Part of helping people thrive is making sure the neighborhoods where they live are thriving too. For the past 25 years, Urban Neighborhood Initiatives has focused on serving the people and places within a 1.4-square-mile-area of the Springwells neighborhood in Southwest Detroit. 

The Michigan Innocence Clinic is the first exclusively non-DNA innocence clinic in the country. Since its inception, the clinic has won the release of 40 men and women who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes and served anywhere from a few months to 46 years in prison.

Katie Shulman’s fiber art will be on view in Myrrha, a collaborative exhibition with woodworker Forrest Hudes, at I.M. Weiss Gallery in Detroit. It runs through May 6.

In partnership with University of Michigan and the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the city of Detroit is bringing back Saturdays in the D. It’s a free program that provides fun, enriching activities for 75-100 Detroit youth (middle and high school) and 100 adults.

“Unfortunately, almost by definition, early stage startups have no revenue and little money to pay attorneys for much needed legal services. Because the clinic is free of charge, I never have to turn away a client for inability to pay.”

~ Tifani Sadek, co-director of Michigan Law’s Zell Entrepreneurship Clinic

How do you make sure that growth is good? This was the overarching question students at The School at Marygrove explored for their final projects about creating equitable growth in their hometown of Detroit. It was the culminating assignment for the economics class taught by lead teacher Brandon Moss and student teacher Hunter Janness.

The students met with Detroit entrepreneurs and energy experts to understand the most pressing energy needs in the city. Those meetings helped them create how-to guides on how Detroit business owners can make their business “greener” and obtain funding through the Inflation Reduction Act to make changes.

To evaluate the impact of these projects and document lessons learned along the way,  CEDAM has partnered with Trina Shanks, University of Michigan social work professor, and her team at the Center for Equitable Family and Community Well-Being. The team will gather and analyze data from network member programs to improve understanding of the impact of student participation in these savings accounts.

“Working on this case honestly made me realize how much air quality is affecting Detroit residents—particularly minority residents such as Latinxs and African-Americans that live within the southwest side of the city,” wrote Dolores Perales. “So, in researching this case, it was interesting to see what is going on, what can be done, and what are the potential things that we as residents and allies can do to mitigate these issues, not only within Detroit, but as in Cecilia’s case, Southwest Los Angeles.”