Last week Kerrel, Rhonda and I spent our time busily preparing for our first community meeting of the summer. This meeting was crucial in order to organize and raise awareness among residents about the environmental health issues in their community. We took two days before Friday to flyer in River Rouge. On the day of the meeting we were very happy to meet Dr. Paul Mohai, a professor at the University of Michigan. His research in Detroit has had a large impact on its residents, especially his latest study on school age children living in toxic environments. His study showed that children exposed to toxic environments suffered from irreversible neurological damage. Rhoda speaks very highly of him and I’ve looked over all of his research as well so it was very nice to meet him on Friday. Although he lives outside of Detroit he cares deeply about the people here and it shows in his work and commitment.
We had about 25 people show up at our meeting so it was very successful and in addition to that, we were able to distribute our health survey to them as well. The great part was that we were raffling off a blender as an incentive to come to the meeting and complete the survey so we got all the results back right away. It was really great seeing everyone there because it was like seeing the fruit of our work. We started our publicity a bit late but nevertheless we still had a great turnout and we got the word out about environmental issues. This week we’ll be preparing for the 48217 community meeting.
