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Teaming Up In South Baltimore

Youth participate in free sports programs in partnership with Volo City Kids Foundation as part of the South Baltimore Gateway Sports Network. Credit: SBGP
Youth participate in free sports programs in partnership with Volo City Kids Foundation as part of the South Baltimore Gateway Sports Network. Credit: SBGP and Partners

How did a 6 foot 7 inch Jewish basketball star from Brooklyn, New York come to spend decades in Brooklyn, South Baltimore, offering tough love and opportunities to young people at risk? Ivan Leshinsky explains why it happened and how it worked in his memoir Teaming Up. What’s the most important accomplishment of the Chesapeake Center for Youth Development, which Leshinsky headed for nearly four decades?

“So I think the legacy is really the hundreds of kids, I say kids -- the hundreds of young people -- who went through our programs and really went on to find a productive and satisfying way of living.”

Then, Brad Rogers, executive director of the South Baltimore Gateway Partnership tells us how they are investing $6 million dollars of casino gambling revenues in its neighborhoods.

Links: Ivan Leshinsky book, Southwest Sports and Fitness Alliance, South Baltimore Gateway Partnership.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Melissa Gerr is a Senior Producer for On the Record. She started in public media at Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn., where she is from, and then worked as a field producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. She made the jump to audio-lover in Baltimore as a digital media editor at Mid-Atlantic Media and Laureate Education, Inc. and as a field producer for "Out of the Blocks." Her beat is typically the off-beat with an emphasis on science, culture and things that make you say, 'Wait, what?'