2019 CIIP Program Book CIIP Booklet 2019 | Page 33

Community Partner: Made in Baltimore
Intern: Jacob Took
Site Supervisor: Andy Cook
What is Made in Baltimore?
Made In Baltimore aims to spur re-investment in Baltimore City by growing the market
for locally-produced goods. We do this by supporting local makers and manufacturers
through our local-brand certification program, promotion and marketing events, and
business development services.
I’m an aspiring journalist at a school with no journalism program (not to mention an overall
dearth of resources for students in the humanities). Heading into this summer, my last summer
before graduating, I faced a choice — should I be aiming for a Newsroom Internship, probably
in D.C. or who knows where? Or should I seek out something different, something that wouldn’t
just give me skills or experience but could offer me a new perspective, let me try my hand at
something different and maybe open up some previously undiscovered doors?
What did I expect when I applied to CIIP? I’m not sure. Some people described the program as
almost magically transformative. Can I pin down one moment this summer when suddenly ev-
erything changed? Maybe I was already too disenchanted with Hopkins and too frustrated by
corruption and blatant inequities in Baltimore to have a seminal moment. Somewhere along the
way, though, I realized that all the people I’ve met and the entirely new ways I’ve been meeting
them (i.e. not primarily as a Hopkins student) have entirely reframed my worldview.
I set a little trap in the first paragraph — the same trap I set for myself last year. Life isn’t that bi-
nary. Who’s to say that working in a newsroom wouldn’t have had the same magnitude of impact
on me? But in the Months of Deliberation (pretty much what I’ve named my junior year), that
choice felt like a referendum on how I want to do this whole journalism thing — from the top-
down, starting with a metropolitan in-crowd, or from the bottom-up, building from real people
living their real lives.
I connected with Baltimore in an entirely new way this summer because I wasn’t just going to
festivals and trying out cafes. Through my work at Made in Baltimore, I met a range of uniquely
passionate individuals working to do some real good in the city. From them, I learned to diversify
my understanding of the Baltimore experience. Baltimore’s challenges are not as black and white
as they seem from Homewood campus. In life, I want to continue learning from others to build a
more well-rounded understanding of the world.
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• Support a small team managing
~180 members, focused on con-
necting with ~40 retailers
• Lead a retailer spotlight, among
other projects, to engage readers
with success stories from members
• Assist with grant applications, pro-
gram development and other parts
of nonprofit management