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Headquartered in Baltimore City, Maryland, Wisdom Projects (officially, Wisdom Projects, Inc.) is an over 15-year-old secular 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN: 27-1060325) committed to peace, safety, and justice for low-income youth, adults, and families who have survived violence and who struggle to overcome mental health challenges. In close partnership with community members, we prevent violence, elevate behavioral wellness, and combat inequality towards community members.

Our work has eliminated homicides and suicides among the population enrolled in our programming, and drastically reduced rates of domestic violence, eviction, school suspension, and gun possession. We enact criminal justice reform by providing neighborhood-level alternatives to and diversion from policing, prosecuting, judging, and incarcerating with deep practices of whole-community healing, organizing, and accountability.

Our work uplifts community members' accountability when making mistakes, as well as their coping skills with PTSD, poverty, anxiety, depression, and other serious mental health experiences. Every day we fight the stigma attached to having mental health conditions by proving that, with the help of immersive, daily nonviolent methods like de-escalation, mindfulness, restorative justice, and conflict transformation, community members can be productive, present, well, and safe.

In recognition of our peace education approach, Wisdom Projects won three Social and Emotional Learning Innovation Awards from Education First.

Our holistic, disability-conscious, data-driven, and evidence-based violence prevention work stands out in the mid-Atlantic region because it is co-led by trained community members themselves. We call this a "community-participatory" approach. In our community-participatory approach, we partner with people who have endured incarceration, gun violence, domestic violence, addiction, poverty, and other forms of harm, and we support them as they make change and build peace within themselves and in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods through gender-inclusive, intergenerational, trauma-informed care. 

We are particularly focused on healing PTSD for survivors of violence. Everything we do involves realizing our evidence-supported clinical outcomes.

The people enrolled in our six main programs-—youth, adults, and families—receive training in de-escalation, trauma informed care, conflict resolution, Social and Emotional Learning, and restorative justice as they become Community Health Workers that we call "Peacemakers." 

The older youth and adult Peacemakers then make and disseminate anti-violence campaigns for themselves and others by word-of-mouth in their homes, schools, and on the streets as well as by video in their online or social media networks. They also co-lead a variety of mediations.

Visit the Impact page of our website for video testimonials from community members' campaigns, as well as data about our outcomes, and information about how we measure our success.

Currently, we are in the sixth year of a long-term community healing project in East Baltimore with residents of 6 low-income housing projects as the official Educational and Health Services Partner of the McKim Center.

Wisdom Projects is also exploring becoming an Advisor for In-School Suspension at Forth Worthington Elementary/Middle School in East Baltimore where we share healing and peacemaking practices to enhance the behavioral health of the students and scholars.

We mentor and hire staff who live in the Old Goucher and Greenmount East neighborhoods in North-Central Baltimore city, and contribute to the betterment of these areas.

Previously, we pioneered community healing projects in West Baltimore at sites like the Penn North Kids Safe Zone and the Harambee Center and in Greenmount East Baltimore at the 29th Street Community Center. In previous projects, we have a strong track record of reducing incidents of violence and decreasing school suspension and expulsion.

Wisdom Projects provides healing and peacemaking consultations for schools, businesses, organizations, hospitals, and health facilities, and schools emphasizing restorative, just, and inclusive approaches to behavioral health, strategic direction, trauma-informed care, and workplace conflict resolution. Recently, we consulted with Watershed Progressive and Restorative Response Baltimore and we have worked with schools like Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School. Contact us to discuss our consultative services.

Our work proves that policy change can flourish within, by, and for grassroots communities. It is our hope that our work sets an example of the power of data-driven, evidence-supported grassroots policies and practices for peace from the ground up.

As Darren Walker and david rogers (the latter's name is intentionally spelled lowercase) of the Ford Foundation emphasize in the March 2024 issue of Inside Philanthropy, an immersive, around-the-clock, community-participatory approach to violence prevention (also called a "community-based" method) is the best model to uplift true neighborhood peace and wellness. Yet, apart from organizations like Wisdom Projects, this model is not widely effectuated in the greater Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area or it is not carried out in a detailed, systematic, well-managed, data-driven, and evidence-based manner. Wisdom Projects' pioneering community-participatory approach fills this gap.

Key to our approach is the uplifting and compensating of community members as Community Health Workers (CHWs), which we call Peacemakers. Research from the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, the Journal of Global Health, Shelterforce, and Frontiers in Public Health has found an "emerging consensus that CHWs should be paid," as Madeleine Ballard and her team argue in "Compensation models for community health workers." 

Most of Wisdom Projects' program budget and a significant part of our operating budget goes towards monthly stipends for CHWs (or Peacemakers) to compensate their trained peacemaking and community-organizing in the neighborhood. Their leadership has been key to the cultural transformation towards peacemaking within our community-participatory approach to violence prevention. The community members themselves must do the work for true social change to occur.

As the Urban Institute says in its “"Equitable Compensation for Community Engagement Guidebook," "In participatory work, we must remember that we are engaging with individuals as colleagues and partners, not as research subjects, constituents, or program participants. Paying people for their time is not an incentive; it’s compensation for their expertise."

Gaining community members' trust, engaging with them equitably, and working immersively around the clock with them helps community members share why violence and dysfunction occurs in their lives. We use this information to build peacemaking plans, mediations, trainings, education, and peer counseling. We enroll interlocking family groups of diverse genders and ages, and help them cultivate healing. 

Our daily healthy food initiative for enrolled youth and families has played a major role in our violence prevention work while combating food insecurity. 

In all of our work, we understand youth and families through a culturally-sensitive “asset narrative” based on the gifts they bring, rather than a “deficit narrative” that focuses on what’s wrong with them. With training and education, community members become their own best assets as they lead their own uplift. 

Our work is 100 percent free/no-cost for community members. In other words, we accept no fees or gifts from community members and our main institutional partner, the McKim Center (except for around $25 that we ask parents to contribute to help bring the children enrolled in our summer program to a fun amusement or adventure park). To support our work, we fundraise, offer consultations and trainings to organizations, and provide communications/editorial/media services. 

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