During my time in Detroit, I will be working on several different projects, all with varying objectives and goals. To try to understand what my impact will be on this city, I think the best way would be imagine a scenario where I had never come to Detroit and never had the chance to make a difference. The project that I believe will have the chance to have the greatest impact is the work I’ll be doing in trying to help D:Hive retool their current curriculum for entrepreneurs. This is a great opportunity because of the lasting impact that this project can have. If we are able to successfully find some ways through which we can improve their curriculum, it gives us a great chance to leave behind a true impact for this city. Imagine if we are able to make a change or two that ultimately leads to an additional business being started in Detroit. The impact of a small business in a growing economy such as Detroit’s is that it often has a ripple effect larger than itself.

The number of innovative businesses within Detroit is higher now than it has ever been. Detroit was once known for being the automotive capital of the world, that’s no longer the case. Detroit is no longer a city bound to a single industry. Detroit is becoming a city that resembles a 1000 piece puzzle, each puzzle piece represents a new idea, a new business, and new innovation. My goal for our project is that we are able to help add a few additional pieces to this vast puzzle. As our pieces find more pieces to fit around them, our contribution has the potential to extend far beyond what we can directly see.

Our ability to help add a few pieces to this puzzle is only possible due to the time that we’ve spent in Detroit thus far. As intelligent as we might, this is not a project that could be accomplished effectively if we did not understand the current resurgence that is happening in Detroit. This is a place that cannot be described through a few pictures or articles on the internet. My perspective and understanding of what Detroit currently is and what it hopes to become has been completely changed through the short time I’ve spent here. If you had asked me at the beginning of our trip whether I thought Detroit would ever return to its former glory, I would’ve said no. I would’ve said that Detroit is simply a victim of misfortunate. However, I now feel as though Detroit will certainly regain its glory. It won’t be in the same fashion it once was, but Detroit will find a way to come together and assemble a grand puzzle. 

People all over the world are fighting for a common, lasting, and endless project: to make the world we live a better place. This project is glorious and without an end, because people always want to become better, and such unsatisfactory becomes the most persistent power source that drives generations of people to move forward.  The big project is made up of innumerous small projects, and this summer, I am so glad that I can contribute to one of those countless projects, and try to make some impacts.

I work in Techtown, a nonprofit organization that aims to accelerate economic growth in Detroit by growing businesses and driving regional collaboration.  A vital part of Techtown is the SWOT city program, which combines economic development and start-up acceleration strategies to transform historically underserved neighborhoods into vibrant and dense communities. Currently, Techtown works with Brightmoor, Grandmont Rosedale, Osborn and East Jefferson.  At the macro level, the SWOT city program has three development phases: retain, grow, and sustain. Now the program is in the first phase that aims to help the existing businesses retain revenue and grow sustainable. In the near future, the SWOT program will move to next phase that tries to bring the right business to the vacant real estate properties in the communities, and fundamentally change the underserved situation of neighborhoods. My project is to explore how TechTown can accelerate business revitalization in Grandmont Rosedale and Osborn neighborhoods through commercial real estate acquisition.

At the first I received my project, I thought this project is a good chance to learn skills, a good chance to build my resume and a good chance to improve network. However, my thought was changed after the first day of work. In the first day at Techtown, in order to deepen my understanding of communities I am going to work with, Katie brought me to Brightmoor and Grandmont Rosedale, and Philip and Regina took me to Osborn and East Jefferson. It was the first time I truly understood what poverty means and the meaning of my project. I knew the vacancy rate, crime rate before I went to the neighborhood. At least I thought I knew them. However, when I was walking in the Brightmoor, I started to understand what those rates mean. I saw houses were vacant, and roads are in poor condition, but people there still optimistic. I saw smiles on their faces, and when I talked to them, I could feel their spirits and love of this city. I was touched. I really want to do something for these strong and kind people because they deserve more than this. The meaning of my project is simple and straightforward: bring grocery store to neighborhood so that children can have healthy food everyday; bring restaurant to neighborhood so that residents can have a place to enjoy their meal; bring hope to the neighborhood so that people can have a better place to live. My work is humble and just a start. Maybe my project alone cannot change the situation, but anything great all has a humble start.  I believe put all these small contributions together can make a big difference.

Students complete projects all the time, but often times do not realize the full scope of what they are doing.  Please write to how you are specifically serving the Detroit community through your project this summer.  Please think past the surface level on this and really dive into what you are doing in and for this city. (400 word min).

            While indeed a large variety of reasons contributed to Detroit’s decline, undoubtedly the number one factor was economics. As the American automobile industry lost its competitive edge to that of other countries, jobs left the city. As jobs left the city, so too did the people. Many of those who stayed were unemployed or at least underemployed. With unemployment and large population decreases comes a host of social problems, many of which can be observed in Detroit.

            While the automobile industry has made something of a comeback in the area, it will likely never return to the levels seen in the 1920s-30s. Rather than flee the city, though, many people have decided to create jobs for themselves by starting a business. These aspiring entrepreneurs may be inexperienced or lack education in how to start their business and translate their idea into a viable source of income.

            This is where D:Hive’s Build class comes in. The class is designed to be as affordable as possible, and helps these people turn their dream into a reality. Their graduates have been quite successful, opening up brick-and-mortar retail locations, restaurants, profitable websites, and more. Improving the economic situation in the city of Detroit is vital to its future success. Without jobs, a city is doomed to failure. The government gets less revenue, people have less disposable income, the arts and culture cannot be revitalized, and more. Yet most of these people cannot find work, so they have to create work for themselves.

            I have seen how many areas of Detroit appear to be completely and totally uninhabitable for new business—in neighborhoods like Brightmoor or Osborn, one would seemingly have to be crazy to start a business there. Yet people are doing it because D:Hive provides them with the skills and knowledge they need to be confident in bringing their business idea to their local neighborhood community. By revamping their curriculum to make it up to date, providing alumni with greater resources and networking opportunities, and more, I am helping this vital program become even better and directly assisting the city’s economic revival.

Blight. Poverty. Crimes. Poverty. Blight. Crime. Blight. Poverty. Crime. Poverty. Blight. Crime. Blight. Poverty. Crimes. Poverty. Blight. Crime. Blight. Poverty. Crime. Poverty. Blight. Crime. Blight. Poverty. Crimes. Poverty. Blight. Crime. Blight.

I can’t even recall how many times I’ve encountered these words during my past three weeks in Detroit. Five decades of transformation simply captured in three words. Like most outsiders, I was content with this mere simplification. I never questioned anything. In fact, there wasn’t much to explain. A few people really understand what has happened to this industrial colossus; some are simply tired of explaining. To make things easier, people simply adopt these three words as the “go-to” explanation, and others, like myself, pretend to understand.

The main reason I chose my current project is because it presents the opportunity for me to go into Detroit’s neighborhoods. After months of chasing after explanations in words, I’ve decided to experience it myself. The entrepreneurial scene in Midtown and Downtown is enticing, but I wanted to see the impact of entrepreneurship in Detroit’s neighborhoods and to experience what it means to live in Detroit.

I am currently working on the SWOT City Team at TechTown. The goal of SWOT Team is to accelerate neighborhood business development. For my project, I am exploring ways TechTown can most efficiently bring high-demand brick-and-mortar businesses into Detroit’s neighborhoods. One of the most common problems new business owners encounter is finding a location to start their business. At first, I couldn’t comprehend why this would be a problem. Rows of empty storefronts line the commercial corridors the once bustling streets. “For Sale” and “For Rent” signs are plastered everywhere – on dusty windows, cracked doors, chipping walls. However, the problem is not this simple. The phone numbers listed as the seller’s number are often outdated. Sometimes, the ownership of the property is not even clear. The neogiation process may take up to months. It is not unusual for it to take over half a year for a new business owner to finalize a storefront. Once the location is settled, undergoing city zoning applications and built-out presents another tedious, and often costly, process. All of these combined leads to a high barrier of entry for new business owners lacking the expertise and financial capability to successfully navigate through this complex process.

But they are the people the neighborhoods need. In a city where the government is bankrupt, where the police force is undersized, where people are afraid to walk around alone – even in daylight, where people don’t even have access to fresh produce, small businesses are the key to revitalizing the commercial corridors of the neighborhoods, to not only fill in the demand of neighborhoods residents, but also to re-establish the once lively and walkable city Detroit had been. Small businesses are the anchor that brings people together to form communities - with more small and local businesses along the commercial corridors, people will start to stroll along the long-abandoned sidewalks, chat with their neighbors, and hangout in neighborhood parks on the weekends.  These are the changes they will erase the drug trafficking, gang activites, and gun violence that has pestered this beautiful city for way too long. It is time to change this. 

    For my Duke Engage experience, I am interning with TechTown in Midtown Detroit. Techtown is a non-profit business incubator and accelerator that offers a huge network of resources to entrepreneurs to help build businesses of retail and technology. TechTown also goes into the communities to find ways to stimulate the local economy and reinvent Detroit. TechTown offers several programs and funding to help entrepreneurs within Detroit pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

    TechTown plans to hold a market on Saturday, July 26th, 2014. This market will be similar to the Eastern Market that is held weekly in Detroit. The market will offer free food and music, while also allowing people from the community to come together and socialize. The market is supposed to increase the foot traffic within the Brightmoor community, especially on Fenkell Street. Only 10 percent of the store fronts on Fenkell Street are occupied. Tech Town hopes to bring people into the neighborhood and inspire them to want to create their own business. The process would be to bring in entrepreneurs to the market and offer them vendor space for the monthly market. Then they would hopefully progress into a real estate property that Tech Town has acquired. My project is to contact vendors and try and contact as many businesses as possible to bring into the market. I will be working on marketing component of the market as well. This entails building the website, managing Facebook and Twitter and creating flyers for the market. I will be working with the marketing team and some members from the SWOT team to make sure everything goes smoothly July 26th. The more people that come out the better! With the help of others, the outcome of my project would be to make sure the market is a success. This would ensure that Tech Town could hold more markets in the future. As for what I am doing for the city, I am working to bring foot traffic to the Brightmoor community as I stated before. This would hopefully eliminate the blight that is seen within the neighborhood. This could ultimately help with eliminating crime and violence while bringing resources to the area. This is so important for the area because without this the community will not prosper in the way that it has the potential to. I am really excited for the market coming up and hope everything does work out in order to help the community!

Last week I talked about social entrepreneurship as sustainable change that is being enacted. To me, this is the corner stone of what I am doing here in Detroit. In creating Small Batch Detroit, I am helping to make Detroit Food Academy even more sustainable. The goal of creating Small Batch Detroit is to provide a sustainable funding source for Detroit Food Academy so it does not have to rely solely on donations and grants, raise awareness for Detroit Food Academy and offer gainful employment for graduates of the academy. To me, this project incorporates solutions for many of the growing problems not only in Detroit, but around the country. Through creating a program based on food, high schoolers are taught about the choices they make every day and ways for them to lead healthier more fulfilling lives. Beyond living a healthier life, the young adults are learning how to create their own business plans and resumes so that they can take control of their own life. In teaching them these skills, the kids are learning how to empower themselves. This empowerment not only helps the high schoolers learn to make nutritious choices, and learn skills that will help them through life, but in teaching the kids how to empower themselves it, in my opinion, is also teaching them the value of education and the need for them to at least finish their high school careers, and in some cases go on to college. 

In my personal opinion, one of the most important things to invest in, invest time, money, effort, and everything in between, is in education. Without education the cycles of poverty cannot be broken because the causes are still there. With education, people are empowered to think for themselves and find their own ways out of the troubles they are going through. This in turn allows them to pass the knowledge to their kids and thus break out of the constant cycles of poverty that people find themselves trapped in. When looking at Detroit as whole, I believe that this lack of investment in education was a large factor of the downfall of the auto industry. Many auto manufacturers didn’t put the proper investment into technology and allowed East Asian companies to push ahead. With education, and investment in education, it allows entire societies to stay on the cutting edge of technology. While there were educated individuals in and around Detroit, the mentality, in my opinion, was too focused on return-on-investment rather than the future. Detroit Food Academy isn’t looking at return-on-investment, it is looking at building the pathways to create a better future, and is doing so by investing itself in education and empowering individuals. It is this mentality, one of sustainability and looking into the future, that is the most important thing my project helps to bring to Detroit Food Academy, and to Detroit as a whole.

Last week we went to a social entrepreneurship challenge.  I really enjoyed it because not only did we hear from the winners from the previous year, but we heard from the finalists this year.  The businesses ranged from food trucks to welding schools.  The presentations of the finalists were set up like the entrepreneurs were pitching their ideas to investors.  I thought some people really sold their ideas whereas others seemed to lack direction.  Detroit Food Academy, where I am interning this summer, was a finalist and I think personally Jen gave the best pitch.

Two of the main components of social entrepreneurship that the host gave at the event were “systems, not symptoms” and “social need”.  Jen did this very well.  Detroit Food Academy aims to affect multiple social issues.  They teach healthy ways to eat and buy food.  This is important because there is a huge lack of food security in this city.  Then they teach the students how to prepare the food.  On top of that, the students gain the skills to start their own triple-bottom line food business.  These are great skills because these students have the ability to become social entrepreneurs themselves. I think the fact that DFA addresses these issues is why Jen and Detroit Food Academy won the People’s Choice Award.

This summer my project aims to give students the opportunity to actually start those food businesses.  The students will make resumes and practice their business pitch.  They will also be going out to the markets and selling the products they made themselves.  This gives the students experience and confidence necessary to start their own food business.  In addition, the students are addressing real life food issues by creating healthy, nutritious food options.

Why does any of this help the Detroit community? Personally, I think that if you invest in youth, you will see returns to your investment.  You also get unseen potential from kids who have just been waiting for the right opportunities.  These students are learning things that they can teach others, such as their families and their future families.  Detroit Food Academy and the summer program create a sustainable system where they take a student and give them the means to be successful after they leave.  The better the citizens are, the better Detroit will be.  I think the more confident these students become, the more efficacy they will have in revitalizing Detroit.

In the world we live in social issues are inevitable.  The systems in place don’t work in the best interests of everybody and so as a result some reap the benefits and some suffer instead.  In the United States when it comes to the economy the attitude that you should take as much as you can get and feel entitled to it is very pervasive.  Those at the bottom stay there and those at the top see no need to change their actions.  Social entrepreneurship manipulates this system and instead of benefitting those on top already, it shifts the good towards the greater society.  I once heard social entrepreneurship described as capitalism used for good, and I think that truly is representative of what social entrepreneurship is.

Why do we need social entrepreneurship?  Well, why do we need entrepreneurship in the first place?  It’s innovation and creativity at its best.  Entrepreneurship is someone taking an idea that’s never been put into action and saying, I’m going to run with this idea.  Entrepreneurship is daring and bold and inspires others to think outside of the box and ask questions like no one has asked before.  So, why social entrepreneurship?  I think it’s obvious!

Social issues have been around since the beginning of time.  There will always be unemployment; there will always be homelessness; there will always be someone benefitting off the suffering of others.  That sounds like a market to me.  But instead of aiming to just make money, social enterprises aim to make a social difference.  They ask why prior tactics have not fixed the issues and instead of creating a typical solution, they create a new approach that gets to the heart of the problem. J.F.K. said to ask what you could do for your country, and social entrepreneurs are doing just that.  They are asking questions.  And they’re not stopping until the can give an answer that’s never been given.  These talented thinkers push us all to view our world in a different way and to not give up when traditional methods don’t work.

I’ve been in Detroit 2 weeks now and there are social entrepreneurs all around!  I am a bit biased, but I think the social enterprise I am interning for this summer is doing amazing things.  Not only does Detroit Food Academy provide a safe, welcoming environment for kids afterschool, but it gives them marketable skills to launch themselves into the real world.  DFA isn’t putting a band-aid on the issue, it’s transforming students into people who can create their own solutions.  Ultimately I think that’s a good SE. 

This weekend at the Michigan Social Entrepreneurship Challenge, they talked a lot about sustainability.  Can you keep yourself afloat without grants and donations?  I think social entrepreneurship is bigger than that.  Not only do these enterprises aim to make profit, but they aim to produce citizens who ask those necessary questions and push the limits beyond status quo.  Social entrepreneurs are creating social change, a social transformation, that will persist long after their absence.

    An example of social entrepreneurship that I have observed in Detroit was during the conference on Friday. Capuchin Soup Kitchen sponsors a bakery called On the Rise in Detroit, Michigan. The bakery is run by the members of ROPE, which stands for Reaching Our Potential Everyday. The participants in this program are people who were recently released from prison or have completed substance abuse treatment programs. This program helps the men in this program turn their lives around and inspire them to create their own businesses once they have discovered their own niche. The purchases made from this program go back to supporting counseling services, housing and other help programs. The community within Detroit helps this business remain successful.

    After looking at that example, social entrepreneurship has many meanings to me. It means that that someone is following their passion and dedicating all their efforts to make others fall in love with their passion as well. It means that you want to create your own innovative path to accomplish a goal. Social entrepreneurship also incorporates a way to give back to the community. Examples of social entrepreneurship that I have witnessed, including the example above, have shown how these businesses are always finding new ways to serve others and make their environment a better place. There is always a way of involving others and creating building blocks to make the enterprise grow.  It is important in this world that we live in because every day things are constantly changing.

    “Sometimes people ask me why am I so excited about what I do. My reply mostly is, "You see one celebrity and get excited. I see several hundred thousand future celebrities, change makers, and world movers, every day.” 
― Sharad Vivek Sagar

    Working within TechTown every day shows me how accurate this quote is pertaining to social entrepreneurship. The idea to be financially successful is not the only goal. There is a larger goal which is creating an impact within the world as “change makers” or “world movers”.

    “I hope to break even while helping as many people as I can and truly making an impact”.

    This statement was made by someone on stage when they asked what he truly hopes to happen with his business within the next year. The world needs social entrepreneurs who can produce new ideas that can help keep up with the changing pace of society. Also, the world needs sustainability and innovation and social entrepreneurship can offer these two things in the long run.