My week and 4 days at Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation have exceeded pretty much all of my expectations so far. DHDC provides such great family and youth services and a million other things to the people in Southwest. Before working there, I kind of thought of Detroit as a place without many resources but I was absolutely wrong (in this case at least). Nearly everyone at DHDC was born and raised in Southwest and cares so much about giving back to their community. It’s really awesome to see, and I’m not even mad that my Spanish isn’t nearly as good as I thought it was. Even though I’m most definitely not a part of their community, I’ve felt very welcomed into it and I feel really grateful for this opportunity to learn so much about another culture.
The project I’m specifically working on this summer is helping with parent workshops to teach them how to be active leaders and advocates in their children’s schools. I’m not sure if that sounds confusing or not, but it definitely is. I’m still trying to find out how I can be the most useful since I don’t want to overstep while community organizing while I’m an outsider in a community, but I’m slowly getting busier and feel like I’m contributing more.
On another note, I got free tickets to a Tigers game the other day and got to spend my work time doing that.
Basically, I’m loving how everything is going so far and I’m very excited for the rest of the summer! And maybe I’ll actually be good at Spanish by the end!
What kind of resources have you noticed?!
I also believed that some of the reasons why Detroit was having issues was because many of the residents did not have access to resources, which like you mentioned is totally not the case. It seems like your organization is very welcoming, and I look forward to reading more about your experiences in the future. Thank you!