Every day passes by really fast around here. I work, come back, go to the gym, sometimes hang out for an hour or two around detroit and then the night is over. It’s not a bad thing but I do feel like two weeks went by very quickly and there’s not as much time as I thought! What I’ve learned about myself is that I am not and can not be a morning person as much as I would like…
When I get to the office in the morning, my mind wakes up another 2 hours later. I’ve had plenty to do this week in the office and preparations for our main project RESTORE NED and it has been busy alright! Before I bore you with all of that, I thought I’d share about my most recent experience. Today (Friday) I was out in the fields from 11am-4pm. You must be wondering what that means. Well, part of restoring Northeast Detroit means cleaning up the neighborhoods and having residents empowered. An active resident of the 7-mile community organized a clean up today. We started off along a vacant lot near a bus stop and little did I know what were in store for. In order to trim the grass, we need to remove the debris so nothing gets jammed in the machines. Raking out all the debris was quite a site to see and pretty gross; bus stops are notorious for dumping. After 3 hours I was just about done and getting really hungry especially with the sun blazing as well. On the bright side, we had a nice little lunch break and did one more vacant lot. It was my first time ever mowing a lawn because I am a city girl, haha.
An interesting thing Pat said humorously, “you’re paying UM tuition, I wonder how your parents would feel if they knew what you were doing.” It’s true, I don’t think my dad would appreciate me freely giving away labor but I think this sort of community work is important. It builds character, gives perspective, and humbles one.
I think that even though it might be considered “free labor”, it’s probably also a great experience learning about some work that non-profits do. I would imagine it would include things that no other organization particularly wants to do, or has the time to do. Plus, working right on the street like that to improve the community helps to build a sense of trust with the community, I think – you’re right there with them, doing the dirty work in order to make things better. Which is awesome!