| The West Baltimore Empowerment Initiative is a joint effort of the COPC at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and four village centers in the West Baltimore Empowerment Zone (EZ). These village centers, established as part of the city's EZ, are adjacent to the UMB campus in downtown Baltimore. They include: Washington Village/Pigtown, Poppleton, Harlem Park/Lafayette Square, and the Self-Motivated People's Community of West Baltimore.
After the village centers were incorporated, with help from UMB's Law School and its School of Social Work, village center leaders identified the community issues that they wanted to tackle and then invited the university to advise them in the development of strategies to resolve those issues. The village centers insisted that neighborhood residents be allowed to implement solutions to community problems by themselves, when feasible. When outside implementation made sense, the village centers made it clear that they wanted residents to work alongside the university.
Approximately 36,295 residents live in the COPC target area. Poverty, inadequate housing, unemployment, low literacy rates, drug abuse, and crime all pose significant threats to the quality of life in these communities. Seven percent of the population in 3 village centers is unemployed and 44 percent lives in poverty. Almost half (47 percent) of village center children live below the poverty level, compared to 11.9 percent in the State of Maryland. Nearly 20 percent of village center households receive some form of public assistance, compared with 6 percent of State households.
The West Baltimore Empowerment Initiative aims to mobilize residents so they can play an active role in community problem-solving initiatives. The COPC provides training in leadership development, community problem-solving, and community mapping; helps village centers create job readiness programs and form Community Development Corporations; and has developed preventive health strategies that focus on heart and lung disease.
The COPC work plan was developed by the Social Work Community Outreach Service of UMB's School of Social Work. The project has been supported by the School of Law's Empowerment Legal Services Program, which represents EZ village centers in all legal matters.
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