The Meaning of Community

Dear Torisa,

It has been an insane week to start working at FoodLab, but your excitement has not wavered regardless. If anything, it makes you even more anxious to begin working closely with a Detroit community that aims to afford more power to black people and specifically black owned businesses. In working with FoodLab, you also will be in contact with community members of the city and of DCERP. And community is so important to you. You know that community is more than just a number of people living within the same area. Community is defined more by the culture of the people within the community. Although in most communities I do believe that values do play a huge role, there are many communities which don’t all share the same values but are a community nonetheless. The communities we are a part of have a huge impact on who we are as people.

Being a part of any community is a great opportunity and also one thing that attracted you to the community work in Detroit. However the main thing that attracted you to this particular community was your lack of adequate knowledge on the city and the communities within that you felt you should have possessed for several reasons. One being that the majority of the people in Detroit are black, and the other being that the city is so close to Ann Arbor, which you’ve lived in for so long.

Although it has its difficulties, working remotely–with one exception–has the potential to be just as rewarding as it would be if it were in person. Unfortunately the one exception is that connections formed will not be as great over video chat as real human contact would be. But with extra video chats–if time permits–i think that you will be able to form those deeper connections! 

I think you will have a great time working with the crew at FoodLab as they are already amazing people as you’ve met many of them. You will gain so many skills and so much knowledge working at this organization while at the same time hopefully being able to contribute to the community. I think one important thing that you could contribute to the community is outside knowledge on neighboring cities and how they may differ or compare to the city of detroit. 

Lastly, I really hope you have the opportunity to understand the difficulties and true processes on the path to entrepreneurship while working here, like you hope to!

Sincerely,

Torisa