Not many college students can say they've founded a basketball team for recovering addicts. Charlie Rubenstein, a UMBC Senior and American Studies major can. Rubenstein has always felt a connection to the city of Baltimore and hoped to apply team athletics to reduce the city's rampant homelessness. This idea became reality while he was enrolled in a UMBC course designed to equip students to initiate positive change in their communities. "When addressing Baltimore's problem of homelessness, I found basketball, a relatively inexpensive sport, would be a good place to start," the UMBC senior said of his goal.

Rubenstein got his idea for the league while watching E:6O on ESPN. The sports television news magazine ran a story on a homeless basketball league operating in California which improved participants' physical health and self-esteem while teaching the importance of discipline and teamwork. Rubenstein decided to create a similar team of approximately seventeen men in Baltimore. The team, a pilot program, was composed of men from the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore City.

Tom Bond, a Helping Up Program Director, described the men, "They are men of all races, creeds and social backgrounds. They share a common thread in that they struggle with a chronic and progressive disease - addiction." Bond himself is a recovering addict. He uses his struggles to help the men with their own and hopes to create a "big family" environment at the Mission.

More difficult than coming up with his idea for change, was making it a reality. Logistical scheduling and finding a place to play proved to be most difficult. Although Rubenstein worked on the beginning stages of his project with three others students: Alex Hyland, Jaree Colbert and Jennifer Kent, he worked on much of the last stages of the project on his own. "You have to realize that other people aren't going to be as passionate about it as you and that you're going to have to do a lot of stuff on your own. You need a lot of self encouragement," Rubenstein explained.

Rubenstein's self encouragement appears to have served him well. His basketball team is thriving and now is entirely run by the men who play in it. Not long after it was set up, men on the team stepped up as coaches and organizers. Bond has seen a change in the men who have participated in the team. He explained that the men at Helping Up have used the team to take their mind off immediate concerns, thrive in a competitive atmosphere, relieve pent-up energy and stress, and build teamwork and camaraderie. Most importantly, Bond added, "It allows the men to learn that they can have fun and experience genuine joy without using drugs or alcohol."

Now that Rubenstein's team no longer needs him, he spends time designing other programs which he hopes will benefit the emotional and physical health of homeless men in Baltimore. By 2010 Rubenstein hopes to have eight to twelve basketball teams similar to the one he has already developed.

Rubenstein is one of 24 students who completed the course Civic Imagination and Social Entrepreneurship during the Fall of 2008. The class was led by Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Assistant Director Delana Gregg and SGA Advisor David Hoffman and will be held again the Fall of 2009. Students enrolled in the course were taught how to recognize problems in their communities and then design and enact a strategy to solve or ameliorate the identified problem. Students were required to find resources to fund their projects, although the seed money for the projects was provided by a Kauffman Departmental grant. UMBC received $2 million in support from the Kauffman Foundation in 2007. Kauffman Departmental grants are provided to UMBC departments, programs, instructional staff and faculty who introduce and implement entrepreneurial and innovative curriculums.

Gregg and Hoffman created the course to help students become active in improving their communities and society. Gregg spoke of the course's goal, "We wanted students to learn how to exercise civic power so we had groups select a social problem or opportunity and launch a practical process to create change on campus or through the campus in the wider community." She continued explaining that civic engagement is a way of life which she hopes the course has taught; a way of life encompassing more than voting come election day or participating in community service.

Brian Frazee, a Junior Political Science major has used skills developed in the class in his work in the SGA and as a RA in Chesapeake and the Walker Avenue Apartments showing that the lessons taught by Gregg and Hoffman have moved beyond the classroom in more ways than one.

Hoffman gave his own advice to aspiring social entrepreneurs, "It can be tough to even believe that you can do something real and consequential, something that goes beyond wishful thinking. But the truth is that there is a growing community of successful social change agents on this campus, and many entry points for students willing to take a chance and act on their ideals." Hoffman and Gregg feel that this class is one of many entry points to make social change at UMBC, including: their class, the SGA, the Shriver center, service learning, research into social problems, community based learning, and SGA's annual Prove It competition.

In addition to Rubenstein's basketball league, the students in Imagination and Social Entrepreneurship worked on several other community projects including: a plan to increase the community involvement of UMBC's apartment residents, a centralized communication resource which would inform students with regards to UMBC campus events, an initiative to make green transportation options more visible to UMBC students, "UMBC Olympics," a two-day event during which UMBC cultural groups would work together to learn about one another, and "Project Black and Gold," in which student-designed images would be placed on banners around campus.