I am about two weeks into the program now! I have switched internship sights and have started to really explore the city in the past seven days. I have gone to the Eastern Market, enjoyed Motor City Pride and the Pride Parade, went out to dinner with friends and enjoyed a new restaurant, explored the Heidelberg Project, and continued to bond with my suite mates. I am starting to make use of my time here, and am realizing the opportunities that are available to me. I am eager to go to Belle Isle and back to the DIA. I want to explore some of the older architecture in the city, and embrace some of the summer festivals. I am starting to feel less trapped, and more excited by the opportunities available to me here.
My new community placement is with Focus: HOPE. It is a large organization that shocked me with its size. It is an entire campus that includes a preschool, bank, manufacturing company, park and more. The people in the organization are so welcoming and friendly also. Focus: HOPE is a non-profit in the Hope Village neighborhood of Detroit that works to overcome the racism and inequalities in the Detroit community and to provide equal opportunities for everyone, despite their social identities. Recently, the organization has taken on the Hope Village Initiative (HVI). The goal of the HVI is to ensure that everyone in the HVI neighborhood has access to education, careers and a safe living environment by the year 2031.
My project specifically will be to work on analyzing data from a Hope VIllage Community Assessment Survey that was distributed to the community by Focus: HOPE last fall. I will analyze this data more specifically by certain demographics. I am also going to design a survey on the businesses of the Hope Village area. This will give the organization some baseline data on how many businesses there are in the community. That way, they can track progress of their HVI project over the years. I will also be inputting data into their Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) software on the proportion of foreclosures in the HVI neighborhood during the years 2013 and 2014. Finally, I will be creating a survey to distribute to community members leading up to an event called ‘Keep it 100’, which is a large neighborhood cleanup initiative.
Overall, this week has been a large improvement compared to last week. I am excited by the opportunities ahead of me, and to see what the next eight weeks will bring as I move forward.
