The Baltimore Ravens and T. Rowe Price have selected their 2024 Community Quarterback Award recipients. Funded by the NFL Foundation, the Ravens Foundation, Inc. and T. Rowe Price, the award honors individuals who exhibit leadership, dedication and commitment to bettering their local communities.
The honorees will be recognized at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday, Dec. 1, when the Ravens host the Philadelphia Eagles. Each Community Quarterback winner will receive complimentary tickets to the game, a personalized Ravens jersey and a $2,500 grant to help aid their respective nonprofit organizations.
2024 Community Quarterback Winners:
Joan Lenczycki – Casey Cares Foundation
For over 25 years, the Casey Cares Foundation has provided moments and memories to more than 1,600 families with critically ill children. Throughout the year, Casey Cares organizes family-centric activities and programs such as tickets to sporting events, concerts and museums, pajama donations to hospitals, group parties and birthday surprises. Since she first began volunteering in 2016, Lenczycki has served more than 5,500 hours. She is the volunteer manager of the Kami's Jami's program, which sends fresh, clean pajamas to hospitals around the nation for critically ill children to wear once admitted. Each pajama set must be carefully examined and tightly rolled to ensure safe transport to local hospitals or homebound kids. At the conclusion of this year, Lenczycki will have rolled over 30,000 new pajamas.
Cameron Livesay – LifeBridge Health Dove House, Carroll Community College Foundation
At 13 years old, Cameron Livesay combines his passions of serving the community and baking. Through his baking business, Soul Man Sweets, Livesay has donated time and a portion of his sales to LifeBridge Health Dove House, the Carroll Community College Foundation and local nursing homes. Additionally, through his giving project, Sweets for the Soul, Livesay has donated to the Carroll Arts Center, Grassroots Crisis Intervention, B+ Foundation, St. Jude, Conectando US and local sports teams. He was the first kid chef to participate in the Taste of Carroll, an event that raised over $260,000 for palliative care at the LifeBridge Health Dove House. Livesay has also adopted a nursing home and donated baked goods and gifts for holiday events, as well as provided birthday cakes for over 100 families in need.
Joshua Oh – Kid Changemakers
Alongside his brother Caleb, Joshua Oh started Kid Changemakers while in elementary school. The nonprofit serves food insecure, foster and homeless children. Kid Changemakers created a free and anonymous meal swipe program at Bowie State University to support college students experiencing food insecurity. The program even allows for students to donate their unused swipes. Kid Changemakers raised $10,000 in seed money to jumpstart the program. They also raised over $75,000 in grant funding for the Blue Ribbon Project. The Blue Ribbon Project serves the needs of foster children and their families countrywide, providing them with free clothing, footwear, books, diapers, toys and wipes. Additionally, the Blue Ribbon Project established a College Support Fund to help teens aging out of the foster system gain access to critical items, including books and other school supplies. The organization has also helped fund and co-sponsor bi-weekly pop-up pantries. The pop-up pantries have hosted hundreds of young volunteers and helped provide 100,000 diapers, 50,000 feminine hygiene products and 500,000 pounds of food to those in need. Most recently, Kid Changemakers decided to address diaper poverty on a systemic level by lobbying the state senate to remove the diaper tax in Maryland. After advocating the importance of the issue, Oh and his brother testified in support of Bill SB-316. The bill was passed and now saves families over 12$ million collectively each year.
Shari Scher – Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership
In 2011, Shari Scher founded the Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership (COIPP), a nonprofit established to empower families to overcome the challenges of incarceration. Through comprehensive, trauma-informed programming, COIPP aims to foster resilience and reduce stigma, while also connecting families to broader resources and essential items, including hygiene products and winter coats. COIPP's services are free, and transportation to events and programs is provided without charge. The organization's focus on emotional healing, community rebuilding and economic stability aims to create brighter futures for children and families facing incarceration-related hardships.
Kim Walker – Baltimore Hunger Project
The Baltimore Hunger Project is dedicated to eliminating the growing problem of weekend childhood hunger by providing weekend food packages to children who identify as food insecure. Kim Walker started volunteering for the Baltimore Hunger Project in 2016 and has been instrumental in the organization's work of donating weekend meals to nearly 2,300 students across 57 schools. Walker has served as volunteer warehouse manager, chief food purchaser, grant writer and office manager during her time with the Baltimore Hunger Project. Since she began volunteering, the organization has grown its impact by adding new components to its services, including providing birthday kits to all participating children and snack packs for school administrators and counselors,. On a monthly basis the Baltimore Hunger Project also donates clothing, school and cleaning supplies, as well as feminine hygiene products, to those in need. More recently, the organization developed the Empowering Minds program, which challenges a cohort of 10th and 11th graders to study the concept of food insecurity and strategize solutions for systemic change.
