Week 1: the “My” in Community

Hi everyone,

I’m Myla Lyons. I am from Southfield, Michigan, and am attending U of M as a junior in the fall. I intend to major in biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience, acquire a(n accelerated) Master’s in Psychology, get a minor in entrepreneurship, dance, and maybe figure out where to fit statistics and or sociology in my 5-year academic plan. As you can see, I have a lot of interests. I also like to write, skateboard, practice karate, tune into the stock market, take pictures (especially of the sky), draw, read, play chess, and rarely sew and play instruments. I’m a good gym buddy, too.

Community to me is the same as “home”. I have lived in what I consider to be an ideal home all of my life: I feel safe, I feel cared about, I feel care for others, I am able to speak, and I am able to listen, and we are able to create change for the better of one, many, or all in our home. Communities are a person’s home, away from home and including home. I’m attracted to doing community work in Detroit because Detroit is my heritage home, where my family came to find community in the form of financial support a mere three generations ago. The privilege of calling Detroit home isn’t free to me. I have to contribute to taking care of home.

I worked with youth at a Detroit-UMich based engineering summer camp where I got a lot of interpersonal experience and instructional aide experience.
This year, I am working with the Detroit Food Academy, a nonprofit organization that hosts programs for middle through high school students to refine their culinary and entrepreneurship skills. I am looking forward to how fun it will be getting to know these young scholars and how creative and intelligent they’ll prove themselves to be for their own enjoyment.

I’d love to strongly develop my social research skills – fortunately, that’s in DCERP’s name. Because of how research can be qualitative, quantitative, or hybrid in nature, I want to make sure the results of my research will be clear and coherent to the students in the program, the parents of the students, the staff, and anyone with interest running their own nonprofit organization similar to DFA.

What would make me especially proud is contributing new information to the Detroit Food Academy that they find useful in their mission, empowering the youth and food of Detroit, through my research. It would make me especially proud to make lasting friendships with my cohort as well.

Thanks for reading about lil’ ole me 🙂