If you know me at all you would know that I love food. All kinds of food. It might be the hospitality major in me, but whenever I sit down with a group of people for a good meal, I am as happy as clam. This explains why I chose Detroit SOUP as my last Challenge for Challenge Detroit. This final challenge was called the “Detroit Impact Project”, a project in which I had the opportunity to leave my mark on Detroit by partnering with a non-profit of my choosing. Naturally, I picked the one non-profit that had to do with eating soup.

Detroit SOUP is a monthly community dinner that funds micro-grants for creative projects in the city of Detroit. Community members come to SOUP and for $5 they get soup, salad, bread and a vote. Now, if you were me, you’d be sold immediately on the food aspect of that $5 deal – but that’s not even the best part. Before dinner, the audience hears 4 pitches for creative projects in the city. These pitches can range from flower gardens to clothing lines, but what they have in common is they want to make Detroit a better place. Community members have the power to use the vote they received with their five dollars to pick which pitch is the best for the city. In the end, the pitch that receives the most votes wins the pot of money collected through the $5-per-person admission fee. If this isn’t the perfect way to jump-start community involvement, fund creative projects and foster democracy to create a better city, I don’t know what is. AND YOU GET SOUP.

These past 5 weeks I have tried to submerge myself into the world of SOUP. With interviews, research and brainstorming, I have tried to come up with some ways that SOUP can create a plan for long-term sustainment. The most important thing that I learned was that this non-profit is the epitome of why Detroit will succeed.