DETROIT — For many University students, smashing concrete or digging trenches may not be the ideal way to spend a weekend, but volunteers of the Detroit Partnership gladly spent Saturday participating in such philanthropic efforts.
This weekend, about 1,500 students from the University traveled to Detroit to participate in events around the city organized by DP, a student organization that provides volunteer and educational opportunities in Detroit to University students. Working with community-based groups, students engaged in activities ranging from demolishing houses to planting community gardens in an effort to support some of Detroit’s most underprivileged neighborhoods.
LSA senior Cassie Basler, executive director of the Detroit Partnership, explained that the group arranged events with 35 organizations around the city. Basler said one of the partnership’s strengths is the diverse and unique opportunities it provides to its volunteers.
“Not many people have the opportunity to knock down a garage with a sledgehammer,” Basler said.
According to Basler, students went to several sites around the city to paint and clean schools, work in community gardens, clean abandoned properties, demolish dilapidated structures and perform a host of other activities. In almost every case, community volunteers, joined the students, eager to see their own neighborhoods benefit from the program.
In Brightmoor, a distressed Detroit subdivision, volunteers worked with the neighborhood group Neighbors Building Brightmoor to prepare community gardens for planting, cleared debris and cleaned up abandoned properties awaiting demolition.
Riet Schumack, program coordinator for Neighbors Building Brightmoor, said to prevent abandoned homes from being used as drug houses, residents often employ a crude technique called “dropping the porch.” The process — an economical solution for a neighborhood where a house can be purchased for $500, as compared to the $10,000 it costs to demolish it — involved tearing the roof off a home’s porch and letting it fall in front of the door to prevent entry.
“(For) people that come back to the neighborhood, it’s very mixed feelings,” Schumack said. “They’re hurt by the fact that so many houses are gone, but they’re also happy to see that something is happening.”
Schumack said the majority of the houses in the neighborhood were built in the 1930s to accommodate the influx of workers that came to Detroit to work in the then booming automobile industry, but the homes were never intended to be permanent structures. Many of the houses, even the inhabited ones, are in poor shape due to years of neglect or abandonment, but according to Schumack, the goal of the project is to make the neighborhood safer and nicer for the remaining residents.
“The alternative is unacceptable to me under any circumstances,” he said. “You’ll have one or two houses on a street that are still inhabited, surrounded by burned out, trash-filled, dangerous structures and drug houses and prostitutes. Your children have to walk by that every day on their way to school … That’s the alternative.”
In the same neighborhood, Hannah Smotrich, an associate professor at the School of Art & Design, worked with University students to strip the outside of an abandoned house and replace the siding with large painted boards with a map of rehabilitation, demolition and gardening projects in the area. The work is part of a semester-long project with Neighbors Building Brightmoor.
“We came up with a concept of what could be on the sides, what could be useful to the community,” Smotrich said. “They would really like almost a ‘visitor center’ in a way … it would be fun to have an orientation for people who don’t live here.”
At another site in Detroit, students worked to help demolish a series of houses to make way for a community garden. Business Senior Chris Sefcheck, who volunteered with Phi Chi Theta, a co-ed business and economics professional fraternity, said he expanded his commitment through the Detroit Partnership to work on a weekly basis tutoring elementary school students in Detroit.
“It’s very rewarding, it’s great to work one on one with the kids,” Sefcheck said.
At the end of the day, all of the participants gathered in Stoepel Park near Detroit’s west-side to hear from community leaders and activists about continuing projects and their appreciation for the volunteers’ time in Detroit.
Speakers included Detroit City Council members Saunteel Jenkins and James Tate, Albert Rush, pastor at West Outer Drive United Methodist Church, spoken-word artist Walter Lacy, longtime community activist Ron Scott and former Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr.
“There’s so many positive things going on in Detroit,” Jenkins told the crowd. “Detroit is a delicate city. Just like we’re full of challenges, we’re even more full of opportunity.”
After attending his first DP Day last year, Carr said the number of students volunteering and the variety of projects throughout the city through the partnership has continued to impress him. He added that his message to students was to keep contributing to their communities in any way possible.
“You have to come here to really see what it is all about,” Carr said. “My message is that you can’t do everything, but you can do something. We’re not going to rebuild the city of Detroit in one day, or one year, or one decade, (but) I want to emphasize that what they’re doing is something and it’s important.”