Our Programs and Services
The McKim Center Project
At the McKim Center, we offer the following forms of community-building and movement-organizing for health, safety, wellness, and peace:
Our life sciences curriculum for after school and summer school guides youth to understand how the five major classifications of life on earth (monera, protista, fungi, plants, and animals) create and sustain life in the wake of environmental and cultural obstacles. Learning about how humans and other species live optimally becomes a touchstone for valuing peace, empathy, and community. We guide youth in scientific methods (observation, argumentation, experimentation, investigation, and confirmation) using microscopes and naturalist drawing techniques. Our indoor and outdoor growing experiences guide youth to cultivate herbs, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and other healthy edible life within their homes. If it is safe to do so, we also offer outdoor wilderness exploration and growing projects in the natural world on field trips.
A centerpiece of our health studies education is peacemaking: this includes nonviolent communication, conflict transformation, de-escalation, anger management, upstander-modeling, counter-messaging, credible messaging, code-switching, harm reduction, and impulse control.
We continually make connections between scientific knowledge-gathering and contemplative peacemaking to prevent relational aggression and disrupt patterns that lead to violence.
Our McKim project gratefully collaborates with Dr. Sacoby Wilson's Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH) laboratory in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health; Friends School of Baltimore; Baltimore STRIDE; Woodberry Crossing; Catoctin Quaker Camp; and the University of Maryland's EFNEP Program.
JourneyMAKERS
In partnership with Christina Marsh, a Healing Arts Fellow of the Baltimore Wisdom Project and a full-time arts teacher at Towson High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, “Journeymakers” is a project-based SEL mentoring and restorative justice initiative that empowers a select cohort of students at Towson High School to uplift them within the school's behavioral health system. Students become “JourneyMAKERS” as they create ongoing visual narratives with photography, text, collage, video, and multimedia that embody their ongoing character-building, team-playing, and SEL development. Students share their projects in showcases to the school via video, photography or multimedia so that they are seen, heard, and valued as vital members of the learning community.
Check out the JourneyMAKERS' Instagram account where the youth leaders are beginning to showcase their multimedia.
Meditations
We provide online, guided meditations for approximately 30 minutes each session. The purpose of the meditations is to offer care and solace to participants in challenging times and to help participants release anxiety and stress as they find calm and cultivate affirmation for themselves and others.
Conversational Healing
We provide free, no-cost community counseling by phone and online to address health and wellness issues that may arise in the home, at work, in school, or during crises. Our community counseling also offers constituents resources and tools to navigate life's obstacles in accessing health services, housing, and other systemic issues.
Wisdom Sharing
We provide wisdom sharing (professional development, training, consultation, and skill-sharing) to teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community advocates to uplift and inspire with ideals and strategies for holistic education. Currently, we are humbled to work with the Friends School of Baltimore.
Communications and Engagement
We provide extensive justice-centered social media engagement through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Medium (the latter of which will debut soon). Much of this communications and engagement includes original reporting and research-based messaging that amplifies the topics relevant to the under-resourced communities and people that we serve.
"JEDI" Consultations
We offer consultations on "JEDI" principles—meaning, principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion—to organizations, corporations and businesses to enhance workplace culture, hiring, and climate. Our "JEDI" consultations combine conflict transformation, mediation, morale enhancement, and conceptual redesigning. We are adept at liaising with any division of a workplace, from the executive leadership to all employees. We are sensitive to a company's culture and traditions while recommended highly considered and well-bought-in changes. We accentuate the positive while offering affirmative, hopeful, and caring solutions, strategies, and systems for the improvement of a business' commitment to "JEDI" principles.
Click here to learn more about our JEDI consultations.
Multimedia
We make multimedia and video by commission to teach elements of community counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, restorative practices, restorative justice, mindfulness, peacemaking, and caretaking in communities. Click here, here, and here for examples of our multimedia and videographic engagement.
At the McKim Center, we offer the following forms of community-building and movement-organizing for health, safety, wellness, and peace:
- Trauma-informed healing services (peace-building; nonviolent credible messaging; upstander-modeling; transformative justice; conflict transformation; community counseling; mindfulness; restorative practices; restorative justice; and health navigation);
- STEM and arts education (life science; exercise science; health science; nutrition; environmental health; environmental justice; civic, social, and cultural studies); and
- Institutional support (food service (if applicable); infrastructural support (counsel and limited resources for interior improvements for learning spaces); consultations for fundraising and development; consultations for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (or JEDI principles); professional development for trauma-informed care and national standards for safety and security; and strategic communications).
Our life sciences curriculum for after school and summer school guides youth to understand how the five major classifications of life on earth (monera, protista, fungi, plants, and animals) create and sustain life in the wake of environmental and cultural obstacles. Learning about how humans and other species live optimally becomes a touchstone for valuing peace, empathy, and community. We guide youth in scientific methods (observation, argumentation, experimentation, investigation, and confirmation) using microscopes and naturalist drawing techniques. Our indoor and outdoor growing experiences guide youth to cultivate herbs, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and other healthy edible life within their homes. If it is safe to do so, we also offer outdoor wilderness exploration and growing projects in the natural world on field trips.
A centerpiece of our health studies education is peacemaking: this includes nonviolent communication, conflict transformation, de-escalation, anger management, upstander-modeling, counter-messaging, credible messaging, code-switching, harm reduction, and impulse control.
We continually make connections between scientific knowledge-gathering and contemplative peacemaking to prevent relational aggression and disrupt patterns that lead to violence.
Our McKim project gratefully collaborates with Dr. Sacoby Wilson's Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH) laboratory in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health; Friends School of Baltimore; Baltimore STRIDE; Woodberry Crossing; Catoctin Quaker Camp; and the University of Maryland's EFNEP Program.
JourneyMAKERS
In partnership with Christina Marsh, a Healing Arts Fellow of the Baltimore Wisdom Project and a full-time arts teacher at Towson High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, “Journeymakers” is a project-based SEL mentoring and restorative justice initiative that empowers a select cohort of students at Towson High School to uplift them within the school's behavioral health system. Students become “JourneyMAKERS” as they create ongoing visual narratives with photography, text, collage, video, and multimedia that embody their ongoing character-building, team-playing, and SEL development. Students share their projects in showcases to the school via video, photography or multimedia so that they are seen, heard, and valued as vital members of the learning community.
Check out the JourneyMAKERS' Instagram account where the youth leaders are beginning to showcase their multimedia.
Meditations
We provide online, guided meditations for approximately 30 minutes each session. The purpose of the meditations is to offer care and solace to participants in challenging times and to help participants release anxiety and stress as they find calm and cultivate affirmation for themselves and others.
Conversational Healing
We provide free, no-cost community counseling by phone and online to address health and wellness issues that may arise in the home, at work, in school, or during crises. Our community counseling also offers constituents resources and tools to navigate life's obstacles in accessing health services, housing, and other systemic issues.
Wisdom Sharing
We provide wisdom sharing (professional development, training, consultation, and skill-sharing) to teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community advocates to uplift and inspire with ideals and strategies for holistic education. Currently, we are humbled to work with the Friends School of Baltimore.
Communications and Engagement
We provide extensive justice-centered social media engagement through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Medium (the latter of which will debut soon). Much of this communications and engagement includes original reporting and research-based messaging that amplifies the topics relevant to the under-resourced communities and people that we serve.
"JEDI" Consultations
We offer consultations on "JEDI" principles—meaning, principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion—to organizations, corporations and businesses to enhance workplace culture, hiring, and climate. Our "JEDI" consultations combine conflict transformation, mediation, morale enhancement, and conceptual redesigning. We are adept at liaising with any division of a workplace, from the executive leadership to all employees. We are sensitive to a company's culture and traditions while recommended highly considered and well-bought-in changes. We accentuate the positive while offering affirmative, hopeful, and caring solutions, strategies, and systems for the improvement of a business' commitment to "JEDI" principles.
Click here to learn more about our JEDI consultations.
Multimedia
We make multimedia and video by commission to teach elements of community counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, restorative practices, restorative justice, mindfulness, peacemaking, and caretaking in communities. Click here, here, and here for examples of our multimedia and videographic engagement.