Strategic Doing in Flint, Michigan

Flint, Michigan continues to struggle through a challenging transformation. For the past seven years, we have been working in Flint, supporting a remarkable core team.

Recently, we learned that Bob Brown, our colleague from Michigan State, will be receiving a lifetime achievement award from the university. The Excellence in Diversity Awards recognize and reward the efforts of MSU faculty, staff, and students to create and support an environment where diversity and inclusion are valued.

Here’s some background on our work in Flint.

Our Starting Point

We have been working in Flint for 7 years. We have a core team that started rebuilding neighborhoods using Strategic Doing. You can see a short video of our core team as we started our work together.

It started with a partnership between Purdue and Michigan State in an effort to reduce teenage homicides. How could we use Strategic Doing to reduce teenage homicides?

WOW Outreach and Neighborhood Without Borders: Kenyetta Dotson and Bob Brown

That work in reducing violence continues with WOW Outreach and Neighborhoods Without Borders.

• WOW Outreach is led by Kenyetta Dotson. You can see more about Kenyetta here and here. She is President of the YWCA Board, a member of the Flint Board of Education, a dedicated member of Church Without Walls, founder of WOW Outreach.
• Neighborhoods Without Borders is led by Bob Brown from Michigan State. Bob started our work together when he reached out to us at Purdue. Bob is associate director of the Center for Community and Economic Development (CCED) at Michigan State and heads up the Flint office. Along with Tendagi Ganges and Kenyetta, he founded Neighborhoods Without Borders.
• For WOW Outreach and Neighborhood Without Borders, Strategic Doing has become a way of life, They continuously come up with new initiatives, such as Hugs for Unity.

In 2018, Governor Rick Snyder named Kenyetta Volunteer of the Year.

Tendaji Talks: Donna Ullrich

When we started our work, our Fliint core team was also led by an extraordinary human being, Tandaji Ganges.

Sadly, Tendagi died rather suddenly. To honor his memory, we now have Tendaji Talks, designed to address racism in Flint.

• Tendaji Talks are led by Donna Ullrich and Bob Brown.

When I asked Tendaji why he liked Strategic Doing, he had a simple, but profound answer: "You broke our grant addiction".

Creating a New Food System for Flint: Artina Sadler

Our core team continues to build out our work in Flint. Artina Sadler at the Community Foundation has been designing a new food system in Flint.

• Learn more about Artina’s work here.

Mentoring Flint's Youth: Hubert Roberts

Hubert Roberts continues his work with Flint's youth. Hubert is another powerful civic leader in Flint. You can read about Hubert’s work here. Watch a documentary on Hubert's extraordinary journey:

• In one of his initiatives, Hubert organizes a monthly greeting of high school students as they come to school in the morning (6:45 am). Hubert and his colleagues line up on either side of the hallway, after the metal detectors, and welcome students with encouraging words, smiles, and fist bumps.

Teaching Strategic Doing in Flint

Every year, we conduct Strategic Doing training in Flint. Bob Brown leads this work. Recently, Bob recorded a short explanation about how Strategic Doing is transforming lives in Flint.

All of this work is happening without much money. And that's the point. Communities are developed from the inside out. We start with the assets we have in our networks.

You can learn more about our work in Strategic Doing here. Or, if you are interested in training in this open source operating system for collaboration, send us an e-mail to [email protected].