Bridging Gaps in Baltimore: The Embrace Initiative at UMB

Explore the transformative work happening at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) through the lens of EMBRACE — a civic engagement initiative led by executive director Kyla Liggett-Creel, PhD, LCSW-C, who is also a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland Graduate School. Liggett-Creel shares her insights into creating pathways for community improvement and how EMBRACE facilitates connections among the University, nonprofits, and the communities they serve.

Listeners will get a peek into EMBRACE’s main areas. They include:

Healing Youth Alliance

    •    Training youth to become peer educators, advocates, trainers, and consultants focusing on mental health and resilience.

Youth Development
    •    Working with youth who have been arrested for nonviolent offenses to provide mentoring and case management to support prosocial behaviors.

Violence Reduction
    •    Partnering with credible messengers and people with lived experience providing conflict resolution, crime/violence prevention, and resource management.

Liggett-Creel also shares updates about the Eutaw Street Initiative, which is an innovative collaboration between UMB Police and Public Safety and social workers to support those in need on the streets. The initiative has a new home at the Embrace Resource Center at 55 N. Paca St.

Tune in to learn more about how the EMBRACE initiative is making significant strides in civic engagement, community service, and fostering a collaborative environment for positive change in Baltimore. Whether you’re a community member, student, faculty, or simply interested in social impact, this episode offers valuable insights into the power of collective action and the importance of embracing and empowering communities.

 

Links of interest from the show:
Opening of the Embrace Resource Center
Ways to Give to the Embrace Initiative
Email Liggett-Creel

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Visit our website at umaryland.edu/pulse or email us at umbpulse@umaryland.edu.

Transcript

Charles Schelle: 0:00

Dana, I don't wanna get too nerdy about the details, but this situation the other day where I needed to know how to do something, I knew the first steps and the end product, the end result of what I needed to do, but I felt lost about all the steps in between. Like, have you ever experienced something like that?

Dana Rampolla: 0:21

Yeah. I feel like I have that happen a lot of times, but but the I about a year ago, maybe it's 6 months ago, I was I was reading. Everybody's talking about sourdough bread and making sour you know, trying to get away from so many preservatives, And I thought it sounded like this great idea. I've been a bread maker, dabbled in it over the years. So I thought, oh, I'm gonna do this. And, you know, you read it. Sounds pretty simple. And I know what the end product needs to be. I need to have a loaf of bread, but I don't I don't have you ever done it? Have you ever tried making sourdough? It's

Charles Schelle: 0:53

I've watched somebody do it before, but I have not personally tried.

Dana Rampolla: 0:58

Well, it's this whole big process. You know? So it's a naturally fermented substitute for yeast, but you don't just whip it up and use it the next day. You have to make it, and then you have to feed it, they call it each day. Anyway, it's a whole long process. And through through that process, I kept thinking, like, am I doing this right? Am I headed in the right direction? And I kinda wish, like, my grandmother was still around because she probably could have set me straight. But, anyway, sorry. That was a long story. Yes. I do know what you mean.

Charles Schelle: 1:28

Good. Good. Because I was thinking about how a lot of people probably have the expertise in something, but it's like, if I only knew that 1 thing, I could really go further and make a huge difference. And so that really ties into what Kyla Liggett Creel is all about. We're gonna talk to, professor Liggett Creel, who is the executive director of Embrace today, And her job is really to help create those connections. Those pathways for people, nonprofits who need help in our neighborhoods, uh, to improve their lives and others too. Right? She's going to talk about several of these projects and and initiatives that she oversees as part of her work that was born out of her time at the University of Maryland School of Social Work as well as a sneak peek of some of her new projects. All of her work is neatly packaged through what she calls Embrace.

Dana Rampolla: 2:21

Yeah. And she's in the provost's office for her Embrace work, and she's on faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Graduate School now, continuing that work, you know, that you just described. One of the latest developments came out of her work with the UMB police, and that was called the Eutaw Street Initiative. And it's where the police and social workers make connections with folks who are out on the street needing assistance. They might need some sort of case management, mediation, and peer support, and that program now has a new home. We'll talk about it later on and just get a little more details then. But, yeah, she's doing a lot of good work.

Charles Schelle: 2:58

Absolutely. She's done a lot of work in the city, like you just said, especially with youth trauma intervention work, but there's so much more that she does.

Dana Rampolla: 3:07

Well, I'm looking forward to learning more about some of her research and her initiatives and especially her work with peer recovery specialists. And what does she call them? Credible messengers? Yep. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, I wanna learn all about that. So let's jump right into our conversation with doctor Kyla Liggett Creel.

Jena Frick: 3:29

You're listening to the heartbeat of the University of Maryland Baltimore, the UMB pulse.

Dana Rampolla: 3:42

Kyla, welcome to the UMB Pulse so you're in a new position in the provost's office as the executive director of Embrace. First of all, congratulations on that.

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 3:52

I appreciate it. I'm very excited.

Dana Rampolla: 3:54

We'll talk about what Embrace is as a teaser in a bit as the program continues to take shape. But first, you've spent about a dozen years on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Social Work before your current role. So where tell us a little bit about what you were focused in at that time, violence prevention, youth leadership development, and you partnered with grassroots nonprofits. What did that look like for you?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 4:18

I actually started here 15 years ago. At first, I was in the the Department of Psychiatry working at Center for Infant Studies, and I did mental health consultation with Head Starts. So really being out in the community, talking to Head Start teachers about how to best support little ones' social, emotional well-being and supervising clinicians and interns. And then I came over to the School of Social Work. I was a foster parent, and they were running some groups for foster parents. So they asked me to come over to be a person with lived experience. As a foster parent we were working towards adoption at the time. And so, and by that point, we had been foster parents for about 5 years, and it had 8 children. So we had done a lot around behavior management and also just helping with difficult things around visiting birth parents and going to court, dealing with lawyers who never met the kid and met, you know, the kid at court and, you know, just trying to figure out early intervention services and all of that. So I was asked to come to the School of Social Work to help cofacilitate groups for foster parents. And then quickly was asked to start developing parenting programs for West Baltimore, specifically Upton Druid Heights with place based initiative called Promise Heights. And I worked with Promise Heights for, I think about 12 years. And my role there was really developing the parenting programs, but also supervising clinicians, helping kind of build out the whole pipeline from birth to, you know, college and career. And I also was working with grassroots and nonprofits in West Baltimore, specifically around violence prevention and trauma intervention and loved just adored that work and got to really meet some phenomenal people who were specializing in work in West Baltimore. And then in March of 20 20 I started working with the Baltimore City health department Around developing the violence intervention and prevention plan for the city and also the Healing City Initiative where we were building trauma informed training for all Baltimore City staff. So it's been quite a journey. I've loved being at the university. And then in July of 23 I moved over to the Provost's office to be the executive director for EMBRACE.

Dana Rampolla: 6:42

Wow. Out of all of those areas of work, what would you consider your proudest work to have been?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 6:47

Certainly partnering with the grassroots and nonprofits and people with lived experience. You know, really Getting to know their programs, getting to know them, their families, their life stories, and then, you know, honing in on the the work of accessing resources, removing barriers, and addressing real world problems.

Charles Schelle: 7:09

As we mentioned earlier, this is a civic minded program that is under UMB provost and executive vice president Roger Ward's office. So how does Embrace differ from what's being done at the Office of Community Engagement, the Center for Violence Prevention at UMB, and the Uplift Alliance, which is a program that acts as a fiscal sponsor for nonprofits.

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 7:30

Absolutely. And thank you for asking. So this is a sneak peek. EMBRACE is really about the work of civic engagement, civic action. And so what that means is that looking at how the university partners with grassroots and nonprofits really is engaging people with lived experience in a mutually beneficial way. So, we do look at research. So for example community members now can be part of the IRB approved research team. And so we have a specialized training for community members so they don't have to go through the, You know, the longer training that most faculty do. And so they can go through a 1 hour video training, upload their certificate, and now they're part of the research Team because we wanna do research with community, not on community or for community. We also work on academics. So we have 3 curriculum programs that are coming out. 1 is for young people To be trained as mental health consultants in the community. They can do consulting with organizations, agency, governmental agencies, Trainings around mental health and resilience. We have another certificate program for violence intervention folks who are in the community. Usually, when there is a a shooting or a crisis that happens, it's really the community members who were called in first. And so it's the guys who are down the street. It's the trusted deacon at the church. They're the ones who are called in to do the work. And so really making sure that they're receiving training, but it's not a top down. It's not a faculty training community. It is you know, the faculty for the curriculum is actually 2 credible messengers who are returning citizens pastor from the community and then a lawyer, a social worker, a community organizer. So it's really about, again, doing with community offering opportunities for people, Students to learn from credible messengers and learn from community members. So we have a training opportunity for interns who wanna work on, you know, around Lexington Market doing the community engagement. And they are learning from, you know, 2 peer recovery specialists and 2 and 10 credible messengers about what does it really look like to do work in the community. And then we have a implementation arm of EMBRACE. And so that implementation arm is called the Collaborative. And in the Collaborative, we do 3 buckets of work. 1 is around youth development. And so we We have a program where we have an apartment building, 42 apartments for previously unhoused young people. And so These young people may have been in foster care. They may be in DJS. They may have been living on the streets. And so we offer mental health supports and social emotional Supports and case management there. We also have the Healing Youth Alliance where young people are trained on mental health and resilience and doing training in the community. We also have some several curriculum programs where, like, we're working with therapists on how to work with young people who have a lot of trauma. Then we have the community engagement, civic engagement violence prevention work. And so that's where some of those overlaps come in. Right? So we have a lot of violence intervention work because we've been doing it for, you know, 8 years now. And so we work with credible messengers. And so we have some projects where We're working on around Lexington Market. We have 10 returning citizens who do community outreach, 2 peer recovery specialists. We've had over 4000 engagements in the past 3 years. Over 200 people have gotten jobs through that work. We do some work on Pennsylvania Avenue where we have 12 credible messengers and 4 returning citizens who are case managers. And there, we are really doing the work of trying to prevent gun violence and also provide resources to community members. And, again, it is with community leaders. It is, you know, with the Upton planning committee. It is with community organizers that is with no boundaries. It is not, you know, us coming in and doing 2 or 4. It really is doing with residents of the community on how do we want to try to prevent some of this violence and also provide resources. And then we also have some work with DJS, with Department of Juvenile Services. We do a lot of removing barriers and accessing resources versus with community nonprofits and grassroots. And so, we coordinate with Uplift, which is the new fiscal sponsor with the university To you know, when we know of their that there's groups where they really are wanting to get larger grants and contracts, By partnering with Uplift, it allows them to do that because now they have a fiscal sponsor who can, you know, handle all of the reporting and is a 5 0 1 c 3. And then the last bucket under our civic engagement is around training and technical assistance. And so we have lots of partners who have expertise like the Black Mental Health Alliance where, you know, we may know of a community group who really wants some training around, you know, healing or around yoga or around mindfulness. And so we might connect them with another nonprofit like the Black Mental Health Alliance to help get the word out around that. But, also, we work a lot with the city and state. So, you know, I was 1 of the facilitators on the squeegee collaborative. We have worked with the mayor's office, the health department with the Healing City initiative. We've worked with, you know, city council people. We work with state leaders because we really know that For the work of healing to be done, for the work of doing trauma informed work in the city and state, There has to be a civic engagement component. And so preparing students on how do you engage the world of politics and make policy changes. So we've had an intern in the mayor's office for the past 2 years because we wanna solidify those partnerships. And so lots and lots of work going on as you heard. We have about 30 returning citizens and credible messengers who are working with us. And then we have, you know, 4 interns, and we have 6 staff, and we're growing all of it fitting under this sort of umbrella of EMBRACE where we are looking at the research, the academics civic engagement. And the last thing most important sometimes is the administration. And so looking at how can we make policies more equitable at the university when partnering with grassroots and nonprofits. So moving them to the front of the line when it comes to Paying invoices having special paperwork so that it makes more sense when we're doing sole source and not asking questions that just don't work when you're talking about community.

Charles Schelle: 14:42

So that is really all encompassing, and and we'll get more into some of those in a bit. But for people who aren't familiar with the line of work and research and the and the community nonprofits that that you work with. I want you to define 3 terms for for the audience, please. 1 is credible messenger, 1 is returning citizen, and the third 1 is trauma informed care.

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 15:03

Great. So credible messenger usually is somebody who is trusted. They may have a shared life experience as the population that you're working with. So a credible messenger could be a 16 year old who is going to the same school as the kids that you wanna work with. It could be a community health worker who people know from the neighborhood And they really trust, and they're the person that they go to first when they have questions or they need support. So it's really just somebody who is trusted and may have some shared life experience. A returning citizen is somebody who was incarcerated and has now come out of prison. And they're back in the community many times that well, the returning citizens that we work with are folks who, As they say, they wanna come back and do some of the healing from the hurt that has happened in the past. And so They're both credible messengers and returning citizens. Right? Because they have a shared experience. People trust them. They have credibility, And they are coming out of prison. They've done their time, and they're coming out, and now they're doing some really great work. Trauma informed care, that is a a term that was coined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA and so what they said was, we really want, for Systems not to cause further harm to people who have experienced trauma. And to do that, we need to use a trauma informed Framework. And so they have key principles that you have to keep in mind, things like giving people voice and choice, and so not forcing people to do things, Considering culture, gender identity, sexual orientation, history as any part of any work that you do. Making sure that your work is safe and that you're not causing further harm by, you know, putting them in situations that are not Safe emotionally or physically. So there's 6 key principles. And so when you're doing the work offering opportunities for collaboration, Offering opportunities for peer support that any work that we do, we should have that trauma informed approach with individuals, But also when working with grassroots and nonprofits.

Charles Schelle: 17:18

Great. Thank you.

Dana Rampolla: 17:20

Kyla, where is Embrace now in its startup phase?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 17:24

We have spent the past about 6 months really first focusing on the changes to administration. We know that sometimes there are real barriers to, you know, grassroots and nonprofits being able to get paid Or being able to hire folks who, you know, are in the community, and maybe their education is a little bit different than traditional. Maybe their resumes are a little different than traditional. And so we've done a lot around IRB, around invoicing, around Purchase orders. And I have to say the administrative team has been phenomenal in really being able to say, Yes. We see that's a barrier, and, yes, let's make some changes so that it's no longer a barrier. We've also been really helping To define what does it mean to be EMBRACE. And that's where those 4 buckets come in that we have. The research Needs to be looked at. The academics need to be looked at. Civic engagement needs to be looked at and administration. And so, You know, that's where we are now. We've made some really big changes already to the administration and IRB process. We have these curriculum projects already up and going and we've been working with, you know, city leaders and state leaders for years now. And so as far as growth, we continue to build new partnerships and really look at different ways that the university as an anchor institution Can engage with grassroots, nonprofit, city, state leaders around addressing real world issues. And what that means is that sometimes challenges exist. Right? And everybody you know, there is a we need to have all all hands on deck. We need everybody to Come together and say, okay. Here's a challenge. What is it that we need to do to address the challenge? And so this is a Initiative where it brings the university to the table and says, okay. This this sometimes is about facilitating or training or developing or creating and so we wanna be part of that to support that process.

Dana Rampolla: 19:26

One thing you've mentioned a couple of times that I'm not sure people clearly know what it is is something called IRB. Can you just tell us what that acronym stands for?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 19:36

Sure. IRB is the internal review board, and it really looks at how to do research in an ethical way to make sure that we are not continuing to cause the harm that has been done by many research institutions historically and even currently. So So making sure that, you know, there's informed consent that anybody who's involved in research knows what is it about. What does it mean? What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen with that information? And so, you know, previously, if you wanted to have a community member part of the IRB sort of protocol application team. They would have to go through a training that is really in-depth and really important for faculty To to know because we have to make those decisions about the research. But for community members, they're not making those type of decisions that we have to be trained in. They do need to have an understanding of what is informed consent. What you know, you can't tell somebody you have to do this research. Can't do that. Right? So Now this means that they can be on the research team, but the burden of the amount of training that was required before has been lessened.

Charles Schelle: 20:45

That sounds like a really cool program with with the citizens on on IRB that that you mentioned. Is any other institution doing similar approaches as far as a institution wide approach to having, their community members on board?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 21:02

Yeah. Yeah. That's part of what we did. We sort of look around and see, You know, who who else is doing this, and what does that look like? So there are other universities that are doing it. I can't pull up the names right now but, you know, this is where some of this unique training has come in. You know, there is a recognition that people with lived experience have an expertise that have an expertise that cannot be replicated by reading articles and doing studies. It just can't. Right? And so having their voice as part of the team is incredibly important, and more and more institutions are recognizing that.

Charles Schelle: 21:38

So what's the limits of their participation as far as what they're commenting on, what they're specifically looking for, and that feedback?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 21:46

Yeah. So, you know, they can do everything from helping design what the study is. So where are you doing Recruitment. Who are you recruiting? How are you recruiting? Also sharing, sort of The the rules of engagement with research. So meaning, you know, if you're talking to other community members, what kind of documentation are you giving? How is it written? How are you sharing it? Where are you sharing it? And then even helping with doing the interviews. If you're doing qualitative study, they can help with actually doing the interviews, which makes a lot of sense because if they're trusted in the community, Then you're much more likely to recruit better, but also the information that you gather when you're doing qualitative may be better because it's somebody that they trust. They can also help design the in the interview tool. But, also, if you're doing quantitative, they can look at some of the questions to see, Is that language making sense? Are you asking questions that make any sense, or is that just not what's happening in that community? So that the questions are always gonna be no because that's not what's actually happening. They can also help with coding. So looking if it's qualitative, they can say, okay. Well, this is really what this means Because they have lived experience that, you know, perhaps the other study team members don't. With quantitative, they can help with really interpreting. What does that data mean? If you have 85 percent of people saying this. What does that actually look like in real life, and what are some further questions that you might wanna ask? They can also be part of writing up the results so that it is accessible, so that it really makes sense. It is an accurate description. And then in disseminating having community members actually be part of any conferences having their names on The actual articles helping to write proposals. Their role is really integral throughout the whole process. You know, when you get into medical research, obviously, you have medical personnel that have to do certain medical interventions and all of that. You know, they can't give Legal advice. They can't do, you know, nursing or medical care, you know, all of that. But they are really important when coming to Patient education or community, you know, informed consent process, all of that. That I mean, they're really integral to the whole study.

Charles Schelle: 24:06

Yeah. And a shout out to our friends over at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the PATIENTS program and the Bridge podcast. Hi, Rodney. You do a lot of similar work with with community members where they're training the, you know, faculty and the researchers on how to do that interaction with the community. So a lot of great synergy there.

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 24:26

Yep. Yep. Exactly. And it is the respecting of people with lived experience as experts. You know, there's different types of knowledge. And, yes, there's knowledge around reading articles, reading books, Going to conferences, and and that does not belittle that knowledge at all. There's also the knowledge of I've lived this. This is my daily life, and there's no way to replicate that knowledge in journals. And so this this EMBRACE work is really recognizing that and centering people who have lived experience and community members As part of the solution rather than just recipients of services.

Charles Schelle: 25:08

Revisiting the community initiatives that you're working on, tell us about the ribbon cutting at 55 North Paca Street you participated, uh, back in January for the Embrace Resource Center with, mayor Brandon Scott. One of the interesting things that mayor Scott mentioned was how this resource center is an example of doing programs the right way and not the quick way. Right? So by way of these connections are made with the people who need help. So how does the resource center do that?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 25:37

Yeah. So the EMBRACE Resource Center was founded about 3 years ago. And, really, it was we recognized that there was a Lot of folks who had a lot of needs on Eutaw Street. There have been a lot of investment around Lexington Market. The Hippodrome is there. We have you know, this is part of Bromo. This is part of a wonderful arts district, and that We needed to put equity at the center, meaning, you know, the Lexington Market is majority owned by Black store owners and women, And so this needs to be successful. Lexington Market is a jewel of Baltimore City where, you know, generations have gone there and have wonderful memories of the work There. You know, historically, the approach has been over policing, mass incarceration and causing a lot of harm. So that is not something that we are going to be part of. We we are not going to cause further harm. And so we had to do something with Community to say, okay. What needs to happen? So we had meetings every month. There was a Eutaw Street initiative where you had business owners, you had community members, you had folks who were stakeholders in the community. You had city leaders And saying, okay. What do we need to do? And so from conversations and engaging with community folks, we said, okay. So We need to provide services. We need to partner with and really bring the voices of people with lived experience to the top and say, okay. What is it that needs to happen? So the resource center was born, and, our first 2 people were contracted were credible messengers, returning citizens Who had been incarcerated, they got out, and they had to go through the struggles of how do you get your birth certificate, how do you get your state ID, How do you get a job when your resume has a 30 year gap? How do you get a job when you have an eighth grade education? And so, we contracted with them, paid, and said, okay. What do you think needs to happen? And so they started talking with people in the community more, And we really started to build up. You know, we need these services. Here are the things that are really barriers. And so how do we remove those barriers? We brought in interns. We started hiring social workers so that they could be there. For some of the social work stuff that has to be done, like, you have to have a social worker to in supervise interns. And, it built and it grew. There was a lot of voice around. Yes. There are services, but we need more messaging from people Who perhaps used to be on the corners and used to sell drugs. And so we contracted with now 10 returning citizens who, you know, used To be involved in drug sales before they were incarcerated. Now they're out, and they're able to have those conversations and say, This isn't what we want for this community. And, again, these are community groups that, you know, have Frequented Eutaw Street, grew up going to Lexington Market. Some of them may have sold on some of those corners to really say, this is what we want for this Community. And here are services to make sure that you're getting the support. Because you can't go to somebody on the corner and say you need to stop selling drugs. Okay. Well, how how are they gonna feed their families? We gotta address that. Right? And so this has grown. So it went from 2 credible messengers to now we are at 14 and we have 2 interns, and we have a full time social worker. And we'll Continue to grow and make sure that we're continuing to do these services. So, 10 days ago, we moved into 55 North Paca. This was done because we needed a location that was ground level for accessibility purposes that People could see in, and we could see out because a lot of our folks are walk ins who, you know, see us and say, oh, actually, I do want some Supports. And that it was close to Lexington Market. So we have the Peace Team, which is our partner where they have 10 credible messengers On Eutaw Street doing the outreach. And they can go to guys and say, hey. If you're ready to get off the corner, we can take you somewhere, and they can just walk 1 block up and say, here are 2 peer recovery specialists that can work with you around whatever services that you are that you need. So I think, you know, it's it's a lot easier if you just say, oh, we're gonna open up an office, and we're gonna hire 3 Social workers, and they're gonna do case management. But that's not that's that hasn't been the most effective way. What has been effective and explains the 30 percent decrease in by in homicides in Baltimore City was the partnering with credible messengers And and really saying who is trusted? Who knows how to do this work the best? So I think that that's what Mayor Scott was really referring to Is it's not the quick way but it is the effective way. And they've now labeled us as part of the violence Prevention ecosystem for the city.

Dana Rampolla: 30:47

What kind of success have your partners and the UMB police had with this outreach?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 30:52

So, really that's how I got involved was that I was working with Chief Leone, and he asked me to do some Training for his police officers around trauma informed care. And as I did that, he said, oh, you know, there's this initiative. We'd love for you to be a part of it. And as I got involved you could hear just like the tale of 2 cities of Baltimore City. There was the narrative, The 2 narratives of this initiative. There were people who really were going back to the days of calling the police, have everybody arrested, you know, As if that works. There's no evidence that that's worked. It's never worked. It's not gonna work. Right? It just causes further harm. But then there was other people who were saying, well, wait a minute. Maybe we need to do something differently. And so UMBPD you know, they have the COAST Team, which is the Community Outreach and Support team. And they recognize, along with the chief, for decades, forever, There has been over policing and underserving, and they wanna do something different. So COAST was already building on Eutaw Street. They were already doing a homeless outreach on MLK, and they really wanted to make that go deeper. So they originally had started with interns with the School of Social Work where they were doing some of the homeless outreach. And then when I got involved, we did some transitions, and the interns started working with us and with their credible messengers around the service focus and really being able to do some of that deeper case management. So COAST works very, very closely with us. You know, the interns still go out every day with the coast officers to do the homeless outreach, that they can do Some of the case management piece. And COAST is, you know, on Eutaw Street with us. They Know all of the Peace Team members. They know all of our peer recovery specialists. Whenever we do in interviews For interns, they are part of the team. And so this is really a partnership that is very unusual when you think of a partnership between credible messengers, police officers, and social workers. It's not it's not really done other places.

Dana Rampolla: 33:03

How many employees do you actually have, and what are their roles?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 33:06

Right now, we have 6 staff. We're hiring another 3 staff. Credible messengers. We have about 30 credible messengers that we work with daily. They're on the streets as we speak. And then we have about 15 grassroots and nonprofits that we work with daily but we've certainly interacted with about 60 grassroots and nonprofits, we've had contact with every school at the university because there are community engaged faculty at every school. We've had contact with at least 3 people at every school and we're part of lots of different meetings We're, you know, we're meeting with folks to try to learn about what they're doing. We coordinate with the Violence Prevention Center. We coordinate with the Community Engagement Center the Office of Community Engagement all of the finance and administration. So lots and lots and lots of people, but, I mean, that's what EMBRACE is about is really pulling people together to collaborate, to, you know, reenvision what does the village look like and bringing people to the village who typically don't share a space. So lots and lots of people.

Dana Rampolla: 34:18

is there anything on the horizon where the community can learn about how to be involved or what we can do to be involved?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 34:24

So in April, we'll be having a big meeting for all community engaged faculty and staff at the university Where we're gonna talk about a toolkit pretty much that we're creating so that people can know how do you get that IRB training to your community partners. How can you help your community partners get set up as vendors subawardees, all of that? We'll have a toolkit. We'll have templates. We'll have sort of a decision pathway for you. So keep an eye out, and we'll be doing that in April.

Dana Rampolla: 34:54

So we don't wanna give away too much about Embrace as you'll be hearing a lot more about it in the upcoming months. But in the meantime, if someone wants to give to Embrace and support all of these great causes, you can visit u maryland dot edu backslash philanthropy where you will find links on ways to give, or you can call 4 1 0 7 0 6 8 4 9 5. Now, Kyla, if someone wants to connect with you to learn more about the program or get involved, how would they do that?

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 35:22

Reach directly out to me. My email address is kliggettcreel@umaryland.edu Love to hear from you, and there's lots of different ways to be engaged. And, again, our office is all about civic action, addressing real world problems and removing barriers and accessing resources. So give us a call.

Dana Rampolla: 35:43

Terrific. Well, thanks so much, Kyla, and we'll put that email address in the show notes as well. Our show notes are gonna be jam packed for this episode. We hope our listeners take a peek and just learn about all the great things you're doing and figure out how to connect.

Kyla Liggett-Creel: 35:57

Awesome. Thank you all so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Jena Frick: 36:05

The UMB Pulse with Charles Schelle and Dana Rampolla is a UMB office of communications and public affairs production. Edited by Charles Schelle, marketing by Dana Rampolla. Of