Summer in the City

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Category: All Saints Neighborhood Centers

New opportunities at All Saints

So we are a little more than half way past the SITC summer and things are a changing. Last week was our final week of the Arts and Smarts program at Glazer Elementary and our tutoring/paint the lockers program at Dixon.

Over the past four-five weeks the volunteers from SITC had gotten to know some of the kids very well, and it was tough for some of us to leave them and move on to other projects.

Last Friday we took the kids from Glazer to Clark Park and for some of us the goodbye at the end of the day was tough. We will meet some of these same kids next year, and the bonds that were built between the volunteers and their buddies will last the test of time.

As sad as we all were at the end of last week, everyone was really excited on Tuesday and it showed. We had 42 volunteers at the Andover carpool site, one of the highest numbers I can remember. A lot of us headed over to All Saints Community Center; some of us nervous, most of us excited. The children at All Saints are just awesome. Even the most zealous SITC volunteer can't come close to matching their enthusiasm and energy. We could also tell how appreciative they were of us. Tuesday was our first day there and when we went back on Wednesday, the kids already had memorized many of our names!

The change of sites is one of the things I love most about Summer in the City. It gives the volunteers a chance to really explore Detroit. We have done projects all over Detroit: north, south, east, west, Belle Isle, everywhere. I venture to say that most of these volunteers had never been to Mexican Village before our field trip to Clark Park last Friday. Although they didn't get a chance to see everything this slice of Detroit had to offer, they at least got some initial impressions that may make them want to come back.

Unfortunately, we have only three weeks left for SITC this summer, but I'm sure that in no time we'll be once again forming friendships with the All Saints children just as we had done at Dixon and Glazer elementary schools.