The Youth Peacemakers Program is an intensive violence prevention, job-readiness, and pre-college/trade school preparatory program that empowers 25 enrolled youth aged 14-18 in East Baltimore to implement peacemaking broadly and deeply into their lives. Enrollees work (for $15 per hour) within the STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking After-School Program at the McKim Center while receiving immersive job-readiness training, and engaging in peer support groups. They learn de-escalation through mindfulness, conflict resolution, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. Their work in the after-school program involves assisting with mentoring younger children, setting-up, cleaning-up, and supporting meal preparation and meal service. They also engage in regular healing circles like mediations and Amnesty Days. Enrollees learn the value of responsible employment as they become ambassadors for peacemaking. This program aims for participants to move and work out of their impoverished neighborhood, to attend trade schools to gain intensive specialized training, to go to college, and to build a better life for themselves and their families away from the violence and crime within which they were exposed in their current zip code.
The Parent Peacemakers Program is an intensive violence prevention collective for select parents or grandparents of youth enrolled in the Baltimore Wisdom Projects’ programming. With ongoing training and peer support, the parents build campaigns to cultivate peace broadly and deeply in their lives. They spread nonviolent messaging within their homes, within the schools of their children, their neighborhoods, and the streets, on social media and by word-of-mouth. Enrollees attend monthly healing circles emphasizing peer support and receive training in de-escalation through mindfulness, conflict studies, trauma-informed care, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning. The parents receive monthly stipends, monthly healthy food support, and limited wrap-around services for reaching milestones for peacemaking. They also engage in regular nonviolence programming like mediations and Amnesty Days.
The STEM & Healing Arts Peacemaking Program joins with the Athletics Program at the McKim Center to form a comprehensive out-of-school-time holistic educational program for youth aged 5 through 18. Running from 3 pm to 6 pm 5-days-a-week, Mondays through Fridays, STEM & Healing Arts is a standardized program emphasizing structured learning. STEM Education, the Planet Protectors Laboratory, and peacemaking form the center of the instruction in this program.
Each summer, in partnership with the McKim Center, the Baltimore Wisdom Project holds a 5-week summer day camp for youth aged 5 through 14 in July from 10 am to 3 pm, five days a week (Mondays through Fridays) featuring STEM lessons, athletics, and intensive training in peace education through conflict resolution, de-escalation through mindfulness, restorative justice, and Social and Emotional Learning.
The Planet Protectors Laboratory for youth aged 6-18 focuses on peacemaking for environmental justice through hands-on experimentation. Click here for an overview of this program.
Conflict resolution through restorative justice is the programmatic glue that makes all of our programs impactful and effective, including the following on a weekly basis: