Explore how to get involved and make a difference within your neighborhood.
To engage in these ways, it is important to first contact your community association, who manages these volunteer opportunities for your neighborhood.
- Attend community association meetings
- Community Awareness/ Neighborliness
- Pass out the community newsletter to your block
- Coordinate a block party
- Sanitation
- Call 311 (or use their phone app or their online tool)
- Clean up the closest green space
- Clean up the alley behind your house
- Participate in neighborhood cleanups
- Participate in Rat Rub Out
- Keep your yard clean, greens trimmed low, and trash-free
- Leadership
- Be a block liaison for the community association
- Join the board of the community association
- Safety
- Register for an anonymous ID number, called a “Crime Watch Number” for 911 calls for which you are not a victim
- Join your neighbors for walks, sometimes called Citizens On Patrol
- Attend the Police Community Council meetings for your police district
- Call 911 and ask for a Supervisor to contact you if the 911 service you experienced was not satisfactory
- Visit the firemen who serve your neighborhood
- Participate in the City’s Operation Crime Watch
- Civic Engagement
- Register your neighbors to vote
- Vote in every election in Baltimore (the Tuesday after the first Monday in November)
- Share your opinion during community forums, and comment on public plans around transportation, housing, the environment, and many other issues.
- Document housing and zoning violations and share with your community association and your neighborhood’s inspector
- Attend Public Government Meetings on behalf of your neighborhood (view the calendar here)
- Attend a Board of Estimates Meeting, where the City’s fiscal policy is formulated and executed
- Housing
- Foreclosure assistance including connections to HUD housing counselors and State and City resources here
- Greening
- Build flower pots for the fronts of all the houses on your block
- Plant flowers with your neighbors
- Plant a tree in front of your house
- Disaster Response
- Become CPR and First Aid certified
- Be a CERT member (learn more about Community Emergency Response Teams here)
