Fourteen students return to the ‘D’ for ’empowering’ spring break experience

Some students just can’t get enough of Detroit.

On the heels of the all-school service day in Detroit on March 28, 14 students returned to the city last week for the second annual ‘Spring Break in the D,’ where they spent four days engaging in community service activities, including cleaning up parking lots, weeding gardens, and decorating homes for families coming out of shelters.

Even though students were just ‘in the D’ the week before, the spring break experience was anything but repetitious.

“This was a singularly empowering and absorbing service experience,” said Tristan Lopus ’14. “In fact, it turned out to be not as much of a service experience as much as it was an electrifying call to join the movement that is the future of a still-great city.”

“Last year’s trip made me interested in Detroit and this year made me really understand it and love the city,” added Maggie McMillin ’14.

Students who participated in the spring break excursion included: Christina Bartson ’13, Lalitha Ramaswamy ’13, Juliano Stewart ’14, Tristan Lopus ’14, Neil Sykes ’14, Krickett Kazyak ’14, Sarah Gargaro ’14, Allie Chatas ’14, Maggie McMillin ’14, Kaity Mussio ’14, Dom Johnson ’15, Tanwei Chen ’15, Maeven Barry ’15,and Rohan Shrimankar ’16.

“My hope is that the students were exposed to a variety of service-work throughout the week, while deepening their knowledge about the city and culture of Detroit,” said Greenhills Service Learning Coordinator Alyssa Friendly. “I was really impressed with our students on the trip – they were energetic, dedicated and fully engaged in the volunteer work. It was a wonderful way to spend spring break.”

During the week, Greenhills students worked with the following Detroit organizations:

Capuchin Soup Kitchen (helped in warehouse for homeless – packaging food, sorting clothes)
Detroit Rescue Mission (see Buckets of Rain)
Buckets of Rain (cleaned up parking lot and prepared garden beds for urban garden)
Ponyride (engaged in environment work at Roosevelt Park)
Earthworks (harvested spinach, rotated compost, weeded & mulched)
Arts ‘n’ Scraps (sorted recycled art materials into boxes for school donations)
Humble Design (furnished and decorated homes for two families coming out of shelters)
Beehive Studio (recorded original GH song)
Stukenberg Press (created signs using traditional letterpress equipment)