Week 1: A Letter To My Future Self – Detroit Community-Engaged Research Program

Week 1: A Letter To My Future Self

Hi Future Scarlett!

Here’s a little blast from the past… This is the part where you’re a wide-eyed, brand-new fellow for FoodLab Detroit and you’re excited every day to see what you’re going to learn from working with this non-profit organization. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, your sunburn from visiting your family in Florida has finally peeled and you’ve worked on your coffee dependency. I expect that you’ve developed social media strategy skills from facilitating FoodLab’s Instagram page, and that you have gotten to know your coworkers better by using those interpersonal communication skills you claim to have on your LinkedIn. By working for FoodLab Detroit, I sincerely hope you create a usable guide that the organization, and many other organizations in the Detroit area and nation-wide, can use as a “how-to” create an event that is sustainable. Additionally, I’m particularly interested in the case study you’re going to write on the production of the Dream Cafe happening next weekend. Looking back on this first week, remember what you said at the Community Lunch to all the individuals that work in the Green Garage about the Dream Cafe? Please send that back in time to me telepathically (if that’s even how that works?) since our boss just volunteered me to do that tomorrow, thanks in advance (or in retrospect…).

I hope that since it’s the end of the program and you’re moving out of Detroit soon, that you’re sad to leave, because this program gave you the opportunity to truly appreciate what this unique city has to offer. Coming into this program, right now, you are still trying to create a mental layout of midtown in your mind during your runs, and I hope that by the end of the program you know your way around. Not knowing anything about Detroit (having only been here on that 1 tinder date freshman year), this is one of the coolest programs you could be a part of because you get to be completely immersed in the culture that’s present here. Detroit is unlike any other city because they have worked for what they have. The effects of history, war, and social constructs are abundantly apparent in the area, and they have shaped Detroit into a city with a rich soul, unlike any city in the world that you’ve been in. Currently, your perception of Detroit is that it is a diamond in the rough. The sense of community and dedication to social justice that the people living here hold is refreshing, it just needs a lot of local economic support and that’s the rewarding part about working for FoodLab Detroit, is that you get to see that happening in front of your eyes.

Scarlett, I hope you remember everything about this program, fellowship, and city that I am going to do my best to be present for and embrace over the next few weeks.

All of my love,

~ Yourself on June 7th, 2018.

1 thought on “Week 1: A Letter To My Future Self”

  1. I agree this could be one of the coolest programs we’re part of! I’m also making a guide, about what the Osborn Neighborhood Alliance has done so far, for other orgs to use. Maybe it’d be interesting to compare them and see how different they are. I’m also excited like you to keep learning about the culture of Detroit and its community! Good luck with everything!

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