week eight

The thing I’ve learned most from our events and group meetings is how important it is to get to know the people you are trying to help. At some of our events, I learned about people providing solutions to problems that I didn’t even know were that serious. It really shows how important it is to immerse yourself in the community your serving to truely understand what the residents need. For example, when we visited the laundromat with programming by Brilliant Detroit, the program met the needs of the residents in a practical way. An outsider may have assumed that the way to increase literacy was to improve the local schools or provide after school programming. Brilliant Detroit decided to make a program that fit into the usual schedule of students and use time that is usually wasted. It so easy to see a problem and start working of a solution, but that solution may not be practical for a certain community. This is also why programs from different cities, or even different communities within Detroit, cannot be applied everywhere.