Dear Life Remodeled family,

If there’s one thing COVID-19 and the resulting economic downturn has shown us, it’s that there is a shortage of resources to address the disparities many lower-income communities face. As social change agents, Life Remodeled, like many nonprofits, has the responsibility to collaborate and share our resources to most efficiently address these challenges.

That is precisely why we partnered with community members to create the Durfee Innovation Society in the first place. The DIS is home to 33 tenants who provide equitable opportunities for families, youth and individuals in the Durfee-Central community, and since the start of the project, we’ve been committed to being more than just a landlord to these organizations. We regularly seek out opportunities to support our tenants and increasingly add value as a result of their presence at the DIS.

Just in the past few months…

• We were selected by the Co.act Detroit Collaboration Pilot, which will allow our tenants to more effectively collaborate within the DIS by sharing critical services such as grant writing and a global marketing strategy.

• We’ve implemented a data collection system for all tenants to help us better track key metrics such as how many adults/youth our tenants serve each month, how many residents are acquiring jobs and how many women and BIPOC are employed within the building, etc. This will allow us to more accurately illustrate collective impact and help inform the work we do to better serve the community.

• We’ve partnered with AmeriCorps VISTA to have two individuals join our team who are dedicated to increasing collaboration among tenants and spreading the word about DIS programming to the community. They will work closely with the DIS tenants to help foster collaboration and also share information about tenant offerings with community members. (Below is a picture of Terri, our newest VISTA!)

As we near the end of the building renovation, we are increasing our investment and commitment to creating sustainability and scalability of our opportunity hub model. We are proud to provide our tenants a space where they can focus less on operational inefficiencies and more on fulfilling their missions of providing opportunities to Detroiters in this community. When our tenants succeed, we all succeed, ultimately allowing us to take on even more opportunity hub projects throughout the city of Detroit in the years to come.

Doing “DIS” Together,