Meet the Power in Dirt Team - Maria!

Meet the Power in Dirt Coordinator for Northwest Baltimore - Maria! Maria coordinates for Park Heights, Towanda Grantley and Greenspring. You can contact her at Park Heights Renaissance (PHR) at (410) 664 - 4890 or mvasquez@gmail.com

Maria Vasquez is a recent new comer to Baltimore, MD.  She recently graduated with a B.A. in History and a B.S. in Public Policy concentrated in Planning and Economic Development from Georgia State University.

Maria’s interests lie in helping underrepresented, blighted communities due to her unique upbringing. She and her family, originally from Peru, came to the U.S. in 1991 to escape terrorism. Growing up Maria remembers seeing her parents struggle to find employment, maintain a household, and provide a decent environment for her and her brother to be raised in. Unlike her peers in school, she spent her time after school helping her parents clean office buildings so that her family could afford to live in an area that provided good public schools and services.

Today, now a young professional, Maria still identifies with the struggle many Baltimore City residents face trying to provide their children with positive opportunities in life.  She sees Park Heights, with all of its assets like Druid Hill Park, Cylburn Arboretum, and Pimlico Race Course, as a community with so much potential.  As one of the community coordinators for Power in Dirt, she is ready to take on the challenge of revitalizing Park Heights and invites community members to contact her if they are thinking about adopting a lot in the area!

Please contact Maria if you live in Northwest Baltimore and are interested in adopting a vacant lot!

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Power in Dirt is a Baltimore City Mayoral Initiative that aims to build capacity in Baltimore City communities to adopt city-owned vacant lots and turn them into community managed green and open spaces. We are interested in all things green and growing in Baltimore City. Do you have a community garden or park on a vacant lot that you and your neighbors started? Do you have a particularly troublesome vacant lot in your neighborhood? Contact us! Let us know your thoughts, feedback, and questions at any time! General questions go to: powerindirt@gmail.com or visit www.baltimorehousing.org/vtov_adopt_resources to find the closest Power in Dirt Coordinator for your neighborhood!

Meet the Power in Dirt team - GIGI!

Meet the Power in Dirt Coordinator for East Baltimore - Galadriel Rosen or, Gigi! Gigi coordinates for Broadway East, Greenmount West, Barclay, Oliver, Biddle Street, Middle East, and Milton Montford. You can contact her at HEBCAC at (410) 528 2800 x 126

Galadriel Rosen (Gigi) is an artist, a self proclaimed plant nerd, and becomes quite merry when striking up conversations ~ How lovely to find a practice that combines all three! She attended MICA in 2004, Concordia University 2006 and graduated with a degree in Studio Art. She has just spent the last two years digging in the dirt to develop common Greenspace on vacant lots with the Community Lot Team of Civic Works, Inc. She is excited to continue working with dirt and green spaces with Power in Dirt!

More to come! Contact Gigi if you are located in East Baltimore and are interested in adopting a vacant lot and turning it into a green and open space for your community.

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If you're just hearing about it for the first time, Power in Dirt is a new Mayoral initiative empowering communities to adopt city-owned vacant lots and turn them into community organized green and open spaces! It is part of the stepUP! Baltimore Campaign making Baltimore City a recognized City of Service. We have revamped the Adopt-a-Lot process, making it easier to find and adopt a vacant lot. We are also offering water access at a reduced rate! Just think what your community can do with an adopted vacant lot!

Bon Secours of Maryland Foundation's Clean and Green Team

Across Baltimore City there is a green movement that is just starting to take it's baby steps. For several years there have been groups from the public to private sector that are starting to work in the area of environmental awareness and promotion in the Baltimore area. Urban greening is not a new thing, and some may say that Baltimore is late to the game. But we have made up for our late start with enthusiasm, and large strides have been made to jump start the Green movement in Baltimore! (Check out all of our Partner organizations links to the right to get an idea of what people are doing, they're great!)

(OROSW Garden Club Garden, right next to Bon Secours of Maryland Foundation at Fulton and Fayette Streets)

The Clean and Green team is a part of Bon Secours of Maryland Foundation (soon to be Bon Secours Civil Works!) located in Franklin Square in Southwest Baltimore. At the corner of Fayette and Fulton, Bon Secours' Foundation Center is situated in the heart of West and Southwest Baltimore - a strategic place to reach out and help the communities that have often been left behind where other parts of the city have received attention.

Clean and Green is a part of Bon Secours' Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Department. It is a program designed to teach green job development skills as well as provide free cleanup and beautification services to West Baltimore neighborhoods. The Clean and Green team is made up of a handful of adults that are hired for on-the-job training in green landscaping. They have six months to learn how to use the tools and go out into the field and clean lots, plant trees, pick up trash, weed, etc. As part of their training each individual gives at least three presentations about some aspect of green landscaping that he or she has learned while working for Clean and Green. Clean and Green teaches people valuable job development skills as well as necessary services to the Southwest Baltimore neighborhoods they work in.

During the summer, youth employees join the Clean and Green team for a period of six weeks. The youth work alongside their adult counterparts, learning about green landscaping and what it means to give back to their communities. Today was the Clean and Green student appreciation event marking the end of their six week work commitment. Each of the five students briefly presented what he or she learned during their six weeks to the Bon Secours Foundation Center staff. They expressed an array of knowledge they had acquired about landscaping, as well as their emotional reactions to the work they were doing.

Did you know that to kill the weeds coming through the cracks in the sidewalk you must pull the weed out from the root and then spray the spot with a solution of salt and vinegar? Or, did you know that in West Baltimore the hardiness zone is 7-8, and that you should plant Native plants according to this hardiness zone? Did you know there are alternative, environmentally safe cleaning products that you can make with ingredients you can find in your own kitchen? Well, they did!

One student expressed that he was surprised at how much effect just a few hours of work can do. Another said that he was transformed by the experience and does not feel as shy. The girl in the group said she had to get used to the jokes made by all the boys - but that by the end of the experience they were all really close.

Tony Goff, the Bon Secours staff member in charge of the Clean and Green team, congratulated the students on their work and brought to everyone's attention the effect the young people had on the community. He mentioned the daily praise and thanks the Clean and Green team received from residents witnessing the work they were doing. He explained that sometimes, they were helping the community without even realizing it. The group had be approached a few times by drug dealers who emptied the contents of their trash bags to look for a particular piece of trash the C&G team had picked up that was in fact the stash spot for drugs. Because in some areas there is so much trash on the street, a stray potato chip bag is a perfect spot to hide drugs where they will not be seen, and without even knowing it the Clean and Green team would throw these away with all the other trash. As time went on, Tony said when the Clean and Green team approached an area where drug dealing was occurring, the dealers would pick up their operation and take it somewhere else.

Urban greening is not just about growing plants or turning pavement into grass. It is a movement, it is an effect, it is something that changes people and areas. Baltimore's burgeoning greening movement is a movement towards something very positive for each community that participates and for the city as a whole. Let's move towards a healthier, safer, cleaner, greener city!

Stay Green!

Anna, Power in Dirt

Welcome!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the new Power in Dirt blog! The Baltimore City Mayor's Office kicked off its new Power in Dirt initiative last Saturday, August 6, with success! 


The Power in Dirt initiative launched with the revitalization of three vacant lots in different parts of the city. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced the Power in Dirt initiative from one of the sites amongst a group of excited volunteers. Power in Dirt was born from the realization that green spaces accomplish so much in our neighborhoods. A green space can cause "crime reduction, improved physical and mental health, improved nutrition, increased property values, and stronger ecosystems." In an effort to respond to this understanding, Baltimore City got to work on a plan that would encourage residents to create green spaces all over the city. On August 6 we launched the event, kicking off a wonderful greening movement starting in Baltimore!


The launch included lots at N Madeira, North Ave, and N Carey Street. Volunteers from the neighborhood and partner organizations came out and picked up shovels, hoes, and rakes and got working! 

We got great help from our partners Civic Works and Blue Water Baltimore designing and implementing beautiful new green spaces where these vacant lots used to be. For example, at 220 N Carey street in Franklin Square, we installed a Rain Garden!

A Rain Garden is meant to capture rain water and absorb it into the soil before it runs off into storm drains and through city streets, collecting pollutants as it goes. Rain gardens help the environment by increasing the amount of water that eventually goes into our groundwater (where we get the water we drink!) and decreasing the amount of pollution in our waterways. A more healthy Baltimore!


Vacant lots are usually seen as a negative element to our neighborhoods. But, if we think of these vacant lots as places for potential green spaces, we can all make Baltimore a beautiful, green, city! I encourage you to talk with your neighbors, go to your neighborhood association meetings, talk with your church communities, and organize a dedicated group to adopt a vacant lot and turn it into something beautiful - or volunteer with someone who is! A green space is not just a beautiful thing to behold - it is a community, it is a learning experience for children, it means healthy living and healthy eating, and it makes everyone who comes in contact with it happy. 


Visit the Power in Dirt website : www.baltimorehousing.org/vtov_adopt and learn how you can contribute to the greening and beautification of your neighborhoods!

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If you're just hearing about it for the first time, Power in Dirt is a new Mayoral initiative empowering communities to adopt city-owned vacant lots and turn them into community organized green and open spaces! It is part of the stepUP! Baltimore Campaign making Baltimore City a recognized City of Service. We have revamped the Adopt-a-Lot process, making it easier to find and adopt a vacant lot. We are also offering water access at a reduced rate! Just think what your community can do with an adopted vacant lot!