Baltimore Faith Leaders Want New City Officials To Know They're Around To Lend Helping Hand, Keep Watchful Eye
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Baltimore's faith community wants newly elected City officials to know that they're here to offer a helping hand, as well as a watchful eye.
Telly Smith is part of the Green Ambassador Program.
"I'm doing the same thing I do every week," Smith said. "To help out the community, to clean up the streets of Baltimore."
The program provides job training sponsored by Wheelabrator Baltimore and a coalition of local churches.
"This is a covenant with government," Rev. Al Hathaway, of Union Baptist Church, said.
Rev. Hathaway is the leader of Act Now Baltimore which has 14 faith-based hubs in each one of the cities designated jurisdictions.
The organization has been around for two years. Now, it wants to get many of the newly elected officials inside Baltimore City Hall on board.
"We are here to collaborate. If necessary, we are here to critique, and when there are instances in which interests are not being met on behalf of people, we will confront," Rev. Hathaway said.
Clergy members are prepared to tackle crime and the inequities in vaccine distribution. They said they want to make sure that the people in office are doing what they promise.
"Most important is making these connections, and you can't always make them inside a building," Alex Smith, Supervisor of the Green Ambassador Program, said.
