It's a Detroit Thing: Inspiring Change in the Motor City

826michigan is a non profit organization that provides free writing and tutoring programs to students 6-18.  Our organization is dedicated to improving students creative and expository writing skills, and working with teachers helping them inspire their students to write.  We offer multiple in-school programs as well as after school writing labs and workshops.  As you have read and heard from other VISTA's our organization is National and there are eight different chapters.  826michigan operates very similarly to the other chapters, but our situation, and my role within, is very unique.  Our center is located in downtown Ann Arbor, but our programs reach Ypsilanti and Detroit as well.  Our hope as an organization is to open a new space in Detroit sometime within the next year or two, dependent on funding.  My job specifically, is to build our capacity in Detroit, in order to gain the support for our new center.  Volunteer recruitment is the most crucial aspect of this capacity building.  It's been very interesting to observe, through my work, the dynamics of the organization during the first couple months of my service.  

826 is centrally located, with a really fantastic space, in downtown Ann Arbor.  They have tremendous relationships with community businesses, non-profits, and of course the local universities: the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.  It is amazing to see the clout that 826michigan has in in the area because of these relationships.  Ann Arbor is a also a very unique city in Michigan.  I'm not sure about the statistics but in terms of per capita, but I'm quite sure Ann Arbor is the most educated city in Michigan.  It is also a very literary city.   Bookshops and reading/writing/publishing organizations line the streets and folks are really into books.  One of the first weeks of my service I worked the 826 table at Ann Arbor's book festival.  There were hundreds of people who attended this event and it was massively successful.  We talked to people about our organizations programs and it was surprising to hear how many people had heard of and interacted with 826 before.  This is not

the case in Detroit.  We have been running programs in Detroit for only a year or so, so we haven't had the time that we've had in AA.  Yet, talking to folks around the city nobody has heard of 826.  This is really something I've been doing and excited to continue to do; talk to people about what 826 does and get them excited about our programs, and of course hopefully gain their support as a volunteer.  As I have said, it is interesting to understand the different relationships 826 has with the different communities, but it is also fascinating to understand the different identities of the communities and how to approach the different living conditions.  Like I also said, Ann Arbor is extremely literate, Detroit is not.  We've heard about the 47% illiteracy rate in Detroit and while it might not be entirely true it is useful and prevalent.  There is also a different mindset and history of Detroit.  Our organization in Ann Arbor has developed a creative identity that thrives on fun and being goofy and playful.  There is a correlation between this identity and the identity of Ann Arbor as a city.  Detroit has a different identity.  It has been an industrial center for a long long time and has a blue collar attitude.  It of course is also plagued by decay, abandoned buildings, and theft.  There is a different approach needed to connect to people in Detroit.  The attitude of the city is much less playful and goofy, but of course there is creativity everywhere you look, and while there are differences that are fascinating there are similarities that are endless.  We are focusing our efforts in Midtown Detroit, which is the cultural center of the city and also the home of Wayne State University.  The relationships in Ann Arbor with the local universities has been huge to development, and similarly we have found the most success in Detroit reaching out to college students.  This has been a fun experience especially since I've recently started a graduate program at Wayne.  I've been talking to basically every student organization about 826 and have started talking to students in classes, specifically english and creative writing courses.  This has been successful and we have found a couple of volunteers, but there is much hard work left ahead and we face many challenges.  I love the possibilities surrounding this position and am really excited to work hard and develop an organizations capacity from the ground up and be a part of the beginning of this project.  It will be a great experience!

As far as my experience with our programs, it has been limited in Detroit.  Our first wave of programs actually starts next week in Detroit and we have been preparing for this during the past couple of months.  Yet, during this time I've been able to work with the programs we have started in Ann Arbor, which have only just recently begun.  We have a program called the "Young Author's Book Project," in which we partner with a high school and work with a group of students as they work on a specific writing project throughout the semester.  This year the students are writing bedtime stories intended for first and second grade readers.  At the end of the project the students get their stories published in a hardcover book with illustrations from Ann Arbor artists.  This has been an incredible program in the past, and I was astounded by how well it is going this year.  The students I worked with have incredible ideas and the stories seem like they are going to be really excellent.  Most importantly, they are excited about the project and it clearly is giving them a sense of empowerment that they may never have experienced before.  This may be one of the most successful programs we have. but this feeling of empowerment is a microcosm of what our organization has accomplished and is striving to develop.  It is such a great thing for the students and the volunteers and I'm happy to be a part of it, and happy to be able to share the experiences with others hoping to inspire them to get involved.

-Chris Brudzynski