History of the Choice Program at UMBC

The Choice Program began in 1987 when Mark Shriver, son of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, identified a community need in the low-income neighborhood of Cherry Hill in Baltimore City. In 1988, the Choice Program became a program of UMBC. The program has grown from a 5-person organization in one community to a program with multiple sites and replications in four additional states. With a staff of committed individuals, the program currently serves over 600 families annually in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Prince George’s County, Howard County and Montgomery County. The Choice Program has been successfully replicated in San Diego, California, Hartford, Connecticut, Syracuse, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island and was cited in the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Gap Analysis Report FY 05 as a “Model Program in Maryland.” Choice also has received national recognition from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in its Model Program Guide in 2006, and by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the National Dropout Prevention Network in 2003.

The Choice Program of the Shriver Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has worked with more than 20,000 youth and their families from Maryland’s highest risk communities for over 25 years. The Choice Program works within the framework of two primary theories of change. First, Choice seeks to reduce disproportionate minority confinement among youth involved in the juvenile justice system by empowering youth and families to advocate for themselves and connect to resources. Second, the program uses service-learning to impact workforce development in the service field by inviting up to 36 AmeriCorps members each year, (typically recent college graduates with a wide array of backgrounds and experiences) who apply their passion, energy, and dedication to addressing the pressing social, health, educational and economic challenges that our youth and families face.

The Choice Program Model

Caring Adult Relationships: Consistent, face-to-face contact provides youth with numerous opportunities for informal counseling, information sharing, mentoring, and role modeling. Choice AmeriCorps members function in teams and manage small caseloads, allowing daily youth-adult connections over a period of several weeks and months. Youth have access to Choice AmeriCorps members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week should they or their families experience a crisis requiring outside intervention. Sharing supervision responsibilities with parents and other caregivers allows Choice staff to develop strong relationships with the youth and families participating in the program.

High Expectations: Choice sets high expectations within the context of supportive relationships. One-on-one goal planning strategies and structured group activities help establish cooperation and communication skills, problem-solving skills, empathy, self-efficacy, self-awareness, and the importance of setting goals and following through. Clear expectations for academic success such as daily school attendance, social appropriateness, the development of effective coping skills, and learning how to make healthy life choices are communicated and encouraged. Clear expectations for appropriate social behavior are established through community service-learning projects, where the values of personal and civic responsibility are modeled, practiced, and reinforced.

Meaningful Participation: Structured after-school, weekend, and summer activities provide opportunities for involvement, responsibility, and contribution. Where available, youth attend after-school homework clubs and receive one-on-one tutorial support at local colleges and universities with undergraduate students. Supervised recreational and cultural enrichment activities are offered on weekends to promote the values of life-long learning, fitness for life and appropriate social engagement with peers. Program participants are also invited to engage in age-appropriate, community service-learning projects organized by Choice AmeriCorps members to promote understanding and experience in connecting to their community in a positive manner.

Building Community, School, and Home Partnerships: Identifying and linking additional social support systems to families within their community constitutes a fundamental component of the Choice Program model. Building these connections is achieved through case management and active involvement in the communities we serve. Choice AmeriCorps members connect with the natural supports within the youth’s home on a daily basis. This presence and support facilitates communication with parents and allows AmeriCorps members to establish a professional relationship with family members, and advocate on their behalf. Identifying and supporting parents’ hopes and aspirations for their child’s educational and developmental needs is achieved through family-centered planning, encouragement, and assistance with navigating the various systems they may encounter.

The Choice Jobs Program: provides vocational services and support for youth involved in Choice and in the communities in which Choice serves. The Choice Jobs Program provides a full array of services including: job skills assessments, job preparedness, jobs search, and placement as well as job retention. The program currently has three key components: The Flying Fruit social enterprise, Job Clubs, and paid Internships.

The Choice Education Program: provides education and career readiness support to Baltimore City high school students. We believe that 1) college access is a key social justice issue; 2) Baltimore’s young people deserve high quality education programming; 3) youth-centered and community-driven approaches to education are imperative; 4) and meaningful education takes place inside and outside of the classroom, on and off of college campuses.

The Choice Program recognizes that the issues which place youth and families at risk are rooted in a history of systemic and structural inequalities. To address these inequities specifically, the Choice Program created a “Change Team in 2016,” whose charge is to ensure that our staff, programs and organization are rooted in racial equity. This brings forth an explicit new set of goals for our organization which are centered around critically reflecting on our own practices, seeking out tools and resources to facilitate racial equity, and ensuring that the youth and families we serve are active participants in shaping their experience in the program. This drives our youth-centered community event, Youth in Action, creating opportunities for youth and families to have agency within the program. While we believe that the work towards becoming an anti-racist organization is never done, we continue to progress.

After an extensive equity audit of the organization, we have begun shifting into a restorative, trauma informed model, have partnered with several leaders in racial equity from the communities where we serve, and have created a number of opportunities for our youth not only to inform change within their communities but within our own practices as a program.

History of Racial Equity at UMBC

Points from The Improbable Excellence Book

• UMBC has had an excellent rate of graduation among African American students--national 6-year graduation rate for AAs is 43.3% and 59.9% for white students. At umbc, the graduation rate between 1997-2002 was 59.4% for AAs, 56.9% for Whites, and 54.1% for Asians

• The creation of the Office for Minority Recruitment in 1971 was one of the earliest efforts to achieve student diversity at UMBC

  • The Office used an affiliation with the WWIN radio station, lectures by prominent AA politicians and educators, and scholarship funds to raise minority enrollment from 7.5% to 10.6% in two years.

  • Now there are more students of Asian origin (Bangladesh, China, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Persia, Philippines, South Asia, Taiwan, and Vietnam) than students of African origin.

  • In 2009, UMBC ranked second in the country for racial and ethnic diversity among undergraduate students (Princeton Review)

  • American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology ranked UMBC #1 in the total number of undergrad chemistry and biochemistry degrees awarded to AA students

  • UMBC was founded after the segregation era that impact all of the other public universities in the state. Therefore, UMBC is the only Maryland public institution that has never been segregated.

  • In UMBC's first two decades there was tension between the SGA and the Black Student Union because the SGA was hesitant to recognize the BSU as an official organization and provide it funding

    • it was believed that the BSU would cause disunity throughout the campus and undermine UMBC growing identity

    • By 2010, there were 22 racial and ethnic organizations on campus

    • UMBC's guiding principle after Princeton Review ranking: "It is a guiding principle at UMBC that living, studying, and interacting with diverse groups strengthen us as people. We challenge our students to reach beyond their comfort zones and connect with others different from themselves