“We’ve done a great deal with housing and revitalization. We’ve worked a great deal with workforce development and with public health. So a lot of how we live out our mission happens in the city of Detroit.”
~ Luke Shaefer, director of Poverty Solutions

“Restrictive abortion policies will further exacerbate health and economic inequality in the U.S. unless public safety net programs and social welfare systems are adequately resourced and reformed to meet the increase in demand from significantly fewer abortions.”

~ Paula Lantz, a health policy professor at U-M’s Ford School of Public Policy and professor of health management and policy at the School of Public Health.

The 48217 is known as the most polluted Zip Code in the state of Michigan. University of Michigan Professor Joe Trumpey and his students teamed up with community activist Theresa Landrum to help raise awareness of the pollution issues created by emitters through a series of murals.

Adams said that even when dealing with difficult topics like race, “I have figured out a way to make the Socratic method humane and useful. If you do it right, it’s like being an orchestra conductor. You’ve got your violins, your woodwinds, and all the different horns, and you get them all playing together.”

Ahmad Nassar was on his way to medical school like many other children of immigrants but his entrepreneurial spirit and devotion to being part of the ongoing revitalization of Detroit compelled him to take a sharp turn in his career. He went on to found Detroit 75 Kitchen, a food truck service in Southwest Detroit.

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.