Well considering my first week I saw drug houses, packs of wild dogs and someone shoot at a house, my second week in the neighborhoods was relatively subdued. I have fallen into a decent routine where I am able to get most of my research work done in the morning and then am able to go to meetings with Pat, my supervisor, and do research in the field. It is hard to keep up with her schedule considering she normally works till 8 or 9 and she is always expected to be 30 minutes late to everything she attends. I genuinely enjoy getting to go to all of her meetings though and since she is the executive director at Nortown she is always in charge of approximately 4 fundraisers and events at the same time. I have also started to take on a few outside responsibilities and am currently trying to began securing grants for two of the projects Nortown has taken on. In addition, I am beginning to set up meetings for properties I have been researching in the area and am excited to see how I can affect the blight in northeast Detroit.
My supervisor is from the neighborhood where I do most of my work, despite that we both tend to stick out when we go through the neighborhoods. Everyone that we have interacted with has been very open and helpful with our work though and I always get the feeling that there are people looking out for us. This was evident when a man in the neighborhoods this week warned us of a pack of dogs that was wandering around. I have noticed too that there are a lot of motivated individuals trying to help the community and they isolate the problems in the neighborhoods and will have no problem reporting them. The biggest obsticle I have seen has been getting funding though for the projects that Nortown has undertaken and I genuinely hope by the end of the summer I can help with that.
I’m glad your second week was more tame. You saw more action in a day than a lot Detroit’s residents see in lifetime.