If you distill everything Thread does into two words, it’s this: build relationships.
Isolation has deepened over the past few decades, but in Baltimore, Thread is weaving a new social fabric—connecting people across lines of race, class, religion, age, and experience to build a community where everyone can thrive.
It starts by identifying the lowest-performing ninth-graders at the lowest-performing Baltimore City Public Schools. And then? Thread makes a unique 10-year commitment to walk with each student through the transition to adulthood and self-efficacy. Since it never unenrolls a student (no matter what), Thread offers them a promise, not a program. Each student is matched with a small group of local volunteers—Gen Zers and retirees, college students and PhD candidates, working professionals and empty nesters, lifelong residents and transplants—who live, work, or go to school near one of Thread’s seven partner high schools. Volunteers build relationships with young people and each other. Together, they define goals, overcome barriers, and achieve success. These relationships are supported by an extensive network of programs and partnerships—a deeply woven extended web of care and support.
What starts as a small group of strangers becomes a “Thread Family.” When one person is sick, another steps in. When someone is overwhelmed, someone else offers to drive the carpool.
At first, the volunteer may offer something small: a ride to school or a reminder to study consistently and persistently. But over time, Thread has found that a beautiful reciprocal model begins to emerge.
In March 2020, a retired woman in her mid-seventies joined Thread as a volunteer. She was paired with a high school student she had never met in person, and then the COVID lockdown began. At first, the young person didn’t respond to her texts—none of them, for months. Then one day, the volunteer suffered her third heart attack. She texted the student to explain why she’d been silent for a while.
That moment changed their relationship.
The student responded immediately. The dynamic shifted, giving the student a chance to offer support, not just receive it.
From that day forward, the student began visiting the volunteer’s home regularly to check in on her and keep her company. She was able to log in to her virtual classes using the volunteer’s Wi-Fi and study, which helped her graduate high school on time. As the volunteer recovered, they became essential to each other’s well-being. They became family.
In this way, Thread is breaking down traditional power structurevs. Society tells young people that they’re to be helped—but rarely are they invited to be the helper. That’s where Thread comes in. As its students start building trust, they start showing up for their volunteers—helping host baby showers or sharing the burden of a loss.
The key to community is mutuality. No one wants to say, “I’m lonely.” But in Thread, people find an antidote even if they weren’t seeking one. Through time and consistency, volunteers often reflect that they came to Thread hoping to help someone but didn’t expect to be the ones who felt seen and supported. Thread’s students have shared that they didn’t realize how much they cared about their volunteers until moments arrived when they needed to step up.
Since its founding in 2004, Thread has worked with more than 1,300 young people and alumni and more than 3,500 volunteers and collaborators. Its students go on to graduate at ten times the rate of their peers. They enroll in college, start careers, raise families of their own, and stay involved in Thread. The model works because it isn’t a model—it’s relationships.
“We often hear the greatest gift we are giving our community is to build the extended family many of our volunteers and students didn’t know they needed,” said Sarah Hemminger, Thread’s Co-Founder & CEO.
As a data-driven organization founded by a neuroscientist, Thread eagerly anticipates the results of its Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) with LEO to evaluate outcomes such as school attendance, graduation rates, postsecondary attainment, enrollment and matriculation, household income, and incarceration rates over a ten-year period for its young people compared with students not enrolled in Thread.
By building social connections across backgrounds within Thread’s supportive community, the organization creates conditions for young people to achieve upward economic mobility and make their dreams real.
“Our community is growing, and because of that we are actively changing and bettering the future of Baltimore. By focusing on what assets we have collectively, we are able to maximize talents and gifts in relationships to bring out the best in each other.”
LEO is excited to gather data on Thread in hopes of codifying the informal social supports that help young people navigate the difficulties of growing up in poverty. Because community social supports can be found almost anywhere, LEO hopes to learn how this kind of local good can be harnessed for collective benefit. LEO looks forward to sharing if the natural resource of ‘having a shoulder to lean on’ might be what it takes for some to leave poverty behind for good.