Baltimore Community Fellowships
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Baltimore, Maryland
2007
In fall 2009, the Youth Dreamers Youth Center finally will open and Kristina Berdan couldn't be more excited.
Not only will the center's opening mark the successful ending of her OSI fellowship, but it also will mark the beginning of a new phase in Berdan's career and life.
"This has become my life's work," says Berdan. "I feel like I have to see it through."
When the youth-run center opens, it is expected to serve 50-80 youth annually in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello and Waverly community. Berdan is negotiating a position with the Stadium School-where she got her start-to continue teaching the Youth Dreamers, and also act as executive director of the center.
Thanks to Berdan's fellowship, the project has come a long way from an idea proposed nearly a decade ago by students from her Community Action course. With Berdan's guidance, the students bought a yellow house for $12,500 after negotiating its price in 2001. Under her direction, the students worked with a pro bono general contractor and an architect on renovation plans.
The house slowly has taken shape since then, with help from each year's new class of students-and many of the original Youth Dreamers, who have long since graduated.
So much has happened since Berdan first began, she is often amazed at all the offshoots that came from this one Fellowship.
One offshoot is a partnership with Shepherd's Clinic, a non-profit clinic that provides health care to some of the city's uninsured. Youth Dreamers volunteers there every Wednesday.
"So people in the community get to see my kids in a positive light," Berdan says.
That, in turn, leads to other positives.
When some of Berdan's students wanted to start a health club for girls at school, but were turned down, they turned to Shepherd's Clinic for help. "They were just opening a wellness center, and so they were very happy to have our program be the first program ever at the wellness center," Berdan says. "So that was very cool." The Youth Dreamers also held a Service Day, in partnership with Shepherd's Clinic. More than 200 volunteers came to help landscape space the center shares with the clinic.
"That day was just totally amazing. It was like nothing I've ever witnessed in my life," Berdan says. "I've never seen so many people of so many different races and ages come together, and you should see it. The space looks completely transformed."
And when young vandals were breaking out huge glass windows at the clinic, the Youth Dreamers created signs to put in the windows, imploring the vandals to stop.
"They said things like, 'Be smart. Be wise. Please don't smash these windows. You're ruining lives,'" Berdan says. "And the vandalism stopped!"
Youth Dreamers also have connected with My Sister's Place, for homeless and battered women. "We go there once a month and we do an art activity with the ladies and we serve them lunch," Berdan says. "And it's amazing to me how that has affected some of my kids."
One student told Berdan she is more tolerant of homeless people.
"Now that I've been around them, I realize that they're just people and I have more respect," the student told Berdan.
Berdan says it would have been nearly impossible to teach these kinds of lessons in community-building without the help of the OSI Fellowship.
"I think that's one of the main things that the fellowship allowed me to do was to step out of the confines of the classroom and use the world as a classroom," she says.
And now that the youth center is almost complete, she hopes to use the center as a place for similar kinds of learning.
The first floor of the center will be a community floor with a lounge, a meeting room and a cybercafé for residents to use computers. The second floor will be a homework/tutoring space. The third floor will be for student employees and a gallery for student art.
Most impressive, the students have raised much of the money needed for renovations on their own-through bake sales, fundraisers, awards and grants.
Berdan says the project never would have been as successful without partnerships, such as the matching grant worth $50,000 from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, or the most recent grant from State Farm-written by the youth-that will allow the center to open and operate for its first year.
"I have really learned the importance of partnerships," Berdan says, "and not to try to do things on your own."
In addition to Weinberg and State Farm, key partners have included Penza Bailey Architects Inc.; The University of Maryland School of Law; Maryland Institute College of Art; Struever Bros., Eccles and Rouse; Stevenson College; and Shepherd's Clinic.
Many of the partners provided more than just funding.
University of Maryland provided student attorneys to help with zoning and permit issues. MICA provided graduate students to work with students. Struever Bros. and Stevenson College helped plan and execute two community service days. And, in a joint project with Shepherd's Clinic, 400 volunteers came to help landscape two acres of land in the neighborhood.
"The greatest thing about these partnerships is that they have been able to come in and do what I don't know how to do," Berdan says. "But they've also been able to teach the kids, so our kids now see adults as a positive resource."
But Berdan says that some of her most important partnerships came from OSI's generous provision of resources-both capital and human.
"So many resources came from my fellow peers, as well as the Fellows from past years who came to share with us," Berdan says. "Working with several Fellows who knew more about something than I did was hugely helpful! Also, just hearing about their work and sharing resources at the gatherings also really helped. I learned not to do everything myself, but to turn to others to ask for their expertise."
