Mission
History
Who is Involved
Supporters
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Kids' Community Service
Volunteers/Teachers/Organizations
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Trainings We've Attended

We started as a part of a block club in 1995 with one volunteer, five kids, some books and origami. Now there is a group of over 50 kids, ranging in age from five to seventeen. The Front Porch extends to all these kids' friends and relatives who visit the neighborhood. 


If children have a safe, informal place where they are free to express their opinions and explore their talents and skills, supported by adults, and to meet other kids in their neighborhood within a structure and develop a sense of safety and true neighborhood then we should see a change in the attitude of the children and eventually the whole neighborhood. It should not be just a place to live but an interdependent place in which to grow, communicate, learn and explore: a safe place from which to begin a life not bounded by a neighborhood, but rather a life rooted in a place that is a springboard to the world. 

Front Porch Grown-Ups are the kind of people who...

• bake cupcakes for other people’s children. 
• pay for pizza for months for hundreds of kids because there is no money right now. 
• stuff their refrigerator with food that is not for them to eat. 
• run up their credit card bill on things for the kids with an uncertainty of reimbursement. 
• give a piece of their backyard to the neighborhood kids. 
• donate money toward the block party and referee the games. 
• cook up the hot dogs for kids after a water fight and not yell at them for stepping the flower beds. 
• bring the kids a pile of books hoping even one will interest them.
• show them how to saw a piece of wood. 
• sit on the porch for an hour and teach them how to knit or make a beaded necklace.
• explain a long lost game like marbles or jacks on a Saturday afternoon.
• will be the monster in a backyard movie.
• run a million thankless errands.
• take the time to chat with two friends having a disagreement.
• talk about neighborhood violence in order to work through it.

Over the years, these include*:

• the youth who started the program (Charlie, Shanelle, and Keith)
• the youth who guide the program (this is every kid in the program - for their privacy we do not list their names)
• Jean's mom and sister and Ms. Karen and Ms. Gene
• our many individual donors, our teachers, and our volunteers who generously give their time and dig in the dirt with the kids, get donations and think of us often.
•  the kind neighbors in the AWARE area
•  Youth Development Commission
•  New Detroit
•  Kiwanis #1 Foundation
•  Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan
•  Junior League of Detroit
•  Sieg Foundation
•  Eastside Community Resource and Assistance Center
•  Kelly-Morang Senior Center
•  Michigan National Bank
•  School of Public Policy Public Service Committee at the University of Michigan
•  Wayne State University Urban Safety Program
•  HUD/City of Detroit Neighborhood Opportunity Fund
•  City of Detroit Alliance for a Safer, Greater Detroit
•  Greening of Detroit
•  Pawlicki Studios
•  4-H
•  High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
•  Eastside Garden Supply
•  Damman Hardware
•  City of Detroit Heilmann Recreation Center
•   The Rock Shoppe
•   Classic Camera
•   AWARE
•   Detroit Public Library
•   Detroit Agriculture Network
•   the employees of DTE Energy
•   Marriott Hotel
•   Farm-A-Lot
•   Gardening Angels
•   Emiko and her students in Osaka, Japan
•   Schoolcraft College
•   Phil Pitters
•   Meijers
•   Costco
•   Rovin Ceramics
•   Diamond Jack’s
•   Sweetheart Bakery
•   Mr. Morreale 
•   Everyone at the Skillman Center for Children 2001- November 2006
  

When we say we use every available resource in the community, we mean it.

*in no particular order

Supporters Who Believed in The Porch 
and Now Rest in Peace