Serving Detroit

If you ever wander around Detroit on a bright and early Friday morning, you may run into a sea of people in red jackets, khaki pants, and Timberland boots performing exercises at Campus Martius. You may even be able to hear us from your office in the surrounding buildings. Or you may run into a group of happy young adults in red performing powerful community service. If that is so, then you just met an incredible group of individuals. You just met City Year Detroit. No, not City of Detroit. CITY YEAR DETROIT!!!

Hi everybody! My name is Gopi Patel and I am an AmeriCorps member with City Year Detroit (CYD). This is my first year serving at my program and I love it! Before I get into the service we have provided for Detroit this year, let me tell you a little bit about our wonderful program. City Year is a non-profit organization comprised of 17-24 year olds that commit 10 months and 1,700 hours of service to Detroit Public Schools. Our members tutor and mentor students from kindergarten to 12^th grade, as well as hold after-school programs for students. We also perform physical service on Fridays around the city of Detroit. At the moment, we have 19 sites throughout the United States and one overseas in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Currently, we have seven teams at CYD located in schools throughout Detroit. We also have two teams dedicated to running our Heroes programs, which recruit and perform service with volunteer students from middle and high school. My team is located at Brenda M. Scott Middle School, which is on the east side of Detroit. Our team has only been in the school since prior to Thanksgiving break, but we have already completed one service project and started another. We provided blankets to more than 100 middle school students and their families at our Warmest Winter Ever Drive in December. The children were able to decorate shopping bags (that were generously donated by Macy’s) and put the blanket inside the bag to either give away as a holiday gift or keep. Also just last week, our team kicked off an All-Year Recycling Drive for Brenda M. Scott Middle School with a Recycling Relay Race. Other teams at CYD have also completed amazing service projects at their schools. The team at Phoenix Middle School painted beautiful murals throughout their school. The teams at both Osborn College Preparatory Academy and Cody High School have overseen large beautification service projects which are still in progress.

Recently, our members have participated in MLK Day and DPS Reading Corps registration day. MLK Day for CYD was amazing all around. We were able to provide volunteers a variety of locations to serve at. We had volunteers as well as AmeriCorps members at Osborn College Preparatory Academy, Cody High School, Gleaners, Fishes & Loaves, as well as many other locations. We also were lucky enough to assist United Way in their MLK Day volunteer events and their rally. The CYD rally was a success with Governor Jennifer M. Granholm in attendance as well as First Gentleman Daniel G. Mulhern. It was truly an amazing service day for everyone. We had members at service sites starting at 7:15 a.m. and volunteers up and ready to go at 8 a.m. It was exciting to see so many people from the surrounding communities of Detroit willing to give up a day off work or school to give back to their community. Every person had a smile on their face and a ready-to-go attitude! It was definitely a day ON not a day off.

Speaking of great smiles and attitudes, a couple of weeks ago about 25 CYD AmeriCorps members participated in the kick-off of the DPS Reading Corps. The DPS Reading Corps is a new initiative from Robert Bobb, Emergency Financial Manager for DPS, to provide reading volunteers to pre-kindergarteners as a way to increase test scores. CYD members assisted with registration and greeting more than 3,000 volunteers that day. It was an exceptionally inspiring day to see so many volunteers wanting to dedicate an hour a week for the rest of the school year to teaching a student how to read. Seeing and feeling that type of positive energy is so contagious it carries with you.

Before I end, I would like to pose some questions for our readers out there. What will you do this year that will inspire others to lend a hand? What actions will you take to serve your community? Don’t wait any longer. Start today. Start at www.cityyear.org. GIVE A YEAR. CHANGE THE WORLD.