Updates on the CoC Youth-Driven Community Center

Congress of Communities (CoC) is a non-profit located in southwest Detroit. We have been serving the community through community organizing, grassroots advocacy, and resident leadership development for over 10 years, visioning and learning and growing each year. Some major components of our work are a Latinx Youth Council, Taking Action por Nuestros Niños parent leader fellowship, early childhood education, and advocating for resident voice in incoming development. Our newest undertaking is creating a youth-driven community center in southwest Detroit – a project which is being funded through Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit (KIP:D), and supported by Michigan Community Resources, among many others.

The idea of creating a youth-driven community center was first born in fall 2018 at a Youth-Driven Spaces retreat through the Neutral Zone. A coalition of CoC’s youth and staff attending the retreat identified that while we are very youth-driven in many ways, such as having youth on our Board of Directors and encouraging Youth Council and Alumni to choose and lead their own projects and learning, our office doesn’t feel much like a youth-centered space. If you’ve ever met our Executive Director, Maria Salinas, you know she is radically supportive of our youth and residents, so she immediately took the feedback seriously and suggested buying a house in southwest Detroit to turn into a youth-driven community center. The Youth Council and our Board loved the idea, and threw their full support and effort behind it; we started searching for funding. When the 2019 KIP:D request for proposals was launched, we felt it was a great fit for our project, which was already very collaborative and resident/youth-led.

After receiving the grant in summer 2019, CoC formed a task force to direct planning and decision-making regarding the Community Center. Our task force is comprised of Youth Council members, Youth Council alumni, Board members, parent leaders, staff, and interns. The task force has been busy learning about zoning requirements, finding a house, reviewing the purchase agreement, and developing an outreach plan for incorporating more youth and resident feedback.

During our house search, CoC staff visited a place on St. Hedwig street that had just been listed, and while it was too small for our center, the empty house next to it was bigger, and even had a lot next door, which we’d be able to buy to use for parking, gardens, play areas, etc. The door was open, so we went inside and immediately fell in love. Using the Landgrid website (a super useful tool if you haven’t tried it), we found out that the owners of the house were local community members we already knew, so we reached out to see if they’d be willing to sell it to us. They were supportive of our vision of creating a youth and community space, and agreed to sell us the house.

The way KIP:D is structured, an organization gets a portion of the grant to do “planning”, then we are supposed to request for the “implementation” funds once planning is complete. Planning funds were not enough to buy our house, so we made a request to our Kresge program officer to receive a portion of the implementation funds before planning was officially done. In order to make this request, we met in person, and prepared a summary of our work, advocating for a variation of the timeline to be approved. Our program officer was able to secure funds for us, and the house was purchased in November. It’s important for funders to understand that timelines and needs vary from one organization to another.

Since identifying the house we were going to buy, we have added neighbors who live near the house to our task force, and we’ve canvassed all residents within a 400 foot radius of the house to let them know what we’re doing, seek their feedback, and answer questions. We are currently interviewing architects, designers, and contractors, seeking folks who will be open to our collaborative, youth-led model. Our goal is to hire Detroiters, and to increase the skills and capacity of our youth and adult residents through this project. Some of our next steps include holding focus groups with youth and parents to identify what kind of programming and design they’d like to see in the space, fundraising for the rest of the project costs, and completing our plot plan for the lots we are going to buy next to the house. We are so excited to be able to share our work and lessons we learn with the community!

We are learning so much about the process, and we are amazing at the outpouring of support from residents, youth, and parents! Stay tuned, and follow us on social media for timely updates!

Facebook: Congress of Communities

Instagram: @coc_swdetroit