Baltimore City Youth
Opportunities Landscape: 2023
Cataloging and Analyzing Programming Opportunities
Introduction
The Baltimore City Youth Opportunities Landscape is a public and collaborative effort facilitated by Baltimore’s Promise to compile, map, and analyze the opportunities available to young people ages 0-24.
To help program providers, policymakers, philanthropic funders, parents, youth, and the greater Baltimore City community learn more about the opportunities available to young people, we created an interactive dashboard (below) that allows anyone to create a personalized view of the city’s programming opportunities.
Youth opportunities are defined as programming for individuals in this age range that is distinct from—or designed to support or supplement—in-school instruction.
In addition to our dashboard, we have created a full report on our findings. Explore the above tabs to read the full Opportunities Landscape 2023 Findings [link], our Spotlight on Older Youth [link], and our Recommendations and Next Steps [link]. You can download a PDF version of this report here [link from words “PDF” to “here”]
Key Findings
The 2,725 programs captured in Opportunities Landscape 2023 offered 124,115 youth opportunities and an early childcare capacity of 19,445 seats.
The report
identified 32% more programs identified than in the Phase 1 dataset, in part to more comprehensive data collection, including more information about programs and how they served young people.
There are 2.3 times the number of opportunities for elementary school-aged children than for older youth (ages 19-24). The gap in programming for older youth decreased from our last analysis, but still exists.
Programming for older youth is largely limited to the summer months. Specifically, 94% of program sites and 70% of opportunities identified for older youth occurred during the summer.
Academic Enrichment remained the primary focus with the greatest number of programs (19.9%) and opportunities available (53.9%) for young people, consistent with Phase 1 data.
Health and Wellness programs played a larger role than in the pre-pandemic dataset. Nearly 5 times the number of programs (270) and nearly 8X the number of opportunities (23,133) had this primary focus.
Neighborhoods with higher needs tend to have relatively more programs than neighborhoods with lower needs. However, there is no direct connection between the amount of need in a neighborhood and the number of programming opportunities.
Opportunities Landscape 2023 Findings
OVERALL FINDINGS
The 2023 report builds on baseline data from the Phase 1 report, which provided data on programs operating in Baltimore City in the year ending in September 2019. Opportunities Landscape 2023 offers a post-COVID view of youth opportunities across the city and by age group, primary focus area, and neighborhood.
Our dataset identifies 2,725 program sites operating in 2022 in 1,499 distinct locations, offering 124,115 opportunities.
Youth opportunities are defined as programming for individuals age 0-24 that is distinct from — or designed to support or supplement — in-school instruction; “opportunities identified" refers to the total number of young people served, as reported by each data source. As many young people take advantage of multiple programs throughout the year, “opportunities identified” does not represent distinct individuals.
Early childcare capacity numbers are provided by the Maryland Family Network, whose dataset contains information on all licensed child care facilities in Maryland, including center-based and home-based care. Data on actual enrollment in childcare facilities (i.e., the number of opportunities) is not reported in the dataset. Thus, the 19,455 early childcare capacity figure is in addition to, not a subset of, the 124,115 opportunities identified figure.
PROGRAM INFORMATION BY AGE GROUP
Key Findings by Age Group
The most represented age group is elementary, in terms of both the number of programs and opportunities identified; this was also true in Phase 1.
Around 52% of the programs in our 2023 dataset serve elementary-aged children, while just under a third (33.1%) of opportunities identified were available to this age group.
The number of opportunities available to older youth increased, from 7,952 in Phase 1 data to 17,482 in this dataset. This may be due to better data collection and a coordinated effort by city stakeholders to increase opportunities for older youth as a result of Phase 1 findings.
There are still 2.3 times more opportunities for elementary-aged youth than for older youth. This is an improvement from the last report, which showed four times more opportunities for the younger age group, but a significant gap in programming remains.
Visit our Older Youth Spotlight to learn more about how we used Phase 1 data to advocate for more programs for older youth, how the Summer Funding Collaborative and Youth Grantmakers initiatives are helping increase quality programming for this important age group, and how non-summer-months opportunities may be the next frontier.
PROGRAM INFORMATION BY PRIMARY FOCUS AREA
Key Findings
Childcare, Academic Enrichment, and Workforce/Youth Development comprise the top three primary focus areas in terms of number of programs.
Childcare: 27.8% (Almost all from Maryland Family Network’s dataset on childcare locations.)
Academic Enrichment: 19.9%
Workforce/Youth Employment: 18.4% (The 419 Youthworks sites from the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development make up 83.6% of that total.)
Academic Enrichment, Health and Wellness, and Workforce/Youth Employment comprise the top three primary focus areas in terms of number of opportunities, making up 53.9%, 18.6% and 7.5% of the dataset, respectively.
An increase in the number of programs and opportunities with a primary focus area of Health and Wellness is a standout change from Phase 1. Compared with Phase 1, Opportunities Landscape 2023 identified nearly five times the number of programs (270) and over eight times the number of opportunities (23,133) with this primary focus.
Of note, our Phase 1 report included focus groups with young people and their parents and caregivers, who revealed their interest in youth-centered programs with engaged, professional staff who could provide safe mental health spaces. Our data indicates that program providers and funders have prioritized focusing on student well-being in response to this type of feedback and the detrimental effects of the pandemic on young people.
Program Information by Primary Focus Area
This interactive map displays all of the program sites in our dataset categorized by Primary Focus Area.
Note: Click top left map arrow to see legend
and + to zoom in
PROGRAM AND OPPORTUNITY INFORMATION BY NEIGHBORHOOD
One clear limitation to our dataset is that opportunities by neighborhood are calculated based on the locations of the program sites and not where individual participants live. Students may travel outside their own neighborhoods to attend programs — 66 programs serving Baltimore City youth are located outside of city limits. As mentioned in the Recommendations and Next Steps section, the emergence of the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub will illuminate this information.
Assessing Neighborhood Need, Programs, and Opportunities
We use two metrics to measure neighborhood need when analyzing whether the programs and opportunities in our dataset meet the relative needs of different neighborhoods in Baltimore City:
Percent of children living below the poverty line (2017-2021), a U.S. Census statistic sourced by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance: Child poverty rates in the city range from 0% in Inner Harbor/Federal Hill to 68.8% in Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park.
Community Conditions Index (CCI), developed by Baltimore City Schools to quantify investment in Baltimore neighborhoods based on economic disparity, access to resources, and neighborhood stability and safety: The index ranges from 6 (indicating low investment) to 24 (indicating high investment), with lower scores representing higher needs.
The interactive charts and data tables below show the relationship between neighborhood need and the number of programs and opportunities in our 2023 dataset.
The interactive map shows the number of program sites by Community Statistical Area (CSA) Neighborhood.*
*The dataset includes 66 programs that serve Baltimore City youth outside of city limits, 17 virtual programs, and 66 programs with an unknown location. To learn more about CSA Neighborhoods, why they exist, and how they differ from what a Baltimore resident may classify as a neighborhood, please visit the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance.
The interactive map shows the number of opportunities by Community Statistical Area (CSA) Neighborhood.**
**The dataset includes programs that provide 4,611 opportunities outside of city limits and 924 virtually; 700 opportunities are part of programs with unknown locations.
Our analysis finds a significant relationship between neighborhood need (based on both child poverty rate and CCI) and the number of programs available to young people. In general, neighborhoods with higher needs have greater numbers of programs, though we found plenty of outliers.
For example, the Poppleton/The Terraces/Hollins Market CSA Neighborhood has the second highest child poverty rate in the city (66.6%) and the lowest possible CCI score (6). However, it is home to only 37 programs in our dataset, ranking 33rd of the 55 CSA Neighborhoods in the city. Similarly, Madison/East End has the eighth highest child poverty rate (47.0%) and the eighth lowest CCI score (8) — but only the 42nd most programs of neighborhoods in the city. Though both neighborhoods are surrounded by others with relatively high numbers of programs, the data shows that despite the promising relationship between neighborhood need and number of programs, not all neighborhoods in the city have an adequate number of programs.
Concerningly, we do not find a similarly strong relationship between neighborhood need and the number of opportunities. Some neighborhoods with high needs have a relatively high number of programming opportunities. For example, the Upton/Druid Heights neighborhood in West Baltimore has the third highest child poverty rate in the city (58.1%) and the third highest number of opportunities (5,937). However, many neighborhoods with high needs have relatively few programming opportunities. The Westport/Mount Winans/Lakeland neighborhood, for example, has the fourth highest child poverty rate in the city (54.7%) but only the 33rd highest number of opportunities (1,416).
In short, there is still considerable work ahead to improve the number of programs and opportunities for young people in neighborhoods with the highest needs.
Recommendations
These recommendations emerged from the analysis of 2023 data and the themes emerging from the
Phase 1 youth and parent/caregiver sessions.
RECOMMENDATION #1: Expand Youth Opportunities
Research shows that quality out-of-school time programming increases educational outcomes for young people. While the 124,115 opportunities that Opportunities Landscape 2023 identified represents a notable increase from those identified in our Phase 1 report, this figure remains dramatically lower than the 171,305 young people that call Baltimore City home. This is especially true when considering how many young people take advantage of multiple opportunities. Significant numbers of young people are still not served by local programming. Our city must address disparities in the availability of opportunities, particularly in neighborhoods with high needs, aiming to ensure equitable access for all youth.
The gap in programming for older youth (ages 19-24) is particularly concerning. For this age group, we identified 17,482 programming opportunities for 46,673 Baltimore City residents. Most opportunities identified occurred during the summer months, leaving a greater gap in programming during the rest of the year. Baltimore must continue to work to increase engaging, high-quality programming for youth, which can help strengthen the pathway from secondary education to career-sustaining wages.
RECOMMENDATION #2: Fund Year-Round Coordinated Data Collection
For the past two years, the Mayor’s Office of Children and Family Success and Baltimore’s Promise convened a Summer Systems Table of over a dozen public and non-profit agencies that provide or support summertime programming opportunities for young people. The table has shared data on programming, discovered gaps, and identified opportunities for collaboration.
Securing funding and support to expand this convening to a year-round table would allow for coordinated strategies among city stakeholders to more effectively meet the needs of young people in non-summer months. Stakeholders have used — and will continue to use — Opportunities Landscape data to advocate for Baltimore’s young people. A more systematic and coordinated approach to data collection will only increase the ways in which data can be used to drive change.
RECOMMENDATION #3: Expand Citywide Program Access
To address disparities in program availability and opportunities for young people, stakeholders should focus on neighborhoods with high needs — and not just the number of programs but the number of opportunities, aiming to ensure equitable access to resources and support for youth across all areas of the city.
RECOMMENDATION #4: Empower Youth in Decision Making
Young people are best suited to make decisions about the programs they experience. Initiatives from Baltimore’s Promise (see Older Youth Spotlight) have shown that young people are able to take data from the Opportunities Landscape and other sources and, in combination with information from their own lived experiences, make program funding decisions and advocate effectively for changes that affect their lives and their communities. Sharing the data, findings, and recommendations from the Opportunities Landscape widely with young people and organizations they lead may further empower them to drive beneficial changes and encourage youth-serving organizations to involve more youth as advisors and embrace participatory processes when making resource decisions.
Next Steps
Continue Opportunities Landscape Data Collection
The Opportunities Landscape dataset continues to improve as stakeholders recognize its importance and the value of contributing to it: updates, revisions, and efforts to fill in missing data will only increase its quality and its ability to affect policy and funding decisions. For example, the dataset currently lacks complete data on program length and schedules. More detailed data would pinpoint further gaps in programming for stakeholders interested in supporting youth opportunities throughout the day, week, and year.
Baltimore’s Promise is committed to continuing this effort. Philanthropic funders can support future versions in a variety of ways, including:
Hiring data collectors from the community
Funding focus groups of young people and parents/caregivers to learn more about youth programming in Baltimore City
Supporting the development of the Opportunity Index (below).
Baltimore City Youth Opportunity Index (Opportunity Index)
Access to youth opportunities in Baltimore City differs based on neighborhood, as does the need for youth programming. In the coming year, Baltimore’s Promise plans to release the Opportunity Index to provide a comprehensive measure of access to opportunities that support the well-being of young people in Baltimore ages 0-24 and help them become thriving adults. The Index will consist of programming and opportunities data from the Opportunities Landscape, as well as other neighborhood-level data on transportation, safety, economic well-being, and more. These two data sets together will tell a powerful story, highlighting concerns such as those we heard from focus groups in Phase 1: that youth are more likely to attend programs close to home, and even subsidized public transportation passes are often not enough to surmount transportation and accessibility barriers.
Baltimore City Youth Data Hub: Summer Engagement Ecosystem
A key recommendation from the Opportunities Landscape Phase 1 report was to develop an integrated data system that would allow the city to better understand the current needs and opportunities available for young people. In Spring 2022, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation to establish the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub, an integrated data system developed by Baltimore’s Promise, Baltimore City Public Schools, and the City of Baltimore.
The Baltimore City Youth Data Hub will help overcome limitations of the Opportunities Landscape dataset, which provides program-level information without revealing who the programs serve, where they live, or their racial and ethnic demographics. With data from multiple sources, the Data Hub will provide a deeper understanding of youth opportunities across the city.
The Summer Engagement Ecosystem, a collaborative effort to highlight gaps in summer opportunities and provide intelligence for planning more equitable programs, will provide a first-use case of the Data Hub. Integrated data from the partners will provide data on the participation of Baltimore City children and youth in summer programs. Updates will be available in 2024.