Museum founder Olayami Dabls, an artist and storyteller who grew up in Detroit, wanted the museum’s exterior to tell the same story as the strands and jars of colorful beads displayed inside. Since 1998, the African Bead Museum has drawn visitors from around the world. He partnered with U-M recently on the AfricanFuturist Greenhouse, designed to mimic bead patterns.

This past spring the farm grew 14,000 tomato transplants in collaboration with Keep Growing Detroit for distribution in that organization’s Garden Resource Program that supports over 2,000 urban and community gardens in the city.

A jointly sponsored UM-Dearborn – UM-Flint Collaborative Research Funding Program awarded up to $160,000 for four collaborative research projects.

The tech pros will provide free, one-on-one support to entrepreneurs in their community. Tech pros will work between 30 and 40 hours a week with small businesses. UMSI and JEI are aiming to enroll 140 businesses. 

The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan provided support of the “place-based experiential learning program to encourage awareness of the Detroit River as an environmental and cultural resource.”

The School of Public Health is working with Focus: HOPE, a Detroit-based civil rights and human services organization, to investigate factors that affect how Black youth participate in and benefit…

Led by María Arquero de Alarcón, associate professor of architecture and urban and regional planning, students explored Wahnabezee — or Belle Isle, as the island park is known today — through oral and written histories, archival material, maps, photographs, and site visits to gain a multi-layered reading of the island and its hidden stories.

InPACT at Home received $1 million in COVID-19 CARES funds and solidified a partnership with PBS Michigan Learning Channel to air these homegrown exercise videos on television, reaching schoolchildren who don’t have access to the internet. InPACT stands for Interrupting Prolonged Sitting with Activity.

Economic mobility projects led by Church of Messiah Housing Corp., Journey to Healing, Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, and Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency will receive technical assistance and $10,000 grants from Poverty Solutions at U-M.