Semester in Detroit Alumni are our best program ambassadors and remain important stakeholders long after they have finished the program. Many, in fact, choose to move to Detroit to live and work after graduation. Over half of SID students who were graduating seniors while in the program have gone on to move into Detroit to live and work. Here are a few of their stories:
Diana Flora (in red) participated in the inaugural SID program in winter 2009 and interned with 12th District State Representative Rashida Tlaib. After graduating, she moved to southwest Detroit and spent a year as an Americorps intern with Gleaners Community Food Bank. In the summer of 2010, she was hired as Campaign Manager for Representative Tlaib's run at a second term in the State House where she was easily re-elected. Diana is currently a Master's student in the U-M Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She intends to return to Detroit upon graduation in the spring of 2012.
Angie Karr also participated in the inaugural SID program in winter 2009 and interned with the HUB of Detroit Bike Shop. Her project that semester involved partnering with the Capuchin Soup Kitchen to launch a satellite bike shop for users of this important social institution on Detroit's lower eastside. Upon graduation that semester, Angie moved to Detroit to live in the TrumbullPlex and work for the HUB of Detroit Bike Shop. Today, nearly two years later, Angie has become fully immersed in Detroit and is helping to develop an off-shoot of the HUB Bike Shop called Fender Bender that would encourage girls and young women to embrace bicycling in the City.
Patrick Morris, a Ford Public Policy Graduate, participated in SID 2010 and interned with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. He spent much of that semester in a 4th-grade classroom at GoLightly Elementary School helping students to hone their creative writing skills. Upon graduation, he traveled around the country and world only to return to Detroit in January 2011 to take a job with a new Detroit non-profit organization called Racquet Up Detroit. Today, he lives in the city and provides tutoring and mentoring to elementary school students in NW Detroit at the Northwest Activities Center.
