Trying to reach the most dangerous

Anti-violence program Roca shows its progress after five months in Baltimore

Armed with a list of 180 young men considered Baltimore’s most dangerous, outreach workers have scoured city neighborhoods since July to find them and persuade them to join Roca, a radical anti-violence program.

In some cases they’re too late. Some of the men have been killed in the past five months or locked up for crimes such as armed robbery or drug trafficking.

Roca is recruiting those still available to take part in the nonprofit’s life skills, therapy and educational classes and transitional employment services. The goal is to give the men, ages 16 to 24, the skills to turn their lives around. The catch? Roca’s outreach workers do not take no for an answer: They relentlessly pursue the men until they join.

Sheldon Smith-Gray, 21, was shocked and suspicious when a group of volunteers first knocked on his door. The at-home visit resembled those police sometimes made — which made him suspicious at first.

”I just heard them out,” Smith-Gray said. “I could hear they were genuine. It was an easy decision.”

“There are 180-odd names on a list that we have to go find, because we don’t know how long we have,” said Kurtis Palermo, Roca’s director of operations and employment in Baltimore. “For many of them, it is the first time in their life they’ve been told their life actually matters and there are adults who will continue to be here.”

Roca hosted an open house Thursday to showcase what its outreach workers have been doing to disrupt the cycles of violence in Baltimore since it opened its doors here this summer. Mayor Catherine Pugh, police leaders and donors visited its headquarters near Park Avenue and Chase Street, a site selected as neutral ground to draw men from both West and East Baltimore.

Lime green walls of Roca’s Baltimore branch divide the center into common areas, quiet spaces and conference rooms where the men can learn life skills.

Roca was brought to Baltimore with a $17 million funding package after operating for 30 years in Massachusetts. The money, which will pay for the services for four years, comes from the city budget, Baltimore businesses and local philanthropies.

Pugh became aware of the program during her mayoral campaign. In trying to put together the funding package for Roca, the mayor touted the program as a key fit with her crime-reduction plan.

“The city can’t do this work by itself,” Pugh said Thursday. “People in the community respond when the program is right. We believed in Roca because it’s about changing lives.”

Roca —“rock” in Spanish — aims to serve up to 100 men in its first year, gradually increasing to 300 annually. Thirteen outreach workers, 12 from Baltimore, are on staff.

Founder Molly Baldwin, a Baltimore native, said Roca is not offering a quick fix. But she believes its work can transform lives over time, based on the results from Massachusetts.

“We’re just at the beginning of a long road,” Baldwin said. “As we get to know them, we find young people who are tired and want something else. It becomes our extraordinary privilege and humble responsibility to try to do this.”

The program’s data show that men typically take 15 to 18 months before they show up consistently, Baldwin said.

Deborah Leedsbey said the volunteers do not let her 20-year-old son, Desmond Russell, skip out on attendance. If Russell does not show up, staffers often ask to be let into his room so they can get him out of bed themselves. Recently, Leedsbey noted that lessons she tried to impart to Russell as a child have started to resonate with him.

“I’m a mom, so I still whoop and holler and fuss,” Leedsbey said. “But he’s been meeting his goals.”

When the men do start regularly attending, Baldwin said, Roca has a strong track record of helping them stay out of jail and in jobs. Last year, Roca worked with 854 high-risk young men in Massachusetts. Of the 283 who completed the first two years of intensive outreach and services, 84 percent avoided arrest and 76 percent held jobs for at least three months.

Palermo said the stakes couldn’t be higher on all sides.

Outreach workers in Baltimore went to one young man’s home nine, 10 and 11 times to attempt to persuade him to give Roca a try. But they could not reach him in time: The man was killed.

Palermo said his grandmother and sister called the Roca worker to tell them he had died and to deliver a message: No one had ever put so much effort into trying to save his life.