Timberrrrr! Global Youth Service Day Gardening in Detroit

Team Detroit's Global Youth Service Day project started off pretty laid back, but ended with cutting down a tree! We started at Eden Garden in northwest Detroit, helping to prepare two large gardens for planting. We met many residents from our cluster (the Greening of Detroit organized Detroit into 10 clusters for garden tool sharing). After that, we got some lunch and headed over to our community garden. After talking to Lindsay from Greening of Detroit, we realized that we should cut down a mostly dead Ash tree that was blocking all of our morning sunlight, and would probably get eaten by the emerald ash borer. Since none of us on Team Detroit is a lumberjack, we enlisted the partner of one team member (whose name is actually Jack!) and his father to help us.

Here's a video of Jack's dad Chuck cutting the front wedge out of the tree:


Here's a video of Jack cutting the tree down while his dad drives the truck away. There's a rope attached to the truck to pull the tree in the direction away from the power lines, the apartment building, and the car parked near the tree...

Isiah the Prophet

I took this video during one of our team days earlier this year. Great job Isiah!

HIV Testing at the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion

Team Detroit helped the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion with their HIV Testing for National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day on March 10th.  We saw a lot of clients and gave presentations throughout the building to recruit.  Testing took place in the regular HIV clinic and on the DHWP mobile unit, pictured here.  It was my first time seeing the ClearView method of testing - it's fast!  We had a great turnout, despite the rain.  Luckily there were a few rain-free minutes so we could snap this picture!

AmeriCorps World AIDS Day Service

To see Team Detroit's official post from the NAF AmeriCorps blog, visit: http://nafblogger.blogspot.com/2008/12/world-of-desserts-team-detroits-world.html

World of Desserts was fun! We had fun setting up the tables, minus the few splinters we got... It was great that Jerelle and Terry were there, too! I hope we raised a lot of money... the Michigan AIDS Fund awarded some awards for people who do work in the community, and my supervisor at HARC won one :-)

AmeriCorps Make a Difference Day Service

View the team's official post on the NAF AmeriCorps blog: http://nafblogger.blogspot.com/2008/12/team-detroit-makes-difference-at.html

I unfortunately wasn't there for this day, though I heard it was a ton of "fun"... we cleaned the kitchens at Alternatives for Girls (I was busy taking my first exam of grad school!). Make a Difference Day is a national day of service through AmeriCorps and other service organizations.