Blightbusters: the update, the event and "The News" article link

Since this post got a little long, I figure I will put the link to the Detroit News article here:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080329/METRO/803290422

Seriously-

www.blightbusters.org is a great organization!  What a great event this past Saturday and what a TON of LOVE.  You could absolutely feel the vibration and the shift toward positive energy that was made.

900+ students from the University of Michigan came out to make an impact on an area in Northwest Detroit.  And make an impact they did.  I only visited 3 of the 5 project sites, but I will tell you what I saw.  We spent the first 3 hours of the day on Lahser Road working on 3 houses that were the likes of things I have never seen.  One of them had caught on fire.  This particular house must have been a storage facility for books.  Do you remember the movie "Finding Forester"?? Imagine his library times 100.  It was incredible.  The irony of all of that knowledge stored and destroyed in that area of town didn't escape us as we pulled garbage can after garbage can full of books to the dumpster. 

It's interesting that you would take so much care prior to "leveling" a site.  But that's just what John George and his crew at www.blightbusters.org do.  They are concerned for the well being and betterment of us all.  We literally had 150 people "schlepping" debris, books and trash out of these houses getting them ready for demolition.  Within 90 minutes we had completely filled up a 20 yard trash receptacle.  We needed at least 3 more of them.

The two other projects that I witnessed was one where they were actually doing street clean up around the intersection of Grand River and Lahser (known as historic Redford).  When Spring comes, we all know about how dirty the area can look and this part of town is now an exception.  The crews did a great job of getting it all cleaned up.

Chazz Miller has done some outstanding Murals in and around this area.  Saturday was no exception.  Crews prepped building sides for Chazz and his students to put a positive brush on things.  Frankly, I am excited to head back down there next week to see the improvements.

People ask me why I am so enthralled with www.blightbusters.org.  There are two main reasons:

1.  They have a mission of making Detroit a better place to be for us all.  They literally want to "stabilize, revitalize and repopulate the City of Detroit".  In order for that to happen they HAVE to make a positive impact.  And you know what, they do it EVERY single day in many, many ways.

2.  Their leadership team.  They are passionate, committed and absolutely driven to see this succeed.  Did I mention they do it every day??  It's amazing what can happen when a small group of people focussed on a common goal get together to be the change they want to see in the world.

On April 9, I will be heading down to Blightbusters to talk about fund-raising.  Please let me know if you would be interested in that conversation.

I can tell you that we will be picking a day in May when the good folks of Motorcityconnect will be invited to make OUR OWN impact with blightbusters.  There is a good chance we will do it twice this year.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Today is a wonderful day, what will you do to make the most of it?