Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Hello all:)!
My name is Tonya and it's safe to say I'm still alive (that's for you mama). More importantly, I'm loving my time here in Detroit. This is my first time blogging so bare with me on this journey of me attempting to transform my endless and messy thoughts into words.
This is my first Catalyst trip and I didn't know what to expect really. However, the third day was just Wah-BAM in my face. Hopefully you read the previous post, but we volunteered at Neighbors Building Brightmoor and Motor City Blight Busters which was very overwhelming. There are times where I question the impact we have on this community and the difference we are making, but when we volunteered at the Brightmoor Center... it was just different. Obviously we didn't see the center finished, however, when Brittany talked to us about the vision of the place I could see the passion and dedication in her eyes. Additionally, I was having a blast taking things apart with a hammer and hitting my dear friend, David, with dry wall. All the community gardens and artwork in that small space to which we walked through were incredible and breath-taking. I never witnessed such a thing within a community because it was filled with love and hope. BUT I can not express my emotions when we walked into the greenhouse. No joke, I was bouncing around the house shouting " Look it's ciltrano! OH! Broccoli!"(the co-op lover inside of me came out). Also the LGBT talk made me reflect on my community in St. Paul and my hometown. I wasn't exposed to it during my high school experience and ever since arriving to St. Paul, I'm sooo grateful for the resources and opportunities provided in my area. Overall, I'm learning so much about Detroit and just everything in this short amount of time. I would also like to say that today we volunteered at a soup kitchen by weeding out the gardens and that alone has conj
ured this small idea in my head. I'm planning to coordinate a community garden in my hometown where the community comes together and be all cute by growing produce together. During that we would educate the public about healthy eating and such, and then we would donate the food to the local food shelf. It would be this cycle of love, healthy livin', and togetherness.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. I apologize for all the emotions, typos, and more. Have a good night and check in the next few hours for new posts.

Tonya








1 comment:

  1. Hey Tonya! Glad to hear that everything is going wonderfully and hopefully everything works out in Virginia, MN!

    ReplyDelete