Grant Portal or email monse.grants@baltimorecity.gov for more information. A stipend for grant reviewers will be provided.
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