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Something that has been on my mind recently is scale. Everyone in this program appreciates community, as it is the Detroit Community Based Research Program. We are all immersing ourselves in specific communities in Detroit at our various jobs. This is the smallest scale you can get, working down at the very local level. One […]

Yesterday, Ayat and I held our first Art for Learning’s Sake event at COTs Detroit’s headquarters. I’m going to break it down screenplay form for the sake of clarity and also, (selfishly) for myself to relive it all over again. ACT 1  Scene 1: Getting to COTs Characters :  Ayat, Jean, an Uber driver named

At this point in the Detroit Community Based Research Program, I feel settled in! I feel more at home than ever this week. I have a routine established and I am loving my time here at this program. This program has given me a glimpse of what life will be after college. Each day I

Last Thursday, the DCBRP cohort went to Cass Corridor to attend “Detroiters Speak: Summertime Edition.” That particular meeting was titled, “Policing Post-Rebellion Detroit,” and speaking for myself, I found this theme to be very timely as the recent deaths of African Americans by police officers still feel very fresh. So, being able to come to

Something I’ve really begun to take notice and appreciate at CPC is how my organization empowers community members to help with our programming.  When putting on events or different activities that will require volunteers/workers Chandler Park always looks to train community residents so that they can fill those roles.  For example, we were able to

I am entering my third year of college, which means my third year of living outside of my house with my mom, of making my own decisions, and of living with new people. Even in high school I was always busy with more than just classes and the same is true with college and with

Okay, I don’t really know what to write but I’ve been having a pretty great past two weeks so I’ll talk about that. Last Thursday at DFA, we started orientation for the summer program. During said orientation, we ran through all of the expectations for the students for the summer. Each staff member had a

How should we cope with living in a broken, corrupt system? Do we boycott it all together? Sustain ourselves and live best we can without any dependence on capitalism? Should we be a part of the system and change it from within? Or something in between? These are questions I’ve been considering a lot the past

Unfortunately, it feels like we as a program have peaked. We have lost the momentum that we had at the beginning where we would explore different restaurants and areas of Detroit. We have become complacent with our daily routines: work, gym, sleep. But from this routine I have learned a lot about myself/how I want

I tend to feel things in extremes. When I started this program, I was excited–super excited. I loved how new everything was. I loved getting to know everyone and staying up until the early hours of the morning talking–we talked about anything and everything because we just didn’t know one another quite yet. I felt