The Detroit Partnership is now accepting site applications for DP Day 2012. We are seeking sites that will be able to receive 20 to 200 volunteers for approximately five hours (9:30 until 2:30) on March 31, 2012. Our volunteers are capable of completing an incredible array of projects. Last year volunteers organized a library, tore down abandoned houses, cleaned up parks, planted gardens, painted murals and did many more valuable projects.

The goal of DP Day is to provide our student volunteers with a service learning opportunity that exposes them to the city and to the organizations that make a difference in it. To help us reach this goal, we ask that, if possible, our sites provide volunteers and staff to work alongside and to interact with the Michigan students. The volunteers and staff at your organization are invited to participate in the DP Day rally at Stoepel Park at 3:00 PM on DP Day. Former Michigan Football Coach and Detroit teacher Lloyd Carr, along with community leaders and speakers, will be speaking about the importance of service and their connection to the city.

Download the Site Application below, and submit it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by February 3, 2012.

Download the Application

It’s that time again! With the new year and new semester, we all have a chance to learn more about ourselves and the world we live in. For the Detroit Partnership, this new semester means a fresh start to serve the Detroit community through our expanding number of weekly volunteer programs, Detroit-based tutoring programs, and annual DP Day event where over 1000 U-M students will travel to Detroit and participate in community service activities later this spring. We have a lot of goals to reach this semester, and we need your help!

If you’re a student at U-M interested in learning more about the Detroit Partnership and how you can participate in service-learning opportunities in Detroit, come out to one of our mass meetings this month:

First DP Mass Meeting
Wednesday, January 11th; 7 pm
Michigan Union, Pond Room

Second DP Mass Meeting
Tuesday, January 17th; 6:30pm
Michigan Union, Kuenzel Room

Click on the links above to sign up on our Facebook Event pages. Can’t wait to see you there!

Written by Mathew Idichandy

Riet Schumack will speak about volunteerism and organizing as a means of uplifting neighborhoods in Detroit next Tuesday, December 6 from 5-7pm, in Room 1134 of the Ford School of Public Policy. Schumack is a prominent organizer in the Brightmoor community.

Schumack founded and currently works with two organizations - Neighbors Building Brightmoor (NBB) and Brightmoor Youth Gardens (BYG) - both of which aim to empower community members to lead healthy and sustainable lives through community asset building. Specifically members of NBB and BYG invest their energies in planting gardens, growing food and beautifying public spaces.

For more information visit Brightmoor Youth Garden and Neighbors Building Brightmoor on Facebook.

Our Detroit Partnership community is growing, and we can’t wait to see it bring fourth collaborative campus events, new mentorship initiatives in Southwest High Schools, and more fun excursions to the city next semester! If you would like to help build community between Ann Arbor and Detroit by organizing events on campus or facilitating programs in Detroit, apply to the planning team!

Applications can be downloaded here, and should be submitted to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it no later than Sunday, December 4th at 5:00pm.

The Detroit Partnership and West Outer Drive United Methodist Church are preparing for the 9th annual One Stop Shop.

One Stop Shop is preceded by a food and clothing drive that runs for several weeks across Southeast Michigan. Church members and University of Michigan students partner with leaders from other partners in Detroit, Ann Arbor, and beyond to collect nonperishable food and gently-used clothing items.

This year, these efforts will culminate with One Stop Shop on December 3, 2011. Personal shoppers help each client navigate the towers of clothing. Each client picks out clothing by the bag-full, and is given a bag of food to take home for their family. During the 2010 event, an estimated $50,000 worth of food and clothing were donated to community members.

Look for collection boxes in apartments and academic buildings around campus this November. We ask that you donate new or gently-used clothing items and non-perishable food items. Without the support of the University of Michigan community, this event could not be a success. We look forward to making One Stop Shop 2011 even more successful than the event in 2010.

Written by Chris Machielse

Dear friends of The DP,

I'm Cassie Basler, the Executive Director of the Detroit Partnership. Though I would love to detail all the exciting initiatives The DP has in the works this year, you can read plenty about them in our newsletter! So, I’ll take some time to sum up what The Detroit Partnership is, and is not.

The Detroit Partnership is a service-learning organization at the University of Michigan, led by a team of 56 students from areas as far as Singapore and Boston, and as near as Detroit's East Side and Ann Arbor. Though our team members come from a variety of backgrounds, we come together to share:

• The desire to learn from members of the Detroit community through collaboration and reflection, build long-term relationships between Detroit and Ann Arbor and eventually create one large community of caring individuals, called "DP.love."
• Passions for social justice and multiculturalism, which inspire us to enrich the volunteer experience with informational events on current social issues, fun cultural happenings and even interactive social excursions to the city!
• Interest in the challenges and triumphs of the city, which amplifies our enthusiasm for Detroit’s grassroots revitalization movements.

This semester, DP members pass their enthusiasm on to 100+ volunteers, who commit weekly to one of over 20 different Detroit community organizations running various youth programs. Through tutoring, fun, games and conversations with youth and community leaders, DP volunteers gain a multifaceted view of Detroit as a community, a home and a close neighbor.

The Detroit Partnership is not:

• A group dedicated to just one day of service and collaboration in Detroit, because we work throughout the year in Detroit collaborating with our partners to host weekly tutoring and mentoring programs.
• A team of super-volunteers who swoop in to the city to "save" Detroit, because our partner organizations already do great work in their communities and are gracious to welcome us, teach us, inspire us, and work with us.
• An organized crime-family from the prohibition era (contrary to what one Wikipedia article might say!).

So, please enjoy learning about our partner programs and upcoming educational fieldtrips in this October's edition of the monthly newsletter, Detroit in your Inbox. Thanks for reading--now aren't you excited to get involved? (I obviously am!)

DP.Love,

Cassie Basler

Executive Director, 2011-2012

Written by Cassie Basler

This week, G-Team, Groupon’s new charity organization, is partnering with us to give the K-12 Detroit students who utilize our weekly volunteer programs the chance to go to visit the Detroit Science Center…for FREE! As many of you know, the Detroit Science Center is an awesome place to learn about the physical world and how it works. We hope that by having hands-on experience with science and by learning new things at the Science Center, students from Detroit will be inspired to excel in their academics as well as challenged to connect the dots between their studies and real-life experiences.

DP supporters and members, we really need your help to make this trip possible! Please consider donating $6 through Groupon to support this cause. This event can only happen if we accumulate at least 35 donations, or a total of $210. Your donation of $6 will cover the cost of admission for 1 student, and transportation will be provided by volunteers and community partners.

We need to reach this amount by this Friday, September 16, so please donate now! Thank you!

The Detroit Partnership will be holding two mass meetings this fall for students looking to learn more about the Detroit Partnership, service learning, and weekly volunteer programs. The meetings are identical in content, so please attend the meeting that best fits your schedule.

Mass meetings are a great way to:

• Learn more about the Detroit Partnership without committing to anything
• Hear more about weekly volunteer programs from the coordinators who run them
• Ask questions and get answers

Also, you might walk away with a free T-shirt or see clips of DP Day from a Discovery Channel documentary that debuted earlier this summer.

Mass Meeting #1:

When: Tuesday, September 27 from 5:00-6:30pm
Where: Wolverine Room, Michigan Union

Mass Meeting #2:

When: Wednesday, September 28 from 6:45-8:30pm
Where: Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union

Volunteers from Detroit Partnership Day 2011 can be seen alongside other community members demolishing abandoned houses, planting trees, and creating public art in the Planet Green mini-series Detroit in Overdrive. The documentary highlights several stories about exceptional leaders doing exceptional things in their community.

While Detroit is often portrayed in a negative light because of issues with education, unemployment, and blight, the documentary examines the revolution that is sweeping across the city. Without ignoring these issues, the 3 one-hour episodes focus on everything from new technologies from heavyweights like General Motors to grassroots movements like community gardens.

Tune in on Thursday, August 4, at 8pm to watch the first episode of Detroit in Overdrive. All three episodes will be shown consecutively. The third and final episode, "It Takes a Village," begins at 10pm and, among other stories, highlights DP Day 2011.

Read after the jump to watch the commercial and the trailer.

Written by Chris Machielse

Dear Volunteers and Friends of The Detroit Partnership,

I'm Cassie Basler, and I am excited to write you as the Executive Director for 2011-2012. But before I look ahead to this coming year, I'd like to bring this year to a close by highlighting some of the DP’s accomplishments. Each of the following would not have been possible without the support of DP members, partners, friends and alumni and I thank all of you for your commitment:

The Education Team organized many informative campus events and meaningful reflection opportunities this semester. The team brought many notable speakers, such as poet and author Shaka Senghor and entrepreneur Philip Cooley, to engage students in discussions on Education Reform in Detroit, Business and Culture in Detroit, and The Pipeline to Prison and the Michigan Penal System.

The External Team revamped The DP’s web presence, bringing you a new website, an opportunity to purchase DP apparel online, an interview with NPR's Changing Gears, and the very E-newsletter you are currently reading.

The Major Events Team and West Outer Drive United Methodist Church of Brightmoor raised over $80,000 in service, food and clothing items for our fall One Stop Shop Food and Clothing Drive. Please see Joseph Sutkowi’s piece in the latest newsletter to learn more about this year’s successful DP Day 2011.

Our Community Teams and weekly program volunteers logged over 9,000 hours of service with over 18 Detroit community organizations, churches and schools in Southwest and Brightmoor. Coordinators also launched two new dance and squash programs.

The Finance Team was able to raise over $25,000 for Detroit Partnership Day and weekly programs this semester, ending the year with enough funding to apply for official 501(c)(3) federal non-profit status and to jumpstart fall programs.

With memories of Detroit Partnership’s successes and challenges in the past 12 years, The DP will continue to make our alumni proud as we move forward with our mission in mind. And as plans for a Ginsberg Project Community Course and an Alternative Spring Break trip to Detroit begin to blossom, The DP continues to increase its commitment to social justice through new service-learning opportunities.

I would like to thank each of our planning team members, community partners, volunteers, alumni, and newsletter readers for supporting The DP this year. I hope each of you will continue to spread love for Detroit, wherever the future may take you!

DP.LoveAndGratitude,

Cassie Basler
The Detroit Partnership, Executive Director 2011-2012

Written by Cassie Basler