Visit Baltimore Education & Training Foundation Announces Grant Winners

(Baltimore, MD – January 30, 2020) – Visit Baltimore, the official destination sales and marketing organization for Baltimore, today announced recipients of the Visit Baltimore Education & Training Foundation diversity and inclusion grant. The new grant program, which launched in late 2019, was created to assist organizations with capacity building and marketing and communications support for events, festivals, and interpretive tours, among other activities. Recipients of the 2020 grant include Poe Baltimore, Inc., Baltimore Architecture Foundation, Baltimore Sister Cities and Chinatown Collective.

Grants were awarded to recipients to support the following promotions:

• Poe Baltimore, Inc. – Grant funds will be used to help enhance multicultural components for the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards. These components include multi-language signage and promotions, an awards program encompassing multicultural artistic interpretations and marketing design and advertising to emphasize international components of the festival.
• Baltimore Architecture Foundation – Grant funds will be used to build upon the success of Doors Open Baltimore, a festival that invites visitors to explore Baltimore’s neighborhoods, explore the city’s most stunning spaces and make meaningful connections. With these funds, the organization will direct more resources to programming and marketing that showcases underrepresented neighborhoods, communities and history.
• Baltimore Sister Cities – Grant funds will be used to produce and promote a public event for the nonprofit in June 2020 entitled “A Golden Night with Zahi Hawass: Promoting Egypt from Pharaohs to the Present”. Baltimore Sister Cities, Inc. is a volunteer organization whose mission is to promote mutual economic development as well as educational and cultural exchanges between Baltimore City and its international Sister Cities. Baltimore has eight sister cities including Alexandria and Luxor, Egypt; Gbarnga, Liberia; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Kawasaki, Japan; Xiamen, China; Changwon, South Korea; and Piraeus, Greece.
• Chinatown Collective – Grant funds will be used to grow the organization’s annual Charm City Night Market as part of the collective’s efforts to amplify the experiences of Baltimore-based Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) artists, entrepreneurs and creatives. Funds will be used to reach new audiences within Baltimore City and the surrounding counties by enhancing social media content to target these larger audiences.

“We’re happy to award these grant funds to four organizations who are doing great work in promoting diversity and inclusion in the City of Baltimore,” said Al Hutchinson, President & CEO of Visit Baltimore. “This grant program is part of our organizational goal to amplify and celebrate the culture creators of Baltimore—especially those with a focus on diversity and inclusion—because we know that high-quality events, meetings and conferences encourage leisure and business travelers to discover our city. We look forward to accepting new applicants for the 2020 program this summer.”

For organizations interested in applying for the Visit Baltimore Education & Training Foundation’s diversity & inclusion grant, applications will reopen in June 2020. Please visit baltimore.org/foundation to learn more about application requirements and deadlines.

About Visit Baltimore

Visit Baltimore is the official sales and marketing arm for the City of Baltimore. The 501(c)(6) organization generates economic benefits for stakeholders through the attraction of convention, group and leisure visitors. In 2018, spending by travelers totaled $5.9 billion in direct spending throughout the city, supporting 86,414 jobs and generating $734 million in state and city tax revenues. For more information, please visit Baltimore.org.

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Jessie Walker
Public Relations Manager
[email protected]
410-659-7032