Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 25

families in need, such as city residents living
in poverty, provide three days’ worth for six
people. Flight 1 partners with community
agencies such as the Baltimore City Health
Department and International Rescue
Committee to identify families in need and
then sets up distribution centers at those
locations. On Flight 1’s first day of operation,
Smith and his team served 400 people.
Smith has a five-year plan to expand his
operation not only throughout Baltimore but
the world. He knows he can help people in
his own back yard, and he knows that other
people need help, too.
“I learned a lot by becoming a forester,”
he says. But the job is so much more than
planting trees. I want kids to see all the
opportunity out there. I want to end my life
doing this work.”

N A ME : Bryant Smith
I N N O VAT I O N : Providing healthy meals to needy

families with an emphasis on promoting nutrition
education

A G E: 40
H O ME: Hampden
O CCU PAT I O N : Forester and pilot
H O BBI ES : Keeping up with his wife and four

children

FU N FA CT: Remembers first tree he ever
planted, an Eastern redbud, in the Franklin Square
neighborhood; years later watched as it got swept
away in a building demolition.
T W I T T ER H A N D L E: @flight1carriers

B A LTI M OR E SOC I A L I N N O VAT I O N JO U R N A L