It occurred to me again the other day, during a conversation with Julia Baez, CEO of : There are two kinds of people around here — those who tackle (or at least care about) the city’s problems and challenges, and those who sit in comfortable chairs and carp about the failure of Democrats and do-gooders to create utopia on the Patapsco. Baez and Baltimore’s Promise are firmly in the former group, though they’ve done little crowing about their efforts and achievements. Baltimore’s Promise is all about helping a specific group of children and young adults, 14 to 24 years old, survive poverty, unstable family life, trauma, depression, and all other obstacles imaginable and unimaginable.
Older youth, particularly boys becoming men, are at higher risk of failure and violence than any other group in the city. Yet, as Baltimore’s Promise found, they are the most underserved. “There is really no central triage for young adults in the city,” Baez says.
“You have to go agency by agency to see what you can cobble together, and for this population, based on all our research, it still woefully fails to meet the need.” Since 2012, Baltimore’s Promise has been doing something about that with support from the Fund for Educational Excellence and local foundations. Baez and her colleagues work with other organizations to steer young adults to the services they need — education and summer learning, health and wellness, housing, jobs, and safe spaces.
I only learned about .
