Mission
About FLSU
Helping today. Helping tomorrow.
First Line Strategies Unlimited, Inc. is a Baltimore nonprofit delivering supportive services through community outreach.
Our mission
Opportunity grows when barriers come down.
FLSU is dedicated to empowering individuals and communities affected by cycles of violence, addiction, and incarceration. Its mission is to remove barriers to recovery and connect people with tools, resources, and support to rebuild and thrive.
Through leadership development, life-skills support, digital literacy, and community partnerships, the organization works to help people build a vision of success.
Our focus →Vision
Elevating youth, adults, and senior citizens to believe and achieve a vision of success.
Purpose
Support people through positive activities, self-development, life skills, and lifelong learning partnerships.
Why we serve
Core Values and Commitment
The core values and commitment to the population in which the First Line Strategies Unlimited, Inc. (Youth and Adult Development & Leadership Program) is the core mission of why we serve, because without structural support or intervention, these individuals face a wide range of obstacles making it virtually impossible for them to pursue legitimate means of survival.
Economic obstacles are complicated by the profound physical and mental health problems that often haunt returning citizens, to the extent that mental health problems have manifested prior to incarceration, they more often than not remain untreated in prison. Eighty percent of the state prison population reports a history of drug or alcohol use. These individuals often face serious, sometimes life-threatening, health problems.
Mental disorders are also prevalent among the inmate population. Rates of mental illness are, by some estimates, as high as four times the rate in the general population. Providing more accessible treatment for mental and physical illnesses could help stabilize these conditions and enable individuals to maintain housing and employment.
Many of the returning citizens we see leaving prison are released with little preparation for employment and little or no treatment for continuing substance abuse problems, many young men and women (known as returning citizens) return to their communities only to find new and unexpected hurdles in their path to reintegration. Instead, little help is available.