Special Report
TEENS IMPACT DETROIT
Hot Town from page 13
Above: Teen Mission
2010 participants
Zoe Yedwab, 14,
of Commerce and
Ashley Sakwa, 15,
of West Bloomfield,
have fun with Kayla
Kramer, 6, of
Detroit.
Left: Danielle and
Brooke Isaacs, 17, of
Farmington Hills are
hard-working
identical twins.
Dani Katz, 15, of Farmington Hills works on the mural.
Groves to Washington University in St.
Louis this fall, chased around kids and
volunteers alike at Glazer Elementaiy
School, one of only three elementary
schools removed from the Detroit Public
Schools closure list, owing in part to
its partnerships with Focus: HOPE,
Summer in the City and Temple Beth El in
Bloomfield Township.
Augusta Morrison, an alum of Frankel
Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield (and
former all-star on the volleyball team I
coached there), brought her passion for
urban agriculture home from Michigan
State University and led volunteer efforts
in Detroit's community gardens.
Michael "Clutch" Baum was promoted
this year, at age 20, to chief financial offi-
cer of Summer in the City. (David Zwickl,
his predecessor, became our inaugural
CFO while still 19.) Michael, who gradu-
ated from FJA in 2008 and returned to
SITC from Brandeis University, put both
his economics and business majors and
his Jeep to good use, managing the entire
budget for the summer and schlepping all
over Detroit to make sure volunteers had
enough water, paint, granola bars and,
occasionally, popsicles.
Michael earned a $1,500 stipend for
putting in eight 80-hour weeks with SITC.
He has described the same itch I got at his
age — that the East Coast is a nice place
to be a student, but there is no place like
Detroit to be an agent of positive social
change. He has already signed on for next
summer.
As in previous years, some volunteers
came out of the woodwork this summer
and were so good that they made the
transition to Crew members mid-summer.
14
August 19 2010
Bobby Mitchell, Arthur Fortune and
Reginald Anthony, all from Detroit and
all recent graduates of Mumford High
School, have stayed involved with their
alma mater as mentors through Young
Men in Transition, an organization cre-
ated by Mumford teachers to develop their
students into strong leaders and positive
role models.
A group of high school volunteers dem-
onstrated such irrepressible leadership
initiative this summer that we created the
"JCrew" to compliment the Crew. Among
the many impressive JCrew members,
Craig Kaplan of Bloomfield Hills brought
SITC to Southwest Detroit's O.W. Holmes
Elementary Scho\ol, where he had been
commuting from Lahser High School in
Bloomfield Hills to lead art programming.
SITC volunteers worked one-on-one with
Holmes summer school students and
painted murals inside and outside the
building. In addition to Holmes, SITC
expanded to Pasteur Elementary School to
create "Camp Pasteur;' thanks to outreach
and support from the Pasteur Elementary
School Alumni Foundation, of which my
mom happens to be lifetime member.
Jewish Support
The stipends and new "Above and Beyond"
grants for Crew members who did every-
thing from managing the website to
coordinating logistics were made possible
by a grant from the Detroit Jewish com-
munity's Jewish Fund. Summer in the City
received its first three-year Jewish Fund
grant, $21,000 for general operating sup-
port, in 2007, helping the program and
the donor base more than double through
2009. This year (through 2012), we have
partnered with the Jewish Fund again to
create "Leaders in Service a program to
catalyze and sustain further leadership
development at Summer in the City.
The grant also funded "Adult Swim:'
a (swimming-free) series of evening
programs for the Crew to engage with
dynamic initiatives and institutions in the
city and to have a chance to learn from
and laugh with each other. On a related
note, this year saw the first Summer in the
City. marriage — my co-founder Michael
Goldberg married Rachel Pultusker, who
created SITC Youth Enrichment, now our
largest program.
Last week, Karen Sosnick Schoenberg
called me at my office at Honigman
Miller Schwartz and Cohn downtown
and interrupted my thanking her for the
Jewish Fund's support to let me know that
Summer in the City would be this year's
recipient of the Jewish Fund's Robert
Sosnick Award of Excellence. She then
interrupted my thanking her for the honor
to let me know that the award comes with
$25,000 for SITC.
Jewish volunteers and volunteer groups
made an unprecedented impact on
Summer in the City this year. Through
a grant from the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit's Stephen H.
Schulman Millennium Fund, Tamarack's
Teen Service Staff returned to Summer in
the City for the third year to parlay their
wilderness and counselor skills into our
community gardening and youth enrich-
ment efforts.
The board of Federation's Young Adult
Division convened in Zussman Park at
the corner of Dexter and Davison, shared
Jerusalem Pizza with a group of neighbor-
hood kids and then traveled down Dexter
(by car, not bus) to paint an amazing
technicolor mural on a building soon to
undergo renovation.
Rabbi Josh Bennett of Temple Israel
in West Bloomfield called me from his
layover in Atlanta earlier this month to
coordinate Federation's Teen Mission par-
ticipants joining SITC for our final week.
They were joined by volunteers from Aish
Huntington Woods and Temple Kol Ami
in West Bloomfield for arts, crafts, sports
and games with the kids at Latino Mission
Society in Southwest Detroit.
Rouge Park is filled with music and kids
of all ages who have come for the SITC
Olympics. They are playing soccer, bouncing
on a Moon Walk, making baking-soda-
and-vinegar volcanoes. Some of them have
never set foot in Rouge Park before and oth-
ers live down the street.
Some are freshly returned from Israel
and others speak only Spanish, Russian,
Farsi or German at home. Everyone speaks
soccer. And everyone can smell the food my
in-laws have been tasked with grilling and
can see the third-story of the mural nearing
completion at the top of the hill.
Its Friday the 13th. Its hot. I am the only
thing standing between everyone and cake.
Three thoughts keep running through my
mind and I can read them on countless
faces sitting on the lawn and standing in
front of the circles and rectangles freshly
painted on the wall.
One: Detroit's future is ours to write.
Two: We have only just begun.
Three: Let them eat cake. ❑
For more information on voluteering or
donating, go to summerinthecity.com .