Artist: Pablo Machioli

Initiatives

Baltimore’s Promise co-develops and identifies strategies, practices, and efforts that can help improve outcomes for Baltimore City youth and young adults at a population level.

Visit our initiative-specific pages to learn more about our current work and partners.

 
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The Baltimore City Youth Opportunities Landscape (Opportunities Landscape) is a public and collaborative effort, facilitated by Baltimore’s Promise to centralize, aggregate, map, and analyze the youth opportunities available to young people ages 0-24. This type of landscape and analysis can help us understand the universe of programs and services that exist in Baltimore City. It will help community members understand disparities in access to youth opportunities by race, gender, age, neighborhood, and other factors.

Click here to visit the Opportunities Landscape landing page, which includes a full report, infographic, dashboard, and stakeholder-specific resources for program providers and youth, parents, and caregivers.

 
 

The Baltimore Summer Funding Collaborative (SFC) is a partnership between public, private and nonprofit organizations that supports high-quality summer programs serving children and youth from low-income backgrounds in Baltimore City through grantmaking. While each member of the SFC has particular priorities, they all share the same goal: to fund different types of summer programs to keep students engaged and reduce summer learning loss so that more youth can reach their full potential. To this end, 100% of funding decisions for Summer 2024 aligned with recommendations from youth and caregivers taking part in the initiative’s community review process.

Baltimore’s Promise is the Administrative Backbone of the SFC.

For more information, visit www.bmoresfc.org.

 

 
 

Practitioners’ and policymakers’ efforts to tackle challenges in education, health, public safety, and economic opportunity are often limited by data silos which create a fragmented picture of services and risks shaping the lives of children and families. This lack of information-sharing prevents Baltimore from strategically, effectively, and equitably meeting the needs of the city’s children, youth, and families. To address this issue, Baltimore’s Promise, in partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools and the Mayor’s Office, has developed the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub.

The Youth Data Hub will provide a permanent and secure system of inquiry enabling agencies and policymakers to make decisions on the complex needs facing our youth and families as they interact with multiple systems. We have embedded an equity lens to this work, allowing us to better understand and address the barriers and challenges faced by young people as they strive to become thriving adults with choices in careers that lead to economic stability.

Visit the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub landing page to learn more.

 
 
 

CareerBound is a partnership of Baltimore City Public Schools, the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, and Baltimore’s Promise that aims to connect City Schools with opportunities that can lead to livable, sustainable wages. It contains five elements:

  • In-school Youth Apprenticeships

  • Grads2Careers

  • Alumni Track + Stackable Credentials

  • Academic Acceleration

  • Coordinated Resources

Click here to learn more about the goals and purpose of CareerBound.

 
 
 

The Forever 15 Fund at Baltimore’s Promise is dedicated to helping young people 16-24 in Baltimore achieve their goals by providing a safety net when things get tough.

Donations will support young people experiencing crisis, which may include providing resources or financial assistance in the areas of mental health, food access, housing, and childcare; building a network of responsive, supportive people and organizations to catch youth before they fall; and establishing an annual resource and wellness fair.

 
 
Youth Grantmakers logo

The Youth Grantmakers (YG) Initiative endeavors to establish a permanent, youth-led grantmaking body through which public and private youth-serving resources can flow. This grantmaking structure has been developed by older youth from Baltimore City ages 16 - 24 serving as the inaugural cohort of YGs. In this first cycle of grantmaking, YGs allocated $500,000 in resources to support Baltimore City older youth ages 16- 24.

 
 

Baltimore’s Promise has committed to a long-term focus on literacy for young people from birth to age 24, with a priority on older youth literacy and a goal of population-level change for Baltimore City’s young people. Specifically, Baltimore’s Promise will dedicate over $30 million of funding in the next ten years to support three literacy strategies. These initiatives were developed through years of data-driven research, analysis, and strategic planning. See our literacy work in action in the CareerBound Academic Acceleration element.

Learn more about our plans to improve youth literacy outcomes here.