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Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published April 28, 2006

Detroit –Lynne Huff knows how to introduce teenagers to Christ.

She gives them shovels, sledge hammers and wheelbarrows.

She has them carry brooms, buckets of cleaning supplies and mixed paint.

And she brings them face-to-face with people whose hearts they can fill with joy by helping clean their homes, neighborhoods and businesses.

Lauren Fosmoen (center) and her peers from the youth group at Christ the Redeemer Parish, Lake Orion, try to turn a vacant lot into a garden. Over the past eight years, the youth group has worked with Detroit nonprofit agency Blight Busters to tear down houses, paint murals, clean parks and prepare storefronts for businesses in the city.

Huff is the director for youth ministry at Christ the Redeemer Parish in Lake Orion. For the last eight years, the parish's youth groups have set aside their spring break week for a Christian service project through Blight Busters, a nonprofit organization keyed on the revitalization of Detroit neighborhoods in need.

Over those years, youths from the parish have helped demolish 21 condemned houses, renovate or restore several others, clean parks, plant gardens, paint murals and renovate storefronts in the Old Redford district on Detroit's west side.

"What they're learning is that we're all connected to each other and what we do impacts one another," said Huff while overseeing her youth group turn an empty lot into a garden last week. "Things that we do in the city in a positive way have a positive impact."

Ask Nancy Green about the positive impact.

Green owns a small shop of manufacturing supplies near Lahser Road. Last year, the group from Christ the Redeemer surprised her by taking an ugly, overgrown part of her lot and mowing, tilling and planting until it looked beautiful.

John Potocki strikes the hard dirt with a pickaxe to help make way for a garden near the corner of Lahser Road and Grand River Avenue.

Then, the teenagers went into her business, which contains literally millions of small parts for industrial machinery, and organized each part in every room inside the place.

"They touched my heart all the way down to my toes," Green said. "They came in with an attitude to beat all. It was just a beautiful thing. I've never been more impressed with a group of people."

You could ask Chazz Miller about positive impact, too. When Blight Busters was looking for someone to help beautify areas of the city that were routinely tarnished with graffiti, they found Miller – a gifted fine artist with a hunger to help his community.

Christ the Redeemer's youths took an empty store front on Lahser Road, tore out the floor, stripped the walls and prepared the way for it to become what it is today: a community art studio in which Miller teaches local youngsters to express themselves through art as a way of positive and healing expression.

"Without them, it wouldn't exist," Miller said. "There's just no way. The manpower is just tremendous – the energy, the organization. This place is running like a ship. It takes a lot."

The youths from Christ the Redeemer in the past three years have helped Miller paint murals on several of the surrounding buildings.

The teenagers themselves have many other stories to share of their work in Detroit.

Seventeen-year-old Lauren Fosmoen has been participating in the parish's service project for four years. She'll never forget the grateful expression on a woman's face as the youth group restored the woman's house after it had been firebombed.

There have been many other signs of gratitude from the community as well, she said.

"We were cleaning around a park and the neighborhood kids came out and were like, 'Can I help?'" Lauren recalled. "And just to see them want to fix up their neighborhood – that's what's inspiring."

Those are the types of stories that Blight Busters is built upon.

Christ the Redeemer is one of several parishes around the archdiocese that supply Blight Busters with a total of 7,000 to 10,000 volunteers each year, though one of a few organizations to lend such a large group – typically in the dozens – for a week of heavy lifting.

Catholics from all over have been known to pitch in, whether from those parishes nearby Blight Buster headquarters on the city's west side such as Christ the King and the former St. Christine parishes, or those further out in the suburbs such as Holy Family Parish in Novi and St. Andrew's Parish in Rochester.

Fine artist Chazz Miller has decorated parts of Detroit with giant murals, and has received a lot of assistance from volunteer groups, including the youth group from Christ the Redeemer Parish, Lake Orion.

Blight Busters was started 18 years ago by Christ the King parishioner John George to take back neighborhoods that have become gang territories or fallen into disrepair.

"What we want is, at the end of the day, for people to see that they really contributed to something positive, meaningful and ultimately something that will help everyone," George said. "Everyone's invited to participate in the rebirth of the city."

Though it's not natural for the Church to mix with the mission of a nonprofit, George added that the Christian aspect of Blight Busters is unmistakable.

"You have to remember, Jesus was the carpenter," he said. "The importance of the teachings of the Church are really interwoven within our philosophy of inviting everyone to participate, and benefiting the whole community.

"It's also safe to say that we pray daily for guidance, resources, finances, the health of our volunteers and the safety of our community."

According to Alicia Marion, executive assistant for Blight Busters, such prayers are being answered in the Old Redford district. Dozens of businesses have opened in the past few years. Still others have been renovated and expanded.

And sidewalks formerly trafficked by gang members have been rediscovered by children and families.

"People are coming around the neighborhood (to businesses) and saying, 'Are – are you open?' and we say, 'Yeah, come on in!," she said. "They're walking here now because there's something to look at or to stop by. We're changing the mentality of the neighborhoods, and when we do that people take ownership of it."

Changing attitudes is an important part of the service project, as 16-year-old Christ the King parishioner Jeremy Andridge can tell you.

Christ the Redeemer parishioners (from left) Stephanie Compagnoni, Mariam Wisnewski, and and Laura Potocki, remove rocks from the field to make way for a garden.

He gets joked by his friends when he tells them he's going to volunteer in Detroit.

"They say things like, 'Oh, don't get shot,'" Jeremy said.

But since first helping tear down houses and paint walls with Blight Busters three years ago, Jeremy said he can put those false stereotypes behind him and focus on the progress that's being made.

"I just like to watch the improvements that we make here," he said. "We're working here and we just get people watching us, and they thank us.… Some people want to help us because they like what we're doing, and that's a really good feeling."

It's a good feeling, said his fellow youth group member Amy Ambraczyk, because it's the way Christ showed Christians how to live.

"As Christians, we are brothers and sisters with everyone," Amy said. "And it's important that if one of your brothers was living in poverty – or living in a firebombed house – you would help them out."

Rolling up their sleeves In the past eight years, the youth group from Christ the Redeemer has   • Torn down 21 condemed houses • Restored houses that had fire and other damage • Turned overgrown, weed-filled lots into gardens • Gutted empty storefronts to turn into businesses and community resource centers • Converted graffiti-strewn walls into colorful, uplifting works of art

In Christ, Amy noted, people are of one family, and if it was unhealthy attitudes that divided people, it's healthy, Christian attitudes that have to reunite them.

"That's what we're doing, is showing them that we are their family and we are in solidarity with them, showing that we are supporting them and encouraging them."

Another of the projects the Christ the Redeemer youth group worked on last week also involved reaching over racial barriers by cleaning and decorating portions of Detroit's "Berlin Wall," a miles-long structure on Eight Mile Road that was rumored to have been built to separate the black population of Detroit from the white population of the suburbs.

The project, like all others within Blight Busters, had them working with people of different colors, creeds and parts of the city.

Most important, Huff said, was that projects like those at Blight Busters give Christian youths personal connections with those they know are needy around them. Instead of knowing about Detroit by hearing about violent crimes on the news, she said, they know it by having invested time and effort into helping the city – and building friendships with those in it.

"When you develop a relationship with somebody, then you gain a personal interest," Huff said. "And that's what this is about, developing those relationships.

"It's personal, and they care about it. They're going to come back and tell other people, and for the rest of their lives they're going to have a personal relationship with this community and they're going to want to help this community grow and thrive."