Second Lieutenant Richard Collins III had plenty of potential. He was a student athlete, ROTC leader, beloved by his family, and a soon-to-be Bowie State University graduate.

On May 20, 2017, two days after his ROTC commissioning in the U.S. Army, that potential was cut short when Collins was fatally stabbed at the University of Maryland, College Park while waiting for an Uber with friends. He was the only Black person in the group. The perpetrator, now serving a life sentence for first- degree murder, was affiliated with a white supremacist Facebook group.

While Dawn and Richard “Rick” Collins grieved, they pondered the best way to honor their son’s life. Bowie State had already funded a scholarship in the younger Collins’ name, and the Maryland General Assembly, spearheaded by State Senator Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr., created the $1 million Richard W. Collins III Leadership with Honor Scholarship program to promote diversity in ROTC programs at the state’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). But the Collinses wanted to do more.

“Something my son said to me right before he was commissioned is that ‘the world is going to know my name,’” Dawn Collins recalls. “That sticks in my spirit. We’re doing things to elevate who he was and what it is that he stood for.”

Shortly after the state funded the scholarship in 2018, the Collinses established the 2nd Lieutenant Richard Collins III Foundation. Its mission? To invest in the education and empowerment of promising young Americans who’ve proven themselves to be outstanding citizens and are committed to working toward a hate-free, more just society for all.

The foundation funds scholarships and mentoring for students and ROTC cadets at the University of Maryland and Maryland’s four HBCUs and recently launched a program with Outward Bound to bring together ROTC cadets from HBCUs and predominately white universities for team-building wilderness retreats on the Adirondack Trail.

“Individuals have said how life-changing that is, and that gives me hope,” Collins says.

Working for social justice drives the Collinses, as parents and as philanthropists. At the beginning of the trial in 2019, the judge threw out the hate crime designation of their son’s murder, as Maryland’s hate crime statutes require the murder to be solely a result of racial hatred. Although there was ample evidence to indicate their son was killed because he was Black, it was not absolute.

In early March 2020, they were at the Statehouse when the 2nd Lieutenant Richard Collins III Law passed, amending Maryland’s hate crime law to state that an act of violence motivated by hate “either in whole or in substantial part” is considered a hate crime.

“There have been state prosecutors who have been able to use the law,” Collins says, adding, “We would love to see a national hate crime law because I think it’s needed.”

The foundation’s more recent Social Justice Alliance is a groundbreaking partnership between the University of Maryland and Bowie State that centers on difficult conversations about racial differences among students to forge common ground and solutions.

Last September, the Collinses were selected by President Joe Biden to participate in the United We Stand Summit at the White House, where they spoke about the loss of their son.

“The pain is always there, but we just have to keep fighting. Because he did matter.”

Twelve years ago, Matt Hanna discovered the Marc Kelly Smith poem “Pull the Next One Up,” and it has since become the credo of his nonprofit organization, Next One Up. Inspired by the poem’s message of helping others find personal success, the program invests in Baltimore City student athletes by providing long-term mentoring on the field and in the classroom. “For us and our kids, it’s about generational change,” Hanna says.

Hanna founded Next One Up while coaching lacrosse and teaching history at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, where he had a front-row seat to his students’ lack of extracurricular education. In 2009, he started a scholarship program to send four lacrosse players to summer camp, and four years later, with help from a fellowship from the Open Society Institute, the initiative included camps, weekend pick-up games, and mentoring.

Today, thanks to partnerships with the Ravens and T. Rowe Price, among others, the nonprofit provides its roster of 120 male students with resources such as SAT test prep and guidance on finding the right high school or college to ensure that they succeed academically, athletically, and socially. The initiative is geared toward middle and high school-aged students who face potential deterrents from reaching their goals, such as unstable housing or incarcerated family members. The results speak for themselves—100 percent of participants have graduated high school and have been accepted to two or four-year colleges. “We have students who have major challenges to weather,” Hanna says. “We fill in the cracks and the gaps.”

Recruiting students at an early age has also created a growing alumni base. Past participants such as Litchfield Ajavon, who is a freshman football player at the University of Notre Dame, can come back and talk about their experiences to current students. Plus, the students can look to Winfield Hopkins V, a Next One Up graduate who is now the Associate Program Director. “They can see how I came up,” Hopkins says. “I try to sit down with the kids and offer to talk with them.”

As Next One Up approaches its double-digit anniversary party on October 24 at The Accelerator Space, Hanna says he’s starting to become nostalgic, especially thinking about how the program’s legacy as a support system continues to grow stronger with each class of young men. “I’ve taken a step back to celebrate the success of these guys and the overall growth of the program,” Hanna says. “For us, the future is focused on continued success and developing great stories and young men in the city.”

Just in time for college-application season, Friends School of Baltimore senior Noah Gainsburg added an impressive title to his resume: St. Francis Neighborhood Center’s Volunteer of the Year. At 18, this Reisterstown native has dedicated more than 300 volunteer hours to Reservoir Hill’s SFNC, a nonprofit that offers youth development programs for families living below the federal poverty line.

Gainsburg was introduced to nonprofit work through his mother’s involvement with local and national organizations, but it wasn’t until he heard about SFNC from a classmate that he knew where he wanted to dedicate his time. “St. Francis is like the hidden little gem of Baltimore,” Gainsburg says. “It’s amazing how much they can do at a relatively small organization.”

Over the past two years, Gainsburg has made a tremendous impact on the center, one that will last long after he trades Charm City for a yet-to-be-determined college town. Through two collection drives last year, he collected enough school supplies for all 60 of SFNC’s enrolled youth, as well as more than 600 coats last winter.

Last summer, he worked as a teaching assistant for SFNC’s third to fifth grade students, and, instead of getting paid, he donated his earnings back to the center. “I grew up with dyslexia and dysgraphia, and, in a lot of the students, I see the issues that they have in school on a more personal level,” he says.

Additionally, Gainsburg’s parting gift to the center, a $5,000 fundraising campaign for its academic program, The Power Project, has surpassed its goal and continues to grow. “For a young man in his teens, I would say Noah’s superhero gift is empathy,” says SFNC Executive Director Christi Green. “It’s very hard for a young teenager to have the level of empathy that he does.”

With a new beginning on the horizon, Gainsburg says he plans to continue his commitment to volunteer work at his new school. “No matter where I end up, I’m going to be building communities,” he says. “I’m going to be involving myself as much as I possibly can.”

The “freshman class” of lawmakers currently convening in Annapolis for their first full week in this year’s General Assembly, includes more women (31) than men (29) for the first time in history.

Those surging numbers of newly elected female representatives mean a record 72 women will serve in the 188-member state legislature this session. Specifically, 11 of those rookie legislators are alumnae of Emerge Maryland, an increasingly successful nonprofit that identifies and trains Democratic women seeking political office.

Since its founding in 2012 and the launch of its first class in 2013, Emerge Maryland has trained 103 women to run for public office. So far, more than 70 percent of those who have participated in the 75-hour, four-to-six-month program have run for elected office—with more than 60 percent winning their various races. Officeholders include not just state representatives, but county and city council, school board, and Democratic state committee members.

“In 2011, there was a confluence of events that got us started,” says Diane Fink, executive director of Emerge Maryland, who previously worked as legislative staff in the General Assembly and served two terms on the Frederick County Democratic State Central Committee. “But the short story is co-founder Martha McKenna, myself, and Barbara Mikulski got together and realized something had to be done about the number of women in Annapolis, which was declining at the time. Women candidates were having to leave the state for one-hour and half-day workshops. And they were not being recruited, but discouraged, from running.”

With key support from Mikulski, the nonprofit got off the ground under the umbrella of Emerge America, which now has affiliated chapters in 25 states.

Baltimore City elected leaders with Emerge Maryland training include City Council member Shannon Sneed, who won in 2016; state Del. Brooke Lierman, who was in Emerge Maryland’s inaugural class and won office in 2014; and state Del. Robbyn Lewis and state Del. Stephanie Smith, both of whom won election for the first time this past November.

Overall, 19 of 25 Emerge Maryland alumnae won in November, including the first black women and the first Chinese immigrant elected to the General Assembly from Montgomery County, as well as the first woman ever elected as State’s Attorney in Anne Arundel County.

Thirty-year-old Sarah Elfreth from Anne Arundel County became the youngest woman elected to the State Senate this fall. A pair of Emerge Maryland alumnae also flipped seats from male to female in the Anne Arundel County Council this fall and that seven-member body is now 5-2 majority female. Emerge Maryland alumna Shaneka Henson was previously elected to the Annapolis City Council in 2017.

The overall impact: Anne Arundel County is decidedly more female and a little bluer.

“We are now electing people who have not had a seat at the table and have not had their voices heard in the past,” says Fink. “The issues they raise, about childcare, increasing the minimum wage, domestic violence, for example, are not heard, not in the same way, when women bring their voices to the table. Fifty-two percent of the population is female and our representation should reflect that.”

With a growing track record and budding network, Emerge Maryland announced a cohort of 20 women in its class of 2019, including five women from Baltimore City who successfully navigated the competitive application process.

“Women across Maryland are now looking to the women who have come before them and realizing they too have what it takes to run and serve in elected office,” says Fink. “They are smart, energized, and ready to run.”

The new legislators in Maryland are part of a rising national tide of women who have been inspired to run for office by a desire to improve their communities, but also by the last presidential election.

During the previous election cycle in 2016, 920 potential female candidates contacted Emily’s List, a group that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights, spokeswoman Lindsay Crete told The Washington Post. Two years later, in large part as a reaction to the election of President Trump, that figure rose more than 40-fold, to 42,000, according to Crete.

Emerge Maryland’s 20 new class members are: Shruti Bhatnagar, Laurie Brittingham, Katina Burley, Rose Greene Colby, Tamira Dunn, Remi Duyile, Cornett Fenn, Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, Natasha Guynes, Ebony Johnson, Kimberlee Lena Kennedy, Stacy Korbelak, Mikkyo McDaniel, Yvette Monroe, Andreana Overton, Odette Ramos, Tori Rose, Shirley Schreffler, Ainy Haider-Shah, and Sarah Wolek.

Don’t be surprised if you hear those names again.

The life of Kariz Marcel has stretched and unfolded like an accordion and neatly fits back together to make the beautiful sound of success. Born in Rochester, New York, and raised in Baltimore, Kariz’s process is one for the big screen from homelessness to building a nonprofit and countless radio spins this man has accomplished what most people only dream of and he is still going.
 

We recently spoke with the producer, DJ, and founder of nonprofit Innovation Echo Alliance about his struggles with school, fatherhood, and the “angel” experiences that led to his success.
 

You have a hot song on 92Q and 95.9 FM entitled “Hey Baltimore” with Eze Jackson and Rufus Roundtree providing the vocals. How did that come about and what has come from that exposure?

Wow, that record really took off! Once we finished it we started sending it to all of the DJs we knew and Rufus went to school with DJ Class and so he let him hear the record. This was a big deal because DJ Class had the No. 1 club record in 2008 entitled, “I’m the Ish,” which eventually featured Kanye West. He loved the record and began spinning it everywhere. Once that happened, 92Q caught wind of it and began playing on their station. KW Griff, of the legendary 9 o’clock mix, began spinning it and once he transitioned over to 95.9 FM he began spinning it there as well.
 

There have been times when I have been in my car and I’ve heard it on both stations at the same time and that’s wild! As far as what has come from the exposure, our song has been the most played song from a local artist on the radio in 2017, we have performed it live for the Light City Festival: Neighborhood Lights and at the Red Bull Amaphiko Festival. The soul of the record is about creating opportunities and so we made a lesson from it where we have kids break the song down and rebuild it. So there is a kids version of “Hey Baltimore” out there and that goes along with my years doing Math + Music=Money and Innovation Echo Alliance, the nonprofit I am building.
 

What initially sparked your interest in making music?

I was born in New York, first of all, and New York was just so hip-hop, so my aunt dated DJs and music people and I just remember seeing it around. Eventually, it was all about, ‘What can I do to get girls?’ I had to figure it out! I wasn’t a ‘hooper,’ or super funny, or anything like that so I started writing rhymes and that led to making beats. But overall what happened between all of that is an injury happened. The bones were shattered throughout my arm and I had a compound third-degree fracture in my arm in the third grade, and the injury was so bad they had to pull me out of school through the fourth grade. I had to be home-schooled, my friends would bring me homework home, and my mom was working two jobs. I missed a couple of those years in school. So I asked my mom to buy me a keyboard and I started making beats with a big cast on my arm and I started performing more. Then I came to Baltimore.
 

How did coming here affect your journey into music?

When I got here, it was so different because I didn’t really know how to maneuver. Once again, I fell back on music, ‘You rap? Ok, then we can be friends.’ If people were creative, then it was easier to connect because at the time I was still doing a lot of painting. I would connect a lot with the artists and we would paint and then that would turn into music.
 

My grandmother bought me a computer in 1997 and I was the first guy in the neighborhood to be recording on a computer, nobody had seen that before. People were like, ‘What!? How are you recording from your computer, yo?’ My grandmother has always been my angel, my secret weapon, and once she got me that computer—that’s when I became the coolest kid in school. Having the computer allowed me to go to MARS [Music and Recording Superstore] with my mother and get the Cakewalk program. There was no YouTube back then, so once I figured out how to use it, that next day, I was walking around school with a boombox playin’ my own shit. I was telling people I had my own studio and I would charge $2 to record at my house. 
 

What has been the most difficult part of your process as a creative?

Nothing is difficult about being a creative, but everything is difficult about aligning a business structure around your creativity. Here’s the thing about it: I started making money off of beats before I even knew how to make beats. After high school, I left Essex to go to a two-year art institute in Manhattan and I went there with all of my friend’s beats. I would go to any open mic or borough and try to sell the beats. 

New York City got me in spaces with stars and, when I came back to Baltimore, I realized everything that everybody was doing here was wrong. I felt like I had a leg up and I decided to pour all I had into it. But yeah, the art ain’t hard—it’s trying to figure out how to put all the pieces, all the experiences, together to try to make money off of it.
 

What motivated you to step from the background, not only to start DJing and performing but to create the new sound that is Afro-EDM?

There are so many sources where it came from, but then this angel thing happened. Lenora King, my sister and artist I was creating music for, introduced me to this guy she was working with from Philly because he wanted to know who was making all of her music. He told me that he wanted to hear everything I ever made and I was like, ‘That’s going to take 10 hours’ and he was like, ‘That’s okay.’ So he came over the next morning and was patiently listening to everything I ever created and telling me to put different songs in different folders. He then said, ‘Do me a favor, that folder at the top, open that folder for me. That’s who you are. That’s the one thing you’ve got in you catalog that sounds like nothing that exists. Do more of that and stop making everything else and start DJing.’  I have never heard from this man again, his phone doesn’t work, email no response. He just disappeared.

I didn’t know why I was going to listen to a stranger, but I bought DJ equipment and I stopped making all of the other genres I made. He was a 50-something-year-old man, an industry vet and he knew what he was talking about. I then started DJing parties and it wasn’t until now that people can hear my music online.
 

It’s crazy because I didn’t call it Afro-EDM but other people started calling it that when they would come down to our parties on Calvert Street. To me, it’s still world-hood, but Afro-EDM is definitely something the world recognizes.
 

How did you first start blending your music with curriculum to create the Kariz Kids?

That happened out of demand. I had a wonderful girlfriend at the time, Karen, director of education for the Creative Alliance and she told me that the kids needed to do something and asked me if I could bring my beat machine to the school if they paid me $50. I went there and did it about three or four times and it was cool, but I didn’t want to be anybody’s role model. I wasn’t ready for all of that.

But CitiBank had gotten a big grant to start teaching kids in the ghetto financial literacy, that was the funding trend during that era, and then Karen asked me if I could find a way to blend my music stuff with financial literacy because the kids were literally falling asleep with the CitiBank curriculum. So I took that curriculum and re-worded it with everything in pop culture that was relevant and I brought in a laptop to blend it with that and at the time it was literally just one sheet.
 

Then more organizations wanted me to work with their kids. So then, I got a call from Karen and she asked me if I could do it in four schools. I personally couldn’t, so I decided to train my friends who made beats to teach and they went out there and did it. I remember a kid wanted me to help her with a math problem, and I wrote easy questions that connect math to music scenarios, but I also got other producers to help me write more math problems and studio scenarios. I then got with a Common Core math teacher and he restructured the math problems and then we basically had a textbook for my Math + Music= Money curriculum. I then got an opportunity to sit down at the CitiBank table and that’s when I realized that this was something I needed to take this more seriously and then I took the program to New York and D.C.
 

Kariz Kids is an important next step for you—it involves an app, curriculum created from the music on your upcoming LP The Blackwater Project, and more. Can you tell me more about the Innovation Echo Alliance?
So Innovation Echo Alliance [IEA] has been built up by some partners, business people, who were like, ‘Look we need to build the back-end for your organization up.’ They went in and put their money where their mouth was and helped me build it out. This encompasses my complete vision for what my nonprofit should be. It’s still in the beginning stages, but we are releasing it this month and we will be working alongside different record companies to make it happen.

 

This is what it was all about—bridging the gap. The mission of Kariz Kids was to bridge the gap between entertainment, education, and business. With IEA, our mission is to build and unite artistic professional educators, recording artists, producers, songwriters, musicians and recording engineers who are committed to changing our community for the better by nurturing minds and educating youth while aiding organizations in accomplishing their charitable goals.  We will also be using music from my upcoming release The Black Water Project and the artists on the record to teach a curriculum created from the album in educational spaces and parts of it will be used specifically for the upcoming mobile app. 
 

Where would you like to see yourself in 10 years?

Within the next 10 years I want my son, Jazz, to be a true product of all of these dope platforms that I have developed. I want him to learn on them and build his own product. I want him to be able to take his ideas and put it on the market.

Standing in an open warehouse, surrounded by aisles and aisles of shovels, rakes, and wheelbarrows, Noah Smock sifts through a thick stack of papers, each representing a charitable organization that has borrowed tools from his South Baltimore supply in recent weeks.

Smock is not a manager at Lowe’s. He is the executive director of the Baltimore Community ToolBank, an inventory of some 5,000 tools that can be rented by schools, churches, charities, and other local organizations for a mere three cents on the dollar. The cost-effective strategy helps these do-gooders and underserved communities take on projects that they can’t afford. “The people we serve are often tasked with solving difficult problems with very few resources,” says Smock. “These tools allow them to realize impossible dreams.”

Since launching in 2012, the local nonprofit has partnered with some 500 organizations, including the Y of Central Maryland, Parks & People Foundation, and Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, which used the tools for everything from daily tasks to large-scale projects, such as tree plantings, playground restoration, and urban farming.

This past summer, with the help of the ToolBank, the South Baltimore Partnership conducted major neighborhood cleanups, which president Betty Bland-Thomas says would have otherwise been impossible. “I couldn’t afford to buy shovels, power tools, gloves, and weed whackers for 25 people,” she says. “The ToolBank has been a blessing.”

The nonprofit was once “promise rich and cash poor,” as Smock puts it, but it now has two full-time employees, a 20-person board, and plans to empower some 50,000 volunteers in 2017. The work is sustained by grants and donations from the likes of DeWalt, Home Depot, and other foundations, but mostly, the community.

In return, Smock and his team do their part to beautify their own somewhat gritty South Baltimore neighborhood, having added bright blue murals and two rain gardens to the warehouse-lined Wicomico Street. “We want to strengthen and celebrate our communities,” says Smock. “To me, tools are empowerment.”

For Scott Braid, the love of film began with his childhood video stores. Growing up in Perry Hall, the lifelong Baltimorean had a weekly ritual: scour the shelves, explore the horror section, and take chances on movies he’d never heard of. 

Years later, in 2000, he got a job at the eclectic Video Americain in Roland Park that cemented his fascination with cinema. He worked there for 10 years and claims to have learned more at the store than during his time at film school.

Eventually, Video Americain started to struggle, ultimately closing in 2014, at which point Braid joined forces with fellow Maryland Film Festival staffer Eric Hatch to form the Baltimore Video Collective. Now, with five other members, BVC plans to bring nostalgia back to Baltimore with Beyond Video, their own nonprofit video rental. Thanks to a push from Kickstarter, the store is set to open on Howard Street this fall. 

“Working in a video store taught me so much about both film culture and people,” says Braid. “They are places to share ideas, make friends, and learn.”

Beyond Video will feature everything from vintage and rare VHS tapes to Blu-rays and DVDs, ranging from rom-coms to cult classics with an overall goal of 10,000 titles. They also plan to include screenings, discussions, and workshops at this long-incubated project. 

“We want it to be more than just a video store,” says Braid. “We want it to be a community gathering space and resource.”

With such a diverse collection, BVC hopes to provide the kind of personal experience that streaming services can’t. 

“Like bookstores and record stores, video stores give people a browsing experience unlike anything online,” says Hatch. “There are films that were life-changing to me that I only encountered because video-store employees put them on the ‘house favorites’ wall. We want film-lovers old and new to have these experiences, and make these kinds of discoveries again.”

Many people can say that yoga changed their lives, but for Changa Bell, yoga may have actually saved his. 

When he was just 30 years old, Bell, now the founder of The Black Male Yoga Initiative (BMYI) and owner of the Sunlight & Yoga Holistic Wellness Center, was suffering from severe arrhythmia. He began practicing yoga and mindfulness as a way to cope with his diagnosis. After three or four weeks of healthy living and regular yoga practice, his heartbeat stabilized. 

Grateful for what yoga had done for him, Bell received certification as an instructor in 2011, and it was then that his mission took shape. 

“I was the only male in a class of 17 people when I got certified,” he says. “It was intimidating to me, and I didn’t want people, specifically black men, to not get the life-saving possibilities of yoga because they didn’t feel comfortable in a space with a bunch of strong, mostly white, mostly young women.” 

So Bell started his nonprofit, BMYI, in 2015. The program is contracted through Living Classrooms and aims to give black men ages 16 to 65 a space to practice yoga, mindfulness, healthy living, and self-care, while certifying them as registered yoga teachers. Bell hopes that many of them will go on to teach and promote these practices in their own communities. The group meets once a week for eight weeks, alternating between yoga and mindfulness lessons. 

Bell says that while he was drawn to yoga because of his heart ailment, some of the men are using yoga to deal with emotional trauma, too. 

“It takes time for some of these guys to get to a place where they are vulnerable enough to talk about this trauma,” he says. 

Bell hopes to expand BMYI in the coming years by establishing more partnerships locally and replicating his curriculum in other cities. 

“If I could put out a call for help on a megaphone it would be for partnerships,” he says. “It comes down to who values this community. I just want the change to take place.”

On a chilly Saturday afternoon, hundreds of 20- and 30-somethings are taking a load off with pints of beer and slices of pizza at Peabody Heights Brewery near Waverly. Holiday-sweatered and rosy-cheeked, they all carry a glow about them, which makes sense, since they just finished a morning of do-gooding at The Salvation Army as part of Volunteering Untapped (VU).

“It’s a pretty fantastic concept,” says volunteer Matthew Riggin. “You get to connect with a new nonprofit every month, help out the city, and meet a ton of great folks. Not to mention the beer is pretty good.”

Whether its members are planting trees and rain gardens, cleaning up parks and playgrounds, or playing with city youth, VU is a volunteer-based nonprofit that hosts monthly events across the city. But unlike other programs, the key to VU’s success is that it mixes the civic with the social by hosting after-parties at local bars and breweries.

“We’re trying to create an opportunity for people to connect not just with local nonprofits but like-minded peers,” says board chair Teddy Davidson. “It’s a great opportunity for them to talk and network, while doing good for Baltimore.” Adds Seth Franz, founder and executive director. “We want to change the way young people think about volunteering. We want to be a launch pad for lifelong civic engagement.”

In three years, VU has drawn thousands of volunteers to dozens of organizations like the Baltimore Community ToolBank, Blue Water Baltimore, Habitat for Humanity, and Moveable Feast. To date, they have planted 500 trees, removed more than 50,000 pounds of trash, and dedicated 10,000-plus hours of community service in Baltimore. Their free events sell out in minutes, and not just because of the booze.

“I met some of my best friends here,” says volunteer Alexis Blair. “It’s easy to make strong relationships. That’s what keeps people coming back.”

Don’t miss VU’s anniversary event at Columbus Center on February 11 with Rep. Elijah Cummings.