BALTIMORE — A man in East Baltimore has committed his life to giving young people a shot at a better life.
Munir Bahar is working to build the William Adams Entrepreneurial Institute and he’s calling on the people of Baltimore to help him do it.
Bahar started with the COR Health Institute, a state of the art facility he built out of abandoned townhomes.
He’s blunt about the issues that lead to the decrepit buildings and unacceptable crime rates we see in the city.
He highlighted the issue in a series of videos he released of him walking around some of the hardest hit and most neglected areas.
“The median income in my neighborhood is only $33,000 with an average household size of 3,” he said.
In videos you’d expect during campaign season, Munir Bahar is walking through his neighborhoods with the neighborhood kids he’s taken in and built up.
The thing is he’s not running for any office and doesn’t plan to— he just wants to show the root of the problems people complain about and get people to do something about it with him.
“Within a 1 mile radius, we have over twenty liquor stores and only one supermarket,” Bahar said. “46% of all high school students miss 20 days or more each school year.”
He’s taking it on himself to fix the problems by guiding the kids everyday.
Paying them to participate in community clean ups, giving them a place to go when they are in trouble.
“Our message is that this community and communities like this across Baltimore and across America need an economic revival,” Bahar said. “There has to be an economic strategy and that strategy can’t just be waiting around for jobs. That’s why we’re building an entrepreneurial center for that center to be an incubator for entrepreneurial thoughts. For more creative revenue generating ideas that can be community based.”
Once they are trained they will create a network called Young Brothers Executive group.
“It’s a youth business association. You put 15-20 kids in a room who are all in the entrepreneurial process that’s a powerful network for those young folks right there.”
They have $260,000 left to raise.
They’ve raised $120,000 already and hope to have the money raised by the end of May and if that happens Munir believes they can complete the project by the end of the summer.
If you want to be a part of the solution click here.
