The Love Center
A project of The Agape Fellowship Miracle (A.M.E.) Church
Rev. Eleanor Bryant, Pastor
4804 Reisterstown Road
Baltimore, Md. 21215
(410) 455-4545

Pastor Eleanor Bryant came to Northwest Baltimore's battered Park Heights neighborhood nine years ago with a mission and a memory.

The mission, she says, was "to bring a blessing to the community," a neighborhood of two-story brick townhouses and enduring poverty that was once predominantly Jewish and middle class but is now almost entirely African-American and poor.

The memory was that of her father, Harrison J. Bryant, who grew up in South Carolina in the days of segregation and lynch law and eventually became a bishop of the African Methodist Evangelical Church.

Beginning with a call to help the community's many low-income children and their mostly single mothers, the church eventually formed a separate non-profit organization, Agape Family Empowerment Center, and -- flexibly addressing needs as they arose -- began creating programs that not only fed people but helped empower them.

Over the years, as money and resources permitted, they have operated summer cultural and educational programs for youngsters; after-school programs (currently including tutoring help with computers, cultural arts, and a middle-school organization for enrichment and self-esteem called "Cool Girls For Christ." Using a grant from the Baltimore Community Foundation's Youth As Resources fund, five of the youngsters are receiving training in tutoring; they'll recruit five more, then serve as mentors to 20 younger children in the neighborhood.

Heavily leveraging partnerships with other community organizations, Agape works with single mothers in an initiative somewhat like Super Pantries, aimed at "interior life development" and health.

Now, however, Agape stands on the brink of a remarkable advance that, given its history and opportunities, holds the potential to make it a national model. Working with a community property owner, the organization is renovating and will eventually purchase an old but sturdy 24,000-square-foot industrial building -- to be called The Love Center -- that will house its programs, the church, and much more. The first phase, including a lobby and reception area and Head Start facility, may open this summer. Soon to follow will be job readiness and placement activities, after-school and BEFORE-school programs; a 19-hour child-care program (making quality care available for the children of workers who don't work normal business hours), and housing services -- when the organization moves into its new quarters, the current facility (a two-story townhouse) will become a three-bedroom transitional home for homeless families.

And in another natural connection with great promise, the group hopes to work with a half-dozen tiny businesses now sharing space in a few dilapidated garages behind the Love Center, seeking to turn it into a small-business "incubator" where entrepreneurs can share space and support facilities at very low cost. (CONNECTION: Send them info about Esperanza Unida, both its training businesses and its community center building.)

Agape gets an amazing amount accomplished on a nominal budget of about $20,000 a year, relying heavily on volunteers. The Love Center would cost about $450,000 to buy and perhaps up to $1 million to renovate by conventional methods. But that doesn't seem to be a problem here, as community members and volunteers (including church groups from as far away as Indiana) are already flocking to Baltimore to help.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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