Above a pizza shop in Belair-Edison lies The Agoge Project — a cross between a martial arts gym and a learning center.

Kids go from learning Spanish one hour to punching each other in the face the next.

The Agoge Project is one of a few nonprofit schools, including Guardian Baltimore and Umar Boxing, that provide free or low-cost martial arts training and personal development to students.

“Programs like ours, I think, oftentimes get looked at as just a martial arts program when really it’s just so so much deeper than that,” said Michael John Jr., founder and executive director of The Agoge Project.

The school has classes in boxing, jiu-jitsu, wrestling and strength training, alongside tutoring, mentoring, workforce development, Spanish and nutrition classes. They also have a therapist, and a counselor present two hours a week, he said.

John, who is also a special education teacher, started the program as a way to incentivize his students to come to school. Then, around 2016, he couldn’t find a space for the program, so he gutted out his basement and ran it there until 2022, when it moved to its current space.

The free program currently has about 50 active members ages 10 and up and is open five days a week. The youths in the program have to attend three out of the five sessions each week and are required to have 90% or better attendance in school, or be making legitimate progress towards that, he said.

If it wasn’t for The Agoge Project and its coaches, Josiah Williamson probably wouldn’t be where he is today, he said.

The 15-year-old used to wrestle for Middle River Wrestling, where John said The Agoge Project sends some of its students to wrestle.

The coach at Middle River Wrestling invited Josiah to join the team at Archbishop Curley High School, and he did. So far in his high school career, he’s undefeated.

The Agoge Project connected Josiah with a family that helps pay for his schooling. It also funds his equipment and travel, he said.

In the future, Josiah wants to become a pediatrician, a goal The Agoge Project is also helping him achieve. It paired him with a doctor, whom he shadowed and who is helping him practice for the SAT.

‘Natural, organic mentorship’

In Remington, Guardian Baltimore, provides free Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes to youths ages 6 to 17.

The school’s founder, Carlos Raba, shook every parent’s and student’s hand as they entered one recent day.

Guardian Baltimore has youth classes six days a week and about 45 youth students currently training.

The school was founded by Raba and Ben Kovacs in 2020. They used their personal money to start it, Raba said. It is affiliated with Guardian Jiu-Jitsu, which provides free jiu-jitsu classes to youths around the United States and the world.

“Progress is all we’re looking for,” head instructor Todd “Locura” Levin said to students during a class.

Raba is also the co-owner and chef of Clavel, a restaurant up the street from the school. In addition to free jiu-jitsu training, every youth student that comes to the school gets a free token that can be exchanged for a burrito at Clavel, he said. Each also gets a free jiu-jitsu uniform.

The school also has jiu-jitsu, yoga and Pilates classes for adults that help subsidize the youth program.

Vinton Blake, 15, who has trained at Guardian Baltimore for over four years, said the teachers care more about the kids than they care about teaching as a job. “They don’t care about the money, because it’s like a passion for them,” he said.

One summer before he joined the school, he stayed in the house to the point where he struggled to walk. Now, he does cartwheels during class.

Some days, he comes in early and helps teach the younger kids before taking his class, then the adult class.

“That’s the whole goal of Guardian here, you know what I’m saying. To create a natural, organic mentorship between kids and adults,” Raba said.

Love them with ‘no strings attached’

Umar Boxing in Druid Heights teaches students to box but also helps with their education. To do one, it has to do the other, which is reflected in its motto: “No hooks before books.”

“People don’t think of boxing as thinking,” said the school’s founder and executive director, Marvin McDowell. “But you need to think to box.”

A typical afternoon for a student at Umar starts with about an hour of tutoring and homework help from educators, then boxing training, he said. It also has GED, yoga and meditation classes and a mentoring program.

Umar, which is named after the Arabic word for “life,” is open four days a week. There are currently over 30 youths from kindergarten to 12th grade in the program. To cover expenses, every student has to pay $100 a year, but there are sponsors for some kids, he said.

McDowell, who has run the program since 1996, said the instructors at Umar serve as “surrogate parents” for some kids. He wants to let children know that someone cares about them and loves them with “no strings attached,” he said.

The Agoge Project, Guardian Baltimore and Umar Boxing are not the only programs of their kind in the city. Some others include the Mr. Mack Lewis Foundation, Corner Team, Beat the Streets Baltimore and classes run by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks.

“The last thing you want is for kids to not have anything to do,” said Raba, of Guardian Baltimore. “They have too much energy. Energy can translate to depression, can translate to anxiety, can translate to getting into trouble in the streets.”