“University of Michigan has been an amazing partner – they have been able to connect us with tons of resources and tons of knowledge. They are a partner we can count on. Partnerships with U-M are invaluable. They take your work to places may not have imagined. Being able to work with brilliant minds and with folks who look at things differently will push you in your own work.”
~ Camille Johnson, director of development and communications for Eastside Community Network
The Engage Detroit Workshops grant program will support eight teams of U-M faculty, staff, students, and community partners in organizing workshops that will strengthen partnerships between the University of Michigan and Detroit. The 2023 round of funding is supporting projects through August 2024. The projects range from one that helps parents become more involved in their children’s education to another that explores the range of fatherhood experiences.
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.
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.
The new study by the research team—including Brandy Sinco, senior statistician at Michigan Medicine, and Joseph Himle, U-M professor of social work and psychiatry—links tolerating uncertainty to their previous findings about reductions in social anxiety through improv.
“I was always very impressed with the way U-M engaged our program participants. You could sense there was a respect for their time and information. It wasn’t ‘we’re going to swoop in, do our research, and bolt.'”
~ Delphia Simmons
The U-M School of Social Work partnered with Williams on his COVID-19 relief efforts. Early on, the school routed social work students to assist with food and supply, packing and delivery, logistics and administrative support.
The project focuses on Zone 8, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Detroit, which takes its name from its zip code. Zone 8 experiences many of the inequalities that ravaged all of Detroit in the past decades — unemployment, addiction, persistent poverty, lack of affordable housing — in hyper-focused ways.
The project builds on Tawanna Dillahunt and Julie Hui’s partnership with the Friends of Parkside to pilot a “community tech worker” program to assist seniors requiring technology-related support. Tech workers will be embedded at Jefferson East to develop a sustainable, useful model that will help bridge the digital divide for small businesses.
