A call for community support from the team at PSB

Help us help an organization that needs it most

Photo c/o Asylee Women Enterprise

When we started Project Salt Box two months ago — digging into government contracts, tracking spending, trying to understand how policy decisions actually impact immigrants in Maryland — we didn’t expect so many of you to show up wanting to help. It’s been overwhelming in the best way. Thank you.

Today we ask you for a different kind of support.

We spend our days (and nights) looking at budgets and contracts, following the money, documenting how decisions made in government offices trickle down to real people’s lives. In the course of that research, we have come across so many organizations that have been doing incredible feats of care, empathy, and love.

Asylee Women Enterprise in Baltimore is one of those places.

Today, we read a letter from AWE executive director, Laura Brown, that calls us to a different kind of action.

For ten years, AWE has been operating out of a building at St. Anthony’s Parish. It’s where people arrive after fleeing everything — violence, persecution, impossible situations — and start over. A person from Iraq planted a fig tree behind the building because it reminded him of home. Another client, who lost his leg to violence, spent his weekends there pulling up rotted carpet and laying tile. Nobody asked him to. He did it because the place became his.

This is the work that matters. When someone shows up in Baltimore at the lowest point of their life, AWE is there. They help people find their footing, get a right start in a new country, and build something when they thought they’d lost everything.

And this summer, they’re losing their building.

The Catholic Diocese is selling the property. AWE tried to buy it, offered higher rent, explained what it means to their clients. The decision still stands.

As Laura writes: “This building has been home to many who were forced to leave their homes behind.” Now they’re being forced to leave again.

Thankfully, AWE isn’t giving up — they’re going to keep serving their clients no matter what. But finding a new space, managing a move, keeping programs running while everyone’s already dealing with so much uncertainty? They need help.

Many of you have pledged subscriptions to Project Salt Box. For that, we are thankful. But we ask you this: if you were thinking about supporting our work at Project Salt Box, we’re asking you to give to AWE instead right now. They need it more than we do.

You can donate here. And if you want, tell them Project Salt Box sent you.

Baltimore needs organizations like this. The people arriving here at their most vulnerable need organizations like this. This is what getting it right looks like.

—The Project Salt Box Team