This urban outreach center?s mission is to hire from within.
“What makes us unique is that our ?Ambassador? volunteers help build a sense of neighborhood,” said Bill McLennan, executive director of Paul?s Place, a 25-year-old nonprofit wellspring of outreach programs for Baltimore?s Washington Village/Pigtown district.
“They volunteer throughout the day,” McLennan said, “but they really help us run our hot lunch program. They literally act as ambassadors. … They [spot and] talk to people who are in crisis and refer them to our staff.”
McLennan is referring to the neighborhood center?s core founding program ? its free hot-lunch offering, now totaling 60,000 meals annually ? for its poor, inner-city clientele, and to the organization?s people-reclaiming ways.
A springboard to a slew of other transforming operations, the center?s mainstay meal ministry is designed to begin breaking poverty?s local grip and enrich the community. Lately, Paul?s Place has also partnered with Chesapeake Habitat for Humanity to renovate blighted area properties ? suddenly of interest to investors ? for local use.
“We?re literally in the shadow of the stadiums [The Ravens? M&T Bank Stadium and Orioles Park at Camden Yards],” McLennan said, “and yet our neighborhood, according to the 2000 Census, has the seventh-highest concentration of urban poverty in the United States.”
Included in the nonprofit?s programs are its free after-school elementary, middle and high school enrichment courses for area children; its 24-station computer lab and computer literacy course; its physical education facilities; its semiweekly health screening clinic; and its dining room and clothing bank.
The $1.3 million-a-year organization ? with a paid staff of nine and 140 volunteers ? also manages an eight-week summer camp for area children out of its new 10,000-square-foot facility.
And, according to coordinator Will Thomas, the Ambassador program alone boasts 40 enrollees, all of whom earn credits for their work, which they can redeem to pay bills and obtain other assistance.
“They helped me with [Baltimore Gas and Electric], and recently they helped with our water heater, which unexpectedly broke,” said Ambassador program member Gina Sykes of gratis assistance available to any neighborhood resident. “It was very beneficial.”
More information
» Paul?s Place
1118 Ward St., Baltimore
410-625-0775
www.paulsplaceoutreach.org
