WEEK FOUR: Culture of Nortown – Detroit Community-Engaged Research Program

WEEK FOUR: Culture of Nortown

The culture of Nortown is quite different and unique than any other non-profit – and I’m not sure if that is a good thing. The organization was founded in the late 1980s by two women. They have create great projects and have made amazing progress in Northeast Detroit. They stand by their mission to restore northeast Detroit and a region that has been abandoned by others.  Nortown continues to create new and amazing projects that will benefit the community. Their passion and dedication is everlasting and remains.

Nortown CDC
Nortown CDC

Although the organization’s efforts remain fresh, their technology is a bit out of date. Nortown is not the most modern organization. Fast forward to 2015, the organization and its co-founders still use technology of the 90s. The other day my supervisor wanted Danielle and I to create a power point presentation with handouts. She wanted to slides to be a certain size and three to a page. She told me to cut and paste the slides on to a fresh page. As I headed out the room to get started on the task, she tells me to come back and hands a pair of scissors and tape. SHE LITERALLY WANTED ME TO CUT AND PASTE THE SLIDES….AND I DID.

Sometimes my supervisor has difficulty seeing the the default size of the font on her computer screen. On the first day she was complaining about the font. “Sometimes it’s really hard to see, so around here we use these.” SHE PULLS OUT A MAGNIFYING GLASS. She took the magnifying class and read the computer screen line by line, unaware of the zoom feature on her computer.

This is just a few of the the technical obstacles that the office face. The culture of Nortown is very different as it remains in the 1990s. Although I am here for a specific project I hope to show my supervisor the beauty of modern technology and how efficient it can make things.

2 thoughts on “WEEK FOUR: Culture of Nortown”

  1. Oh gosh, I’m laughing out loud thinking about you cutting and pasting those slides! And the magnifying glass! I love it. I bet it can get frustrating at times, but I’m sure you and Danielle are good sports about it! I wish you success in catching your supervisor up. Maybe you can show her all the wonderful tools that Google has to offer (though even I find it overwhelming at times so maybe not…hahaha)

  2. It seems like you may continue to get quite a bit of amusement from your site. It seems quite hard to do work without the technology necessary to keep p but I am sure it gives you the opportunity to appreciate how far technology has advanced in such a short time.

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