When Caitlin Crutcher has the opportunity to introduce Detroit students to the idea of community development, whether at Southeastern High School or through programs at
Eastside Community Network (ECN), her favorite lesson involves a single question.
What does your ideal neighborhood look like?
“Essentially, it provides students with the opportunity to imagine,” says ECN’s 26-year-old director of youth development. “We bring out a whiteboard, and get in small groups, and we list all the things we currently see in our neighborhood: good, bad, ugly, the great stuff. It all goes on the list. Students will say, ‘I see parks, I see liquor stores, I see broken-down homes, I see vacant lots, and potholes. Whatever it is, they don’t hold back. They’re very, very honest.”
Crutcher is teaching from a curriculum created by four Detroit Community Development Organizations that make up the Youth In Community Development Collaborative:
Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance (CRCAA),
Urban Neighborhoods Initiative (UNI),
Congress of Communities (CoC), and ECN. These nonprofits have independently undertaken youth development initiatives for many years through a range of programs, including teen councils and advisory boards, workforce and leadership development, as well as educational and social support services.
But, in 2019, leaders Kenyetta Campbell, Christine Bell, Maria Salinas, and Donna Givens Davidson came together to design and implement the youth leadership pipeline which emerged from
Building the Engine of Community Development in Detroit (BECDD),
a citywide process to strengthen neighborhoods by building a coordinated, equitable system for community development work in Detroit. BECDD was authored and organized by Detroit activist Maggie DeSantis. (
Read our accompanying article about DeSantis’ storied role in community development and how Building the Engine came about.)
The Youth In Community Development Collaborative (not yet a formal name) has met monthly to develop and pilot a competency-based curriculum for youth development with both classroom instruction and after-school activities. It’s aimed at fostering the next generation of community leaders, piquing their interest in this work and teaching them practical experience and skills in the field – all while creating and supporting a community development and youth leadership network across Detroit.
“With all that’s going on in the world right now, and in our country, young people need to understand that they can have an impact within their neighborhood, which could, in turn, have a ripple effect on the world,” says Kenyetta Campbell, executive director at CRCAA.
Exposure in middle schools, high schools and summer employment programs
After testing the program in three Detroit high schools, in two middle schools, and through an internship program with numerous local partners, the collaborative is expanding this summer to help several Community Development Organizations (CDOs) adopt the curriculum through a partnership with
Grow Detroit’s Young Talent.
GDYT’s
summer jobs program trains and employs thousands of young adults between the ages of 14 and 24 with meaningful work across the city.
And a dual-enrollment college credit program
The collaborative is also working in
partnership with the Southeast Michigan Community Learning Partnership (SEMCLP) and the University of Michigan-Dearborn (UMD) to provide a dual enrollment opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to explore community development as a potential career option.
Pathways into Community Leadership, now in its fourth cohort, is a first-of-its-kind program for both DPSCD and UM-Dearborn. It offers a two-year certificate that enables students to earn college credit by studying and participating in community leadership and development initiatives through a social justice lens.
Schools across the city are participating in Pathways: Southeastern High School, East English Village Preparatory Academy, Western International High School, Cass Technical High School, and Marygrove. The program aims to
develop a model that many more DPSCD and high schools in Southeast Michigan could choose to replicate.
From the pilot phase to the demonstration
When Crutcher presents her favorite early curriculum lesson, she asks students what they want to see in their neighborhood and who and what are needed to create that change.
Answers include greater city involvement, financial resources (aka “money!”), green spaces, hospitals, firefighters, police, building contractors, and individuals responsible for maintaining vacant lots and properties. Eventually, she says, at least one young person in the room will say, “We need us!”
“And that, for me, is always the light bulb moment, the transformational moment, when students start to realize, 'Oh, I have the power to make these changes. I can make a difference in my community,’” she says.
The students then brainstorm ideas for community change: cleanups, fundraisers, lobbying the city council to effect policy changes, and other initiatives. Once prompted to visualize a different reality, students' imagination soars.
ECN started teaching youth development lessons at Southeastern High School in 2022 alongside classes ranging from history and economics to advanced manufacturing. Last fall, the nonprofit transitioned to teaching the curriculum at its headquarters and drop-in center, recruiting students from multiple schools.
Each organization implements the curriculum in its own way, Campbell says, providing feedback to one another on what is working well and where there are challenges. When they identify a need for change, discussions and approvals occur as a collective effort.
Over the past three years, in Southwest Detroit, UNI and CoC have collaborated to deliver the curriculum at Western International High School to over 100 students annually, including those who are bilingual and non-English speaking. Additionally, UNI has delivered the curriculum in an after-school program at Amelia Earhart Elementary-Middle School to 30 students. This summer, UNI will employ a group of students who received the curriculum at Western to work on community-focused projects.
At the same time, CRCAA has trained 30 students yearly at Cody High School, guiding them through a community development curriculum in weekly classes from ninth grade to graduation. Students apply what they have learned through service projects in the community, such as transforming bus stops with creative shelters or hosting neighborhood clean-ups.
At Warrendale Charter Academy, 15 middle school students participate in after-school curriculum training with CRCAA by joining a junior youth council that develops school-based initiatives.
Last summer, CRCAA hired students who had received the curriculum during the 2023-2024 school year. The youth met frequently with the architects designing CRAAA’s new headquarters to provide input on the development of the drawings for the new building. Campbell says that it's vital that young people have ownership and input into these significant projects.
“Even when local politics shift, these kids can step up and say, 'Listen, we were in it. We were involved at the beginning. We were involved in the middle. And we want to be a part of the implementation,’” she says.
One young person’s experience from age 15
Taylin Hodges, 21, is the youth program coordinator at CRCAA. She became involved in community development work at the age of 15 through
a significant planning and design opportunity with the organization.
As part of the
Neighborhood Framework Investigation team for the Warrendale/Cody Rouge community, Hodges was one of nine youth who collaborated with Detroit’s Planning and Development Department and HECTOR urban design consultants to make improvements to the neighborhood through a youth-centric lens.
Hodges and other teens interviewed city officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan, communicated with residents, and shared ideas that contributed to the creation of the neighborhood framework plan.
“Just speaking about my experience with other youth in community development, a lot of people were very surprised that we had ideas and things to say,” she says.
During the planning process, Hodges engaged in conversations with residents, and she says many residents were surprised to find that the young people shared their concerns and priorities. “We had an understanding of what was needed and what was important in the community,” she says.
In her role today as a youth program coordinator and mentor to CRCAA’s youth council, Hodges says that she shocked by how far ahead her students are thinking, their innovative ideas and problem-solving skills. She values their opinions and ideas, despite their inexperience.
Today, Hodges is pursuing an education in environmental science, a subject that sparked her interest through her involvement in community work.
Creating a youth development collaborative was something she and her peers on the CRCAA youth council had hoped to experience, hoping various organizations could have an understanding of each other’s work.
Hodges says, “That way, any collaborations we do can have a broader reach, and we're able to help everybody all across the city.”
Forming a network for collective change
In addition to the four lead organizations, five new Detroit agencies are adopting the collaborative’s curriculum this summer. With extensive youth development infrastructure, UNI and ECN are providing training and support for the new organizations.
Crutcher is helping to guide new organizations in delivering the curriculum at their sites, with 120 students expected to participate this summer across multiple locations. As the collaborative grows, so will a community of practice that shares learning and continually works to improve the curriculum.
“I think back as a high school student myself, and I had no idea that community development was even an option,” says Crutcher.
At ECN, she and colleagues are incorporating the community development lessons into the organization’s paid youth fellowship and ambassador programs, as well as its youth podcasting program and day-to-day activities with young people. The curriculum guides participants through the process of creating a community development plan, from idea to implementation.
It also incorporates discussions on power and privilege, environmental racism, and other sensitive topics that can sometimes be triggering for students, she says.
Detroit Heals Detroit is providing guidance and understanding by teaching a trauma-informed approach for participants.
The community development lessons provide students with opportunities to view their current neighborhoods in a more positive light, to explore what's possible, and to foster a sense of connection, responsibility and ownership, Crutcher says. When youth complete projects they envisioned, she sees them hold a sense of empowerment and confidence that carries into other aspects of their lives.
Crutcher’s students have completed different types of projects: packing and distributing hygiene kits in partnership with the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, teaching free tech classes to help close a knowledge gap in the community, collecting signatures and lobbying city council to prevent a middle school from closing, and gathering volunteers to clean up blight and beautify their neighborhood.
Boots on the ground
As part of its work outside of schools, in 2022 and 2023, the collaborative piloted a citywide internship program for young people aged 14 to 24. It coordinated the program through UNI’s workforce development infrastructure, which has a history of placing interns in community development organizations.
Christine Bell, executive director at UNI, provides numbers from the organization’s Community Development Internship Report. More than 180 young people applied during the three-semester pilot. Through a process of vetting CDOs and matching applicants, the collaborative placed 64 young people with community partners, resulting in a total of 3,800 hours of work and collectively earning the youth nearly $59,000.
Bell says it's ideal if a young person is introduced to the curriculum in high school, enrolls in the dual enrollment program next and, at some point, interns with a CDO that offers them a job. However, because programs are being piloted in real-time, often without a linear path, the goal is to create multiple points of entry for teens and young adults.
The internship model, in particular, “was very successful in providing capacity for CDOs and on-the-job, hands-on training for young people in community development work,” she says.
The internship pilot program ended in the winter of 2023. Bell says the collaborative is in conversations with many organizations to find a city-wide entity that will support and sustain the program long term. If that doesn’t happen, UNI will likely lend its infrastructure as long as it has the required staff and funding
“One of the nice things is that we had other workforce development dollars [in 2022 and 2023], so if a young person needed more support, we could enroll them in our workforce development programming,” Bell says, noting UNI’s many internal career pathways, including Southwest Urban Arts Mural Project and Southwest Food Cultivators.
The nonprofit has seen success in developing talent through these programs, and Bell hopes that this type of continued support can be part of a citywide internship solution.
“Part of what brought this work together was the realization that we're all trying to do the same kind of thing across the city,” says Crutcher. “When we work in collaboration, we get to engage in cross-city dialogue… not just the East Side versus the West Side versus the Southwest.”
As a fan of the phrase 'many hands make light work,' Crutcher says, “When we do something together, carrying that and working in tandem, it just makes the work a bit lighter.”
Resilient Neighborhoods is a reporting and engagement series examining how Detroit residents and community development organizations work together to strengthen local neighborhoods. It's made possible with funding from The Kresge Foundation.
Many of the city’s CDOs looking for intern talent will be at GDYT’s Young Professionals Conference on July 31 at Huntington Place. The collaborative is bringing its young people to network with seasoned professionals, engage with storytelling, hear panelists share their career experiences in community development, hear young people talk about what they've learned, and participate in other ways.