CapP Gown
ARBOOK
Students from Amelia Earhart Elementary School in Southwest Detroit
worked with U-M students to pack boxes of food staples at FOCUS: Hope.
Ad Deadline:
May 9th
Spring Break In Detroit
U-M students find reciprocal
relationships through
service, solidarity in Detroit.
Free Listing
Deadline:
May 9th.
Brandon Shaw
Special to the Jewish News
Graduation Time!
The Jewish News
will honor all Jewish
students who are
graduating this spring
from Michigan high
schools in our Cap &
Gown Yearbook 2014.
The Yearbook will be
published in our
May 22nd issue.
2011
Cap Gown
YEARBOOK
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30 April 10 • 2014
T
wo freshmen, two sopho-
mores, two juniors and a
senior at the University of
Michigan walk into Detroit to find
their place in the city and, in turn, find
themselves.
This was the premise of an
Alternative Spring Break we partici-
pated in March 2-9 coordinated by the
student-run Jewish Detroit Initiative
through U-M Hillel and Repair the
World. This was the third annual trip
after the student group began in 2012,
engaging nearly 30 students in a week-
long trip in which students live, volun-
teer and explore in Detroit.
People asked why we were going,
often remarking how we were "headed
to help Detroit:' But they were wrong.
Our days were jampacked with a
range of engagements. Each weekday
afternoon, we spent time with middle
school students from Amelia Earhart
School in Southwest Detroit, doing
activities ranging from bowling and
playing air hockey to taking a tour of
the Museum of Contemporary Art to an
exhilarating scavenger hunt that can-
vassed much of Downtown Detroit.
Each weekday morning, we volun-
teered at a variety of nonprofit organi-
zations, including Focus: HOPE, which
provides an average of 44,000 ship-
ments per month of food staples, deliv-
ering them to people in need. We took
a drama class one morning at Matrix
Theatre and an art class at Arts and
Scraps on another, then took those new
skills to teach students at Experiencia, a
charter elementary school that opened
its doors earlier this year.
Each evening, we gathered around
our living room for a dialogue with
Amit Weitzer, our service learning edu-
cator, to merge our day's activities and
to discuss the intersection of our Jewish
values and social justice work.
Weitzer was pivotal in shaping our
understanding of the idea of gentrifi-
cation — the concept of a shift in an
urban community toward wealthier
residents or businesses and increasing
property values — as well as the idea
of how our perception of our volun-
teer activities was affected by our own
privileged backgrounds, whatever that
maybe.
Repair the World's Detroit Director
Ben Falik and the five Repair the World
Fellows helped introduce us to a city
several of us knew little about, as many
of us are from outside Michigan.
We stayed in the Summer in the
City "Collaboratory," a historic home
in Southwest Detroit, and sought to
embody Summer in the City's mission
"to transform the impact volunteers
have on Detroit and, in turn, the impact
Detroit has on volunteers:'
I went to Detroit thinking we'd
"help" the city, but Detroit "helped" us
as much, if not more. By immersing
ourselves in the diversity of culture,
opinions and ideas, we worked to be in
solidarity with Detroit and Detroiters,
while enhancing our own understand-
ing as well.
Falik's sense of urgency, energy and
passion for service and engagement
in the city he knows and loves are
examples of exactly what Detroit
needs — for each of us to minimize
preconceived notions or associated