{"id":14008,"date":"2015-10-27T18:21:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T18:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?post_type=blogpost&p=14008"},"modified":"2015-10-27T18:21:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T18:21:37","slug":"leading-our-first-challenge-the-scoop-on-the-small-business-directory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/leading-our-first-challenge-the-scoop-on-the-small-business-directory\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading our First Challenge: The Scoop on The Small Business Directory"},"content":{"rendered":"

This fall, Devon and I were thrilled to be selected as the two fellows to help lead our peers on our first challenge project with the Mayor\u2019s Office. As lifelong locals to Detroit, we have worked with the City of Detroit in various small capacities in recent years and coming into this project we had a great level of respect and excitement to partner collaboratively with this current administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Neighborhood Small Business Directory was a recent \u201cbig\u201d idea from the Mayor\u2019s Office to address the following challenge: \u00a0\u201cHow does the city showcase and stimulate new business for some of Detroit\u2019s oldest, best, and most unique establishments, many of which are also tucked away in far corners of the 140 square miles that make up the City?\u201d Beyond being a just business directory, our project had a creative focus. The main objective for this challenge was to leverage the power of story-telling to create profiles of the many \u201chidden gems\u201d aka neighborhood businesses and also produce narratives for each of the City\u2019s seven districts. \"IMG_3129\"<\/a>Fellows were divided among the council districts and we helped coordinate the teams as they planned how to immerse themselves in learning about Detroit\u2019s diverse and special neighborhoods. The District Managers were very helpful in liaising with our teams and introducing them to the businesses in their neighborhoods. The teams met and interviewed local business owners to hear \u00a0their stories and also enjoyed getting to know them, sampling their products, and even taking some great photos. The fellows also got to let their creative juices flow a little and come up with recommendations for ideas that the city or individual businesses could implement to increase awareness for the Neighborhood Small Business Directory or local businesses themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

To support the Mayor\u2019s Office in bringing this directory to life meant that we as fellows needed to embrace an \u201call hands on deck\u201d approach, and the Challenge Detroit fellows were more than happy to step up. The fellows\u2019 effort and passion for the project paid off as our partners in the Mayor\u2019s Office were impressed by how much ground we covered and data we gathered in addition to the special stories of the businesses we presented. Each and every team was able to paint a rich narrative about their district that encapsulated fascinating insights and compelling personal struggles that come along with being a small business owner in Detroit. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"FullSizeRender<\/a>As fellow project leads, Devon and I were reminded first-hand that the first of anything is never easy, especially when you set high standards for yourself and your \u201cfellow fellows\u201d. We did our best to keep everyone relaxed, enthusiastic, focused, and on schedule. \u00a0In the end, we were both honored to have been chosen to as the first peer project leads, and to have partnered with the Mayor\u2019s Office to help serve our City\u2019s local business community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to view the online directory, \u201c<\/span>Do.It.Dream.It.Detroit<\/span><\/a>\u201d, and check out a Detroit small business you have never visited before!<\/span><\/p>\n

This blog was written by Year 4 Fellows and Challenge 1 Project Coordination Leads,\u00a0Gabriela Santiago-Romero<\/a> and Devon O\u2019Reilly<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This fall, Devon and I were thrilled to be selected as the two fellows to help lead our peers on our first challenge project with the Mayor\u2019s Office. As lifelong locals to Detroit, we have worked with the City of Detroit in various small capacities in recent years and coming into this project we had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":14013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25,19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-givedetroit","category-community-outreach","category-detroit","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}