Warren-Conner Development Coalition
Maggie DeSantis
10100 Harper
Detroit, Mich. 48213
(313) 571-2800

More than a decade ago, a group of residents, community organizers and the representatives of institutions along Conner Avenue, a main artery that runs north and south through Detroit's battered East Side and that incorporates industries, parks, a hospital and a college along with thousands of residents along its length, realized that the only way to try to bring their community back was to band together.

"We felt like underdogs and we were sick of it," Maggie DeSantis said. "We're regarded as 'the bad part of town,' and we're unrepresented in the city's at-large system."

With a high level of competence and a low tolerance for what Maggie DeSantis delicately calls "B.S.," the community began a series of goal setting meetings that led in 1984 to the incorporation of WCDC as a "non-profit development coalition," named after the two major streets that intersect in its neighborhoods.

Over the years, WCDC has started up a broad array of innovative programs, some modeled after good ideas in other places and some seemingly unique. Most of the programs fall into three broad categories: Youth and Family Development, Community Education and Organizing, and Economic Development. "They all fit together," DeSantis said. "All three are required for an organization like this to have an impact. You can't have a substantial economic base without organizing. You can't organize without the other supports in place. They all relate."

Following are some of the highlights of WCDC activities within each of the broad program areas:

Economic Development: First, in a truly unique concept, WCDC makes members of the community economic participants in its own economic rebirth by selling shares of its for-profit real-estate development corporation, Detroit East Community Development Corp. (DECDC). Residents buy into the corporation with shares from $25 to $1,000, which not only helps raise the corporation's $325,000 capital base but also gives members of the neighborhood both an emotional and a genuine sense of ownership that welds the shareholders -- 250 of them at last count -- into a powerful political force. DECDC has also leveraged more than $2 million to build Mack-Alter Square, a 5-acre commercial development that will include two retail stores, a wellness clinic, a state office and, eventually, a supermarket. Another economic development initiative, The Detroit Eastside Industrial Forum, brings together community leaders and the officials of local industrial firms large and small to conduct "workforce development," creating and retaining jobs for neighborhood people.

Community Education and Organizing: Project LEAD, a leadership development training program, is designed to train and inspire neighborhood activists and equip them, through 12-week training courses, with tools for problem solving, developing projects, fund-raising, communications and other skills neighborhood leaders need. WCDC also publishes a community newspaper, "The Pipeline," and provides technical assistance to grassroots groups and research on community issues.

Youth and Family Development: The Partnership for Economic Independence (PEI), modeled in part on San Antonio's Project Quest, seeks to restore chronically jobless families to self-sufficiency through a holistic approach and paraprofessional "coaches" who will guide them in finding whatever resources are needed to solve their particular problems. In addition, organizers worked with local manufacturers and health care employees to create "employment tracks," in which the employers work with WCDC to create jobs and train PEI clients to fill them. Started only this year and serving 75 families (150 percent of the first year's goal), PEI has already placed 20 individuals in jobs. Another model program, Youth on the Edge of Greatness (YOE), develops "indigenous leaders" among the community's young people, training them as junior community developerment practitioners.

Operating out of the basement of the red-brick castle that houses Detroit's Eastside YMCA, WCDC has a staff of 45 and an annual budget of 2.3 million. It has recently received a major grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, allocating $160,000 to form a coalition of residents and local institutions to develop a model neighborhood-development plan. The plan, if approved, could yield another $3 million over two years for implementation.

Detroit's East Side is an economically battered neighborhood, with many vacant lots and abandoned buildings and horrid unemployment rates, with only 35 percent of men over 16 currently employed and only 24 percent of women at work. But the group has hope, and it's doing something to make its dreams happen. As its brochure says, "Our dream is to build on the richness that already exists here, and shape our community into the pleasant, safe and diverse neighborhood that has defined our history and can assure our future."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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