Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 24
Taking
Flight
“Plant a tree, save a life” is more than just a slogan to an enterprising business owner.
By Lisa Simeone
Bryant Smith has seen disaster from on
high and down low. Growing up in a housing
project in East Baltimore, surrounded
by what he calls “a lot of nasty things” –
poverty, crime, drugs, prison – he never
imagined that he would one day be a
licensed pilot. It’s not that he started out
with that as a dream. As a child, he didn’t
even know what to dream. Until he became
involved in an after-school program called
The Door.
into community gardens. He also noticed an
occasional follow-on effect: less crime.
“I was 13 years old,” he recalls, “and I
was living in what I would call a fish tank. No
exposure to the outside world, no bridge.
Then I started seeing these brown folks
coming in and talking like staff, like they
were in charge. I had never seen that before.
I thought only white people were in charge.”
He also started thinking about disasters
on a different level.
Smith blossomed. “I clung to them,” he
says. “I saw them as my way out.”
Four years later, when the Parks & People
Foundation came knocking, looking for a
forester trainee, The Door recommended
Smith. He learned how to plant trees, how
to prune them, how to transform vacant lots
pg. 2 3
From there Smith got a job with the U.S.
Forestry Service, which sent him to college
and also to sites around the country, to do
ecological research projects and study the
effects of natural disasters. One component
of his education was aviation. Looking
down on forest fires from high above, Smith
realized he could learn to become a pilot.
“What about these disasters that occur
every day?” he asked himself. “Hunger,
poverty, lead poisoning. How do I provide
resources to people in need?”
Thus was born Flight 1 Carriers. Smith
and his team put together Disaster Relief
Packets and Humanitarian Aid Packets, all of
which contain potable water, healthy food
(not processed or loaded with sodium), and
hygiene products. The DRPs, for people
who’ve been hit by Hurricane Matthew,
for example, contain three days’ worth of
these necessities per person; the HAPs, for