Study Trip to Baltimore, USA
Background
The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in partnership with ToteBoard organise an annual Transforming the Non-Profit Sector series of learning journeys, panel discussions and conference. The theme for 2022 was “Solutions that Help Us Help One Another” and focused on the wide variety of ways that communities can support one another. Older forms of ‘mutual benefit organisations’, ‘friendly societies’ or community development work now co-exist with newer ‘ground up initiatives’. Decentralised and distributed organisational forms also afford new kinds of tech-enabled peer-to-peer collaboration alongside more traditional associations structured to represent members’ interests. Innovative forms of social care, worker-owned and platform cooperatives are also emerging to re-imagine how social impact can be achieved beyond traditional service delivery.
We invited speakers to talk about contributing to the commons; new ways of organising social change through cooperatives; and collaborative forms of learning that help to unlock a community’s learning capacity. We also organised a study trip to Baltimore to allow a deeper immersion so that non-profits can understand how to harness existing assets and consider new ways to help communities help themselves.
Why Baltimore, Maryland?
We wanted to visit the Baltimore Algebra Project so that non-profit practitioners can understand the value of peer learning in a youth-led organisation. We were also interested in how the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED), a funder that provides technical assistance, played a key role in supporting worker-owned cooperatives that gave Baltimore a reputation for being a ‘City of Co-ops’.
Main Baltimore Hosts:
- Jamal Jones, Co-Director of Baltimore Algebra Project. Helped to facilitate community organizing projects (e.g. revision to school policing policies, campaign for community control of schools, obtaining day passes for travel for students during the school week, etc.)
- Jay Gillen. facilitator of Baltimore Algebra Project for Baltimore City Schools. He also wrote about his experience in ‘Power in the Room: Radical Education Through Youth Organizing and Employment’
- Kate Khatib, co-founder and worker-owner of Red Emma’s, a cooperatively-owned restaurant and bookstore in Baltimore that helped to catalyse a city-wide ecosystem of worker-owned businesses over the last decade. In 2015, she helped to found the Seed Commons cooperative and its Baltimore peer, the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, and in 2018, became co-director of the Seed Commons network alongside Mr Brendan Martin.
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