Strong City Baltimore deserves our support
As a longtime donor to Strong City Baltimore, I’d like to add some balance to Justin Fenton’s recent article, “Financial woes at Strong City Baltimore are creating big problems for vital community programs it is supposed to support” (Sept. 18). Strong City Baltimore should be commended especially for two specific actions it took over the past several years: First, taking the risk to help organize and reinvest in an abandoned East Baltimore building and helped create a vibrant new center for nonprofit incubation, job training, among other uses. Second, taking the risk to start and grow a fiscal sponsorship program for new nonprofits because there was a significant need for this service.
Taking risks does not mean everything will work out perfectly. Rather than all the criticism, I think we must take necessary actions as a community to help Strong City as it “rights the ship.”
A lack of working capital makes the task of providing fiscal sponsorship so difficult that very few organizations will step up to fill this need. Government agencies that want to support small, emerging groups but are either slow to pay or need reports of expenditures before they pay out their grants.
With this article, The Sun has exposed a major need for a structural solution to problems Strong City faced with its fiscal sponsorship program. I suggest that the city and philanthropic partners who also rely on those nonprofits might step up to help by establishing a fund to cover gaps in cash flows from slow-paying public agencies. A fund of $500,000 to $1 million would allow a sponsoring organization to avoid the problems Strong City encountered.
Finally, many groups that were small when they came to Strong City, like Baltimore Corps, have thrived with the assistance they received as a sponsored organization for several years. Their success is one example of many efforts Strong City helped develop and for which it deserves much credit.
UM’s students should have weekly coronavirus testing
I’m a neurophysiology major at the University of Maryland, and I am worried about the well-being of our campus (“Dorm full of University of Maryland students potentially exposed to COVID-19 asked to stay in their rooms,” Sept. 18). Students’ mental and physical health is being neglected due to a lack of a proper COVID-19 response from the university. I personally chose to live at home due to my increased risk, but my friends who had no better living situation than on and off-campus housing are suffering.
Despite the rising number of deaths, which has now reached 200,000 people nationwide and almost 4,000 in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan is calling to initiate reopening plans for the state. He recently called for indoor dining at restaurants to increase their capacity to 75%, which will risk lives unnecessarily.
I have been lucky enough to have that option of living at home. I knew it was the safest choice for me, but my heart goes out to those on campus. My friends tell me about their panic attacks, their hopelessness and the lack of mental health services available. They tell me about the parties their neighbors throw and how when they report the large gatherings, the authorities do nothing.
Prince George’s County has a large Black and Latinx population. These groups have been hit the hardest across the country mortality-wise.
The actions of students not following guidelines and the school’s inability to enforce them are endangering the most vulnerable in our community. UM currently only requires people to get tested if they show symptoms or have been around someone with symptoms. Since people can be asymptomatic for the virus, this current system poses an enormous health risk for the campus community.
To have a chance at returning to normalcy, I am calling for Governor Hogan to temporarily close all non-essential business.
As for College Park, I ask that school administrators make their weekly testing required for anyone in the campus community. The students here are begging for our school to make a better plan.
Polio survivor Mike Lang a true Baltimore role model
Dan Rodricks wrote a wonderful column about Michael Lang (“A Baltimore boyhood memory of polio and a pool hall,” Sept. 22). I graduated with Mike from City College in 1960. He was an inspiration to many of us who were Boy Scouts with him in Troop 147, sponsored by the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.
He was always one of us. Never did he say, “I cannot do it.” Nothing was too much for him to conquer. If there was hike, Mike participated. Broad Creek Scout Camp was a challenge with its terrain, but that was not a deterrent in his attendance or participation in its activities. He was a terrific role model to us teens who knew him.
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