Detroit to Open Youth Hostel April 17

My name is Kevin Ward and I am a core volunteer for Hostel Detroit.

There is a small group of us that have started the first hostel to operate in the city of Detroit in fifteen years. The hostel is a non-profit organization and will open April 17th with approximately twenty beds. It is located in North Corktown, just off of Rosa Parks Boulevard near Slows BBQ and Old Tiger Stadium. Our mission is to provide travelers to Detroit with a low-cost option for lodging while also providing an avenue for them to make a true connection to our city.

We feel that the Hostel is relevant to students because we are seeking to connect young people from all over Michigan (and the world) to the revitalization of the city of Detroit - through low-cost travel, discovery, and understanding. We have a dedicated group of Volunteer Ambassadors  that will help hostel guests seek out activities and places in Detroit that are aligned with their interests. Whether students are interested in the Arts, Music, Volunteering, or almost anything else, we'll help them discover what they want to see and do during their stay.

We also feel that the Hostel provides student organizations with a great opportunity to become involved in projects and other great activities in the city. Our Volunteer Ambassadors are also willing to help organize and put together a "Weekend/Week in Detroit" for them if they are interested.
 
We can be found at www.hosteldetroit.com<http://www.hosteldetroit.com/> and www.facebook.com/hosteldetroit<http://www.facebook.com/hosteldetroit> .

Here is the Facebook Event for the opening: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197068633644445 .

Video: Requiem for Detroit

Check out this 74-minute video on Detroit:   
http://vidreel24.com/movie/Requiem-for-Detroit.html

Glenn Beck Compares Detroit to Hiroshima

Bing blasts Glenn Beck's rant on Detroit

Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110301/METRO/103010352/Bing-blasts-Glenn-Beck-s-rant-on-Detroit#ixzz1Fx3lW9BB

Not sure if you've seen this yet, but seems relevant to our talk about Detroit, especially after yesterday's tour. Glenn Beck compares Detroit to Hiroshima in terms of destruction, but argues Hiroshima was able to recover by embracing entrepreneurship and the free market while Detroit remains in squalor due to corruption and progressive policies and unions.

Needless to say, Detroiters are offended. I highly suggest watching the clip of the Dateline segment (included in the article).

"Like many national media members, Glenn Beck has probably never been to Detroit, understood Detroit, and doesn't care about Detroit," Bing said in a statement. "We welcome him to see and experience Detroit for himself so that he can deliver facts, rather than repeat fiction."

From Motown to Grow-Town!

By Ashley Atkinson
The Michigan Citizen
Here’s a little known statistic: More than one-in-50 Detroiters will be engaged in growing their own food in family, school, community and/or market gardens across the city this year. Although our landscape is covered in ice and snow now, very soon Detroit will be overflowing with productive patches of green, filled with heirloom tomatoes, snap peas, collard greens and vines ripe with the fruits of summer, lovingly tended by the capable hands of our citizenry. With over 16,000 residents involved in the Garden Resource Program (GRP) alone, Detroiters are leading the country with efforts to transform vacant land into productive gardens and farms; rebuilding local networks of food producers, distributors, processors, and consumers, while building community and stability in our neighborhoods. READ MORE

Grace Lee Boggs of Detroit

The Boggs Center

The Boggs Center was founded in 1995 by friends and associates of James Boggs (1919 -1993) and Grace Boggs (1915 - ) to honor and continue their legacy as movement activists and theoreticians. 

Our aim is to help grassroots activists develop themselves into visionary leaders and critical thinkers who can devise pro-active strategies for rebuilding and respiriting our cities and rural communities from the ground up, demonstrate the power of ideas in changing ourselves, our reality, and demystify leadership.

Board members engage in diverse community building activities: youth leadership development, urban agriculture, environmental justice and more.

Boggs Educational Center

A NEED
Many of the challenging conditions Americans toil under today are a direct reflection of the failings of our educational system.  Detroit, the epicenter of the nation’s political-economic crises, provides a prime example of the material, psychological, and social costs of our attachment to the existing system.  Our 47% rate of functional illiteracy, our failure to graduate three-quarters of our high school youth, our 10.6% unemployment rate, the fact that almost half of our children are living below poverty level, and the reality that the vast majority of our youth no longer believe in the version of “the American dream” that our grandparents tied their lives to, and our parents only began to realize – all are clear signs of our need to change.  All of these problems are rooted in the inability of our nation’s current educational system to envision and practice the full potential of schooling for human development.  Nowhere is the deficiency so keenly felt as in Detroit.  READ MORE

A VISION
Children who attend the Grace Lee Boggs Educational Center walk to school each morning.  Some walk with their parents, some with their siblings.  This is easy to do; their school is located in their neighborhood.

They play on the way, meet up with friends.  They say hello to the adults they have come to know while walking this route since kindergarten.  They pass gardens that they help senior citizens tend.  They may stop to pick a weed or to filch a ripe cherry tomato.  They pass art installations that double as functional play equipment and swing or jump or climb.  They know all the tricks; they have helped design and build them.

From the kids who have attended this school since its inception to the very new arrivals, everyone feels safe.   They are surrounded by people who love them and who will look out for them and they know this to be true.  They have risen to the high level of academic and social expectations asked of them at their school.  The community has also risen to the level of support they need to be whole, healthy, and strong.  READ MORE


A MISSION
Our students will be creative critical thinkers who employ multiple literacies and contribute to their surrounding communities.

Embedded in our mission are the following guiding principles.  These principles are inherent in both how we will facilitate learning and why we believe educational experiences are essential for children and adults.   READ MORE

SEED Wayne

SEED Wayne is dedicated to building sustainable food systems on the campus of Wayne State University and in Detroit communities.


SEED Wayne works in partnership with community-based organizations promoting access to healthy foods, urban agriculture, farm-to-institution, and food planning and policy development.

SEED Wayne embraces core university functions in teaching, research, engagement and operations.

Student leadership is central to SEED Wayne’s success.

SEED Wayne projects are located on campus and in the community. Browse projects here.

Our campus projects started with a vegetable and herb garden called the Warrior Demonstration Garden (established 2008) and a pilot farmers market, with two days in 2008. Since then, we have developed two other campus gardens, the St. Andrew's Allotment Garden and the Parking Structure #5 Experimental Garden.

In 2010, we also offer two farmers markets, one weekly and the other monthly.
The weekly market is called the Wayne State Wednesday Farmers Market. The monthly market, offered every third Thursday from June to October, is called the Wayne State School of Medicine Farmers Market.


View our newsletter, Wayne SEEDLING.

Spread the word - download and distribute the SEED Wayne brochure. Click here to view a You Tube video clip of an interview with Director Kami Pothukuchi on SEED Wayne's programs.

SEED Wayne is located in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

If you have questions about SEED Wayne, please contact:
Kami Pothukuchi, Associate Professor of Urban Planning
k.pothukuchi@wayne.edu
313-577-4296 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 313-577-4296

Detroit, Michigan

by Sam Brennan

-Ranked #31 by Sustain lane

-Ranked high in water supply, housing affordability, and natural disaster risk

-Ranked low in Planning and Land use, Green economy, and green building

-Used to have 2 million people now contains 950,000

-City was designed for the automobile

- The large quantity of vacant lots allows for many community garden projects

- Business entrepreneur  Hantz buying 5,000 acres of farmland, envisioning a new type of city

- This is important as Detroit can be considered a “food desert”

- That is a strength of Detroit as many people see it as blank canvas with space to work with

- For example my uncle’s Green Garage

- zero energy building, no trash, 90 years old former model T factory

- to serve as office space for green enterprises

-also to be part of Detroit’s new green community

-living space within walking distance as well as community garden’s

Slideshow of What's New and Green from the Detroit Auto Show

Check it out at TreeHugger [via Gizmodo]