Baltimore Corps picked its 10 Elevation Awards grantees for 2022

Baltimore Corps just awarded planning grants of $10,000 to 10 social entrepreneurs looking to make an impact in the city.

The organization aims to advance racial justice and equity for residents. Through its Elevation Awards program, it funds entrepreneurs’ novel approaches to strengthening Baltimore communities — from STEM kits for youth to transitional housing to decrease recidivism.

Infinite Focus Schools, one of Technical.ly’s RealLIST Startups 2021, came through the Elevation Awards 2018 and has been growing since. It’s evidence of what this early-stage funding can do for developing local leaders.

Here are the 2022 awardees, with descriptions via Baltimore Corps:

• Prison to Professionals (P2P) Transitional House, founded by Dr. Stanley Andrisse, is using the funds for operational costs of transitional house for men and women returning from incarceration in Baltimore City.
• A Peace of Nature, is the brainchild of Symone Barkley. She’s using STEM kits to equip traditionally excluded communities with resources and knowledge to act sustainably in their everyday lives and advocate for sustainable behavior in their communities. The hope is the early exposure to STEM will boost diversity in the field.
• Win Project: A Transformative Leadership Development Series is led by Kelvin Lyons. The goal is empower leaders and build community amongst youth and men through “real talk” conversations.
• Positively Caviar Inc. from Chazz Scott provides science-based mental wellness workshops rooted in positive psychology to introduce youth to mental wellness strategies to counter stress and adversity.
• R.I.S.E. ASD Arts Collective, founded by Kammeran Griggers, brings arts education to youth and young adults with autism.
• Next Generation Language Access, led by Omari Jeremiah, brings interpreter training to bilingual high school students. The goal is to fill the need for professional interpreters in community settings and train the next generation of professional interpreters in order to decrease nationwide gaps in language access.
• P.I.N.K (Providing Information Necessary to Know) 4 The City was founded by Nicole Logan with the aim to curate community-focused education programming to promote preventative care and address the disparities regarding breast cancer and African American women under the age of 40.
• ELLE-a-vation Exploration Bootcamp, led by Natalie Daniels, helps adolescent girls achieve personal goals and prepare for career paths through empowerment, education, employment opportunities and exposure to entrepreneurship
• Tendea’s Call To Duty, the brainchild of Elijah Miles, is a community leadership training program for Black boys living in McElderry Park.
• The Equity Project, founded by Dion Bowen, is using design, fashion, marketing, finance and digital media to bridge the technology gap in underserved communities.

Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.