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Detroit Engineer Works With Residents To Restore Their Community

A “lil positivity” and inspiration to put a pep in your step this afternoon!!

Via BMeCommunity.org:

By trade, engineers are problem solvers. When BMe leader Gaston Nash visited his hometown on the west side of Detroit after a post-college career, he found trash piled on the street, abandoned houses and a neighborhood in disarray. To improve the Fitzgerald community, he decided he had to move back and facilitate a new culture.

The Michigan State University graduate bought two houses, and restored one to be his primary residence. Around the time he moved in, students from the University of Detroit Mercy conducted a survey on why the area was doing poorly, and local residents discussed how to make improvements. The solution, they decided, was to form a coalition called the College Core Block Club, which Nash led as president.

“I saw the trash piles and a neighborhood that was kind of falling apart,” Gaston said.

“Creating the group was done out of almost necessity to try and get caring neighbors together, and improve the neighborhood. At the time I moved in, college students were doing their capstone projects for their master’s [degree] in community development. After some meetings with me and another neighbor, we decided to form the block club.”

Focusing their attention on a one-square-mile radius between University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove College, the group began restoring their district. They fostered three goals: find leadership in the neighborhood, create a culture of a clean and safe community, and establish a space for residents to gather. “Most of the kids grow up here thinking they don’t have any opportunity, or that somebody isn’t giving them something that they deserve, when the opposite is true,” Nash said. “It’s important to change the perception because it’s important for black kids to buck the stereotypes, love and believe in themselves as people.”

Nash’s proposition is the reason we was given a BMe Leadership Award in 2013. BMe Community is committed to building caring and prosperous communities inspired by black men. Started by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, BMe is now an independent organization with backing from Knight, Open Society Foundations, and the Heinz Endowment. BMe operates year-round in Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Pittsburgh and is expanding nationally.

For more on Gaston Nash and other “Everyday Stories” on black men who are assets to our society please check out BMeCommunity.org

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