Today I finished the final Friday of my July Impact Project with Alternatives for Girls (AFG), a Detroit non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of homeless and at risk young women. I became aware of this organization while attending their annual Role Model Dinner at The Fillmore in March on behalf of my host company, The Suburban Collection. While there, I had the opportunity to meet some of their staff, and to listen to stories from girls who’d volunteered at AFG, received mentorship through one of their programs, and even a teen mother who’d resided there after finding herself with nowhere to go after being put out of her home with two young children. After the last teen shared her story, and explained how AFG had made such a positive impact in her life, my entire table was close to tears. In that moment I recognized how meaningful and necessary that their contribution was to the city, and hoped to one day be able to help their cause in some way, though I didn’t know how.

AFG Role Model Dinner 2014 – Source: AFG Facebook Page

When I found out that Challenge Detroit was letting us choose our own non-profit for the July Impact Project, I knew right away where I wanted to go, and was fortunate enough to be able to connect with AFG and make it happen. During the orientation that I received prior to beginning my work with the organization, I learned what a valuable role volunteers play at AFG, and about the many different programs and initiatives that they help to run smoothly. Over the past month I was tasked with coming up with various measures to bolster engagement among volunteers to include researching existing volunteer corps and volunteer training opportunities, planning a volunteer appreciation event and designing invitations for said event.

My experience at Alternatives For Girls, similar to Challenge #3 with Coalition for Temporary Shelter, was very meaningful to me in that I could clearly see the positive impact that this organization’s work has on real problems affecting the city of Detroit, and how important it will be to stay focused on quality of life issues such as homelessness, teen pregnancy, gang involvement and sex trafficking in the midst of the seemingly more popular, and “New Detroit-ish” issues of the day, that are in fact, most times not really issues at all in the lives of many Detroiters….