Working together to transform Detroit into the safest city of its size, where people thrive
We are a coalition of community organizations supporting ongoing efforts to make Detroit the Safest City in the World. Our effort begins with literacy.
Our History
A conversation between friends developed into the vision of Detroit being designated as “Safest City In The World” within the next 25 years. It inspired these friends to invite others to brainstorm, research, and create an organization that would fulfill this idea with the cooperation of many different branches of our Detroit community. We learned from research reports and studies that this idea has been on the table for a long time and that various efforts have been made in individual areas such as policing, neighborhood development, employment, and social services – but nothing that coordinates and creates intersections between these programs with the larger goal of becoming the Safest City In The World.
Through our weekly meetings we developed a strategic plan that involved seeing real growth in several specific areas which would help Detroit not only to become the safest city, but also one of the most desirable for residency. We at first thought that focusing on the ZIP code which was known statistically as being the least safe would be a place to start our efforts. We met with various leaders there and decided to join the efforts of an organization called Arise Detroit which hosts an annual Neighborhoods’ Day in the summer, and volunteer to work with a group in the aforementioned ZIP code.
We soon realized that we needed to build our organization so that we could have the manpower and resources to seriously work on the challenges that faced our city and create collaborative efforts between different organizations that would create greater effectiveness for all. We built a core of volunteers, registered as a 501 c-3 charitable organization, got our social media outlets installed and had a website established. Then we decided to focus on one area that seemed to get little attention but was crucial to helping individuals and families to succeed in Detroit: adult literacy. We are planning an event to bring representatives of adult literacy organizations and representatives of potential funders together to discuss needs, visions, and solutions that will forward the goal of having 95% of Detroit adults functionally literate within the next two decades or sooner. We also hope to involve industries that are currently having difficulty finding employees because of the issue of illiteracy.