Wisdom Projects
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General Overview

Wisdom Projects, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to building peace through community education and community healing.

We work in partnership with community centers, recreation centers, and schools within under-resourced urban neighborhoods to prevent, reduce, and eliminate incidents of violence by building movements and organizing communities for peace, healing, justice, dignity, and holistic learning.

Our mission is to reimagine education and reimagine the world by enhancing the lives of youth and adults with peace-building, holistic education, intercultural understanding, and anti-oppressive, liberationist thought leadership. 

Our trauma-informed educational and healing services empower youth and families who live in low-income housing "projects" to become neighborhood peace advocates, ambassadors, and leaders. We do this through the following practices:

  1. community participatory mindfulness;
  2. teaching disarmament;
  3. nonviolent credible messaging;
  4. upstander-modeling;
  5. transformative justice;
  6. conflict transformation;
  7. community counseling;
  8. restorative practices;
  9. restorative justice; and
  10. de-escalation.

Headquartered in Baltimore City, Maryland, Wisdom Projects, Inc. has two divisions: the Chicago Wisdom Project (founded in 2010 and focused on thought leadership) and the Baltimore Wisdom Project (founded in 2013 and focused on direct community organizing). ​

Wisdom Projects, Inc. is the result of the 2019 merger of both divisions into one nonprofit organization.

More About Direct Community Education and Community Healing


Within the greater Baltimore City area, through our unique giving-service model, the Baltimore Wisdom Project organizes and builds communities undergoing socio-economic challenges and significant patterns of violence by offering the following:

  1. Trauma-informed healing services (community participatory mindfulness; peace-building (both everyday relational peace and global peace typified by youth-led advocacy for weapons-elimination and anti-nuclear proliferation); nonviolent credible messaging; upstander-modeling; transformative justice; conflict transformation; community counseling; restorative practices; restorative justice; de-escalation; and health navigation);
  2. STEM and arts education ((life science, engineering, and environmental justice combined with civic and cultural studies); and
  3. Institutional support (food service (if applicable); infrastructural support (counsel and limited resources for interior improvements for learning spaces); consultations for fundraising and development; consultations for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (or JEDI principles); professional development for trauma-informed care and national standards for safety and security; and strategic communications).
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The Baltimore Wisdom Project has offered high quality educational and health services in some of the epicenters of neighborhood violence in Baltimore City in partnership with community centers like the former Penn North Kids Safe Zone/Harambee Center in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester and the 29th Street Community Center in Greenmount East. We have also offered in-school restorative justice and mindfulness programs at institutions like Towson High School. We continue to offer these services in daily, deep collaboration with the McKim Center in East Baltimore.

More About Thought Leadership

The Chicago Wisdom Project offers thought leadership through the Reimagining Magazine and the Reimagining Podcast on anti-oppressive education and healing. The Chicago division previously offered ground-breaking out-of-school-time and summer holistic-educational and rite-of-passage programming for youth primarily from the South Side of Chicago. The Chicago Wisdom Project also trained practitioners in a unique course for holistic educators.

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Wisdom Projects, Inc. is grounded in the Wisdom Education movement. To learn more about this movement, please obtain and read Dr. Theodore Richards' Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto (Homebound Publications, 2013). 
Co-Executive Directors of Wisdom Projects, Inc.
​

Dr. Theodore Richards
Director (CEO) and Founder 
​Chicago Wisdom Project 

Co-Director (Co-CEO) of Wisdom Projects, Inc. 

Upāsikā Miss tree turtle
Director (CEO), Lead Teacher, and Co-Founder
Baltimore Wisdom Project
Co-Director (Co-CEO) of Wisdom Projects, Inc.
Please note: "tree turtle" (spelled lowercase) is Miss turtle's legal name.


Board Members of Wisdom Projects, Inc.
​​
  • Upāsikā Miss tree turtle, President
  • Dr. Theodore Richards, Vice President 
  • Mr. Todd Hoskins, Secretary
  • Ms. Mollie Dowling, Member
  • Ms. Arianne Richards, Treasurer
  • Ms. Sharon Williams, Member
  • Ms. Laura Orem, Member​ ​
  • ​Mr. Finn Schubert, Member
Administrative Essentials 
​
  • Click here for our BYLAWS.
  • ​Feel free to contact us for recent financials.
  • Our fiscal year runs from September 1 through August 31.
  • We have completed an independent audit as well as a Form 990 for the last fiscal year of 2019-2020. 
  • Click here for our nondiscrimination policy.

Connect 
​
  • Click here the Chicago Wisdom Project on Twitter.
  • Click here the Chicago Wisdom Project on Facebook.
  • Click here the Baltimore Wisdom Project on Twitter.
  • Click here the Baltimore Wisdom Project on Facebook.
  • Click here Wisdom Projects, Inc. on Instagram.
  • Click here Wisdom Projects, Inc. on TikTok. ​
  • Contact us anytime.
Reimagining education | Reimagining the world.
Copyright © 2020-2021 | ​Wisdom Projects, Inc. | All Rights Reserved