Money was allocated, new slogans emerged, and politicians declared that a “new day” for West Baltimore would be paramount, and so on and so forth. What’s to pity? It is the people that make up any community. This community has a long and rich history of thriving and surviving all forms of adversities. Unified Efforts did not provide its free summer program out of pity but out of love for people that needed a void to be filled, a void occasioned by the closings of a nearby elementary school and a recreational center. Last summer twenty area students ranging from six to seventeen years of age benefited from Unified Efforts’ five weeks of structured out of school time program. Our success was not so much from what we brought to the table, but from what we received—a lot of optimism from the community’s greatest resource, their youth. The next time you hear or read about how Baltimore’s Penn-North and surrounding West Baltimore communities should be pitied and feared, we say, “Don’t believe the hype.” An African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” My belief is that a single child can raise up an entire community. Deborah B. Ramsey Debbie was named a 2016 Fellow by Open Society Institute , a network of partners, projects and foundations in more than 100 countries. The Baltimore field office focuses on the root causes of intertwined problems in our city and state. Visit OSI-Baltimore. I BelongMagazine.com Fall/Winter 2016–17
I BELONG MAGAZINE.COM Letter from the Publisher
Deborah B. Ramsey – Open Society Institute 2016 Fellow
Belie When Baltimore’s Penn-North community was ablaze in the spring of 2015, local, national and international coverage on all the 24/7 cable news channels did not miss a moment of Baltimore’s “uprising.” Shame, disbelief and negative labels were mainly directed at our young people. Words like “thugs” and “criminals” were uttered, not just from the media but also from Baltimore’s public officials. Once the smoke cleared, Mayor Rawlings- Blake called off the week-long curfew, and Governor Hogan removed the National Guard, the order of the day was to “pity” Baltimore’s historic community. Page 6
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