Solar Stories of Detroit

The Solar Stories of Detroit documentary project elevates 16 Detroit solar success stories with the use of collaborative storytelling techniques and in the form of short videos. From on-grid rooftop solar projects to off-grid ground mount solar installations, this video series allows us to travel across Detroit, from North to South, East to West, and discover the wide-ranging benefits that solar represents for the city’s varying communities and organizations.

In elevating the voices of diverse community leaders, Detroit residents, and business owners, who have “gone solar”, this project’s goal is to spread the word around Detroit that going solar is possible for people of all walks of life.

Ultimately, this project aims to help raise the citywide demand for solar, which will push government officials to be more prone to creating favorable and equitable policies for access to renewables. 

In the fall/ winter of 2020, Catherine “Cat” Diggs, DWEJ’s former Manager of Programs & Outreach, who began her journey with us at DWEJ as a LISC AmeriCorps service member, received a mini grant under the Innovation Project national pilot LISC AmeriCorps put forward to its members. The grant program seeked to provide service members with a bit of funding to get an Innovative Project of their own creation up and going before the end of their term. Cat was 1 of 3 members nationally to receive a mini grant. 

With this money, she commissioned her long-time friend and project partner, Alexandre “Alex” da Veiga, a photojournalist and videographer, who had recently relocated from Detroit to Philadelphia, to work with her on this documentary project idea.  You can check out some of his work here. 

Alex flew into Detroit in mid to late November and spent  a month doing community outreach and field interviews with Cat. Despite the spike in COVID cases at that time, their project was received with open arms by many Detroit community leaders, who agreed to meet with them in person.

Cat and Alex spent almost 7 months from January to July of 2021 working remotely on editing the 11 in-person and 5 virtual interviews they collected between November and December of 2020. 

Through some of our available grant funds, we, at DWEJ, have stepped in to provide further funding to help make this Innovation Project a reality. 

Why is it important? 

The impetus behind the Solar Stories of Detroit project was that Cat, who had been partnering with local clean energy and energy efficiency experts to develop programs in Detroit, had noticed that conversations about environmental issues and solutions, as well as community needs often took place in closed circles of subject matter experts. In other words, the everyday person, if present at those meetings, would not necessarily feel included or compelled by what is being said, no matter how pressing the issue is. The urgency of transitioning toward the use of renewable energy is no exception to that rule.

This project therefore seeks to provide an opportunity for Detroiters to have equitable access to information about the promise of solar energy in their lives and about what a clean energy future would look like for them. By making the language used less technical and by having the stories come from known and trusted community leaders, the project helps to  break down knowledge barriers for Detroiters surrounding the idea of going solar. 

Moreover, in a large urban sprawl like Detroit, it is crucial to connect success stories, in this case, solar success stories, and to centralize them into one place (i.e. the DWEJ website and YouTube channel) in order for Detroiters citywide to glean inspiration from them.  Oftentimes, community leaders are spread very thin between projects and are constantly on the search for more funding for their initiatives. One of the goals for Cat and Alex’s project was to give them a moment to stop and celebrate their accomplishment and be a part of a large Detroit-wide web of solar success stories.  

Furthermore, the City of Detroit, which has serious air quality problems due to its historic ties to the fossil fuel and auto industries, only currently uses 1% of its solar rooftop potential and sources less than 3% of its energy from renewables. For Detroit residents, who have historically suffered from asthma and chronic respiratory illness rates much higher than anywhere else in Michigan, solar energy could represent a transformative solution to our air pollution and public health problems. 

Here is a quick list of the community leaders who generously granted us their time throughout this project: 

• Malik Yakini, Founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (D-Town Farm)
• Diane Cheklich, Co-founder of D2Solar and Co-chair of the Renewable Energy Committee of the Green Task Force (resident of the Willys Overland Lofts building) 
• Gary Wozniak, Founder and Executive Director of Recovery Park
• Ben Dueweke, Sustainability Director at Walker-Miller Energy Services (resident of North Corktown) 
• Bob Chapman, congregation member of the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church 
• Pastor Wallace Gilbert Jr., Assistant Pastor at Church of the Messiah 
• Carolyn Leadley and Jack Van Dyke, co-founders of Rising Pheasant Farms
• Anita Sevier, Development and Alumni Relations Director at Gesu School 
• Lisa Nuszkowski, Founder of MoGo Bike Share Detroit 
• Reverend Faith Fowler, Executive Director of Cass Community Social Services
• Gibran Washington (Program Manager of Eco-D) and Henrik Mader (Energy Analyst), EcoWorks Detroit 
• Tammy Black, President of Manistique Community Treehouse Center
• Jerry Ann Hebron (Executive Director) and Natosha Tallman (Program Director) of Northend Christian Community Development Corporation and Oakland Avenue Farm
• Belinda Gilmore – Founder and Owner of Bent Rim Brew House
• Leandra King – Founder and Owner of Detroit Farm & Cider
• Jessica Hauser – Executive Director of the Downtown Boxing Gym Youth Program 

Looking Forward…Knowledge is Power 

The completed Solar Stories of Detroit video series now lives on DWEJ’s YouTube channel, website, and social media pages. We are also excited for the community leaders who made our project possible, to share the videos within their networks. The hope is that this project will help increase the everyday person’s interest and belief that citywide access to solar energy for all is indeed possible if we fight for it.  

Since March and every third Thursday of the month, the Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association (GLREA) has been featuring one of the Solar Stories of Detroit videos through the Michigan Solar Users Network (MISUN) statewide Zoom calls hosted by John Sarver, one of GLREA’s board members. The goal of this monthly meeting series is to raise Michigan-wide awareness about Detroit’s solar potential. Please feel free to check out the past 4 presentations, through the following links: 

• St. Peter’s Episcopal Church 
• EcoWorks 
• MoGo Bikeshare
• Rising Pheasant Farms 

There will be more to come in the next few months to a year.  

More concretely, this project is supporting the work of the Renewable Energy Committee (REC) of the Green Task Force (GTF), Detroit City Council’s advisory body on sustainability policies, which Cat has been actively involved in since the early days of the pandemic. Diane Van Buren and Diane Cheklich, the co-chairs of the Committee, were looking to collect case studies for how solar energy works for the City of Detroit and to create a platform through which other Detroiters can gain inspiration for starting their own solar projects. The Solar Stories of Detroit video series meets that need directly and all the videos are also featured on the GTF REC web page.

In April/May of 2020, the REC had launched a Solar Readiness Assessment project, through which nonprofit/neighborhood organizations and houses of worship were invited to get a free assessment by local installers to see how prepared they were to get solar installed on their properties.  The  groups that have been deemed “solar ready” could gain direct inspiration from some of these solar case studies and could gain valuable information on how to finance such projects. The idea is also for them to feel like they can contact the community leaders we have interviewed to ask questions and pursue a more elaborate conversation. This project therefore represents a way to bring people together and to strengthen a local support system for allowing others to go solar. 

The project will also help with the Detroit solar community’s common effort to revive the interactive “Detroit Solar Map”. This  map had been created in the context of the preparation of the Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda (2019), in order to determine how many megawatts of solar had been installed in the city. Now that the stories have been translated into video format, the incentive to update the map and repost it online, has been strengthened. This map will help the Detroit solar community collect data around new solar projects and trace the progress we are making in increasing our solar potential citywide.

Hopefully this project will become a more collective effort to document success stories and will live on into the future. To read some more, check out our Blog post on this project.

Check out the trailer to this documentary project, whose purpose is to to elevate the voices of Detroit residents, community leaders, and/or business owners, who have successfully “gone solar”. The final product of these collaborative interviews and storytelling techniques, is 16 videos. View the full playlist.

The Delray Neighborhood Framework Plan (2019-2020)

Helping Create a Community-Driven Neighborhood Plan 

The Delray plan is one of several neighborhood plans created by the City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department. For Delray, the City selected Rosetti, an architecture and planning based firm headquartered in Downtown Detroit, as lead consultant. Joining the team also, was Interface Studio, a planning and urban design firm based in Philadelphia. Having been selected to lead the community engagement strategy for the City’s Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda, DWEJ was added to this team to make sure environmental justice was incorporated into the conversation. Our goal was to make sure community needs would be accounted for throughout the process by helping to build the Framework Plan’s community engagement component.

A Bit More About Delray… 

The Delray Neighborhood Framework Plan is a proactive response to the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge/Trade Crossing between Windsor, Canada and Detroit. The 167 acre US terminal complex will be built in Delray. This construction project will radically alter the neighborhood through building the terminal complex, the destruction of numerous structures and roadways, and requiring the relocation of many residents. 

Delray is a historic neighborhood situated on the southwest side of Detroit. It was once called the “Hungarian Village” due to the many immigrants who settled there from that country. Over time, Delray and the surrounding neighborhoods became heavily industrialized and significantly underpopulated. Today, it is home to the expanded Marathon oil refinery and the largest sewage treatment facility in North America. Delray also shares a border with Detroit’s 48217 zip code, found to be the most polluted zip code in Michigan. 

Community Engagement Summary

As a result of the environmental justice issues faced by the Delray community, the Framework Plan includes a significant community engagement process, which DWEJ helped build with the rest of the consulting team and the Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition, who is serving as the Delray community liaison. This inclusive Community Engagement Plan sought to build trust through resident surveys, interviews, public meetings, advertising, and data collection. In other words, the goal of the engagement process was to work with the people of Delray to create a collective vision for what the neighborhood might look like during and after the construction of the bridge, rather than informing them after the fact. 

After completing the initial phase and distributing surveys and informational materials throughout Delray in July, the next challenge was to obtain input from the ~430 households who decided not to move out of the neighborhood. It was important to reach and engage them so consensus could be developed around key issues, such as development and revitalization, economic development, transportation and access, environment and infrastructure, and vegetative buffers and screenings. 

Despite COVID-19 having affected our team’s community engagement efforts, we are still striving to make sure the voices of Delray neighborhood residents are heard throughout the planning process.

See the official Delray Neighborhood Framework Plan.

The Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda (2019)

Recognized as a Trusted Community Leader

Along with many other organizations and Detroit residents, DWEJ spent years pressing for an Office of Sustainability within the Detroit City Government. Our combined efforts were rewarded in 2017 when Mayor Duggan established the Detroit Office of Sustainability. This action, which coincided with the publication of Detroit’s first grassroots Climate Action Plan, created goals for applying sustainability across all elements of City departments and domains, and brought Detroit into alignment with other large cities that were already addressing climate change.

Two years later, we saw the results of our work building the Detroit Climate Action Plan become the foundation of the Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda. After being created and staffed, the Office of Sustainability committed to create its own sustainability plan that would outline a strategic roadmap to create a more sustainable city where all Detroiters thrive and prosper in a more equitable and green city, as well as work together as resource stewards.

The Office of Sustainability began searching for a consulting team to help them implement a thorough, citywide community engagement process to generate the agendas’ goals and actions. Their goal was truly to reflect the will of the people of Detroit, especially those that had often been excluded from past planning processes. 

Building Strategy through Community Collaboration 

We were selected to oversee the design and implementation of the engagement phase, in conjunction with AECOM, EcoWorks, SAGA Marketing, and coUrbanize. It was truly a blessing for us earn this opportunity. Our goal was to work with grassroots community partners to determine how to move forward together with a shared vision, and to include residents from the beginning. 

Through our three-phase community engagement strategy, we used a wide array of methods to engage Detroiters in as many neighborhoods and demographics as possible, such as:

• 14 Sustainability Ambassadors from the community hired to maintain an ongoing presence in their neighborhoods 
• 4 Workshops relating to: (1) Environment and Health, (2) Housing and Neighborhoods, (3) Infrastructure and Open Space, (4) Transportation and Economic Opportunity
• 4 Town Hall meetings hosted across the city, which were widely publicized
• Paper and online surveys in multiple languages and formats that were shared at community meetings, face-to face, or distributed by the Sustainability Ambassadors. They were also circulated online through e-mail lists, websites, Twitter, and other social platforms, as well as through the coUrbanize website.
• 7 focus groups targeting under-represented communities
  

A Plan that Elevates the Voices of Detroit Neighborhoods 

Through this robust engagement process, our team reached thousands of Detroiters (residents and businesses), to learn more about the challenges they face in their day-to-day lives, as well as to hear their voices, opinions, and suggestions about building a more sustainable Detroit. We are proud to say that: 

• 6,800 Detroiters were engaged
• 1,600 surveys were collected in Spanish and English
• 1,200 online comments were collected on coUrbanize
• 2,000 Detroiters were reached by attending 100+ existing community meetings
• 860+ Detroiters met with  Sustainability Ambassadors
• 370 Detroiters were engaged through Town Halls
• 50+ Detroit-based organizations were engaged through eight Practitioner Workshops

Our combined, collaborative efforts allowed the voice of the people to not only be heard, but to influence and guide the development and focus of the Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda. 

Read more about the Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda Engagement Phase

Once this intensive engagement phase was accomplished, the Office of Sustainability laid out its plan for an accessible, transparent, and easy-to-read Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda. The Agenda was created to achieve four outcomes: (1) Healthy, Thriving People; (2) Affordable, Quality Homes; (3) Clean, Connected Neighborhoods; and (4) an Equitable, Green City. Through these outcomes, the City is committed to achieving 10 goals and implementing 43 actions to address many of the most pressing challenges that Detroiters face today.

Read the full report of the Detroit Sustainability Action Agenda

Working Together with Lawrence Technical University Students (2020)

Providing Students with Hands-On Experience 

DWEJ has partnered with universities in Detroit and around Michigan for many years. Sometimes, those partnerships are focused on research and policy development. Other times, they are more hands-on and directly engage students. In 2020, we worked with students from graphic design and industrial design classes at Lawrence Technical University’s Detroit Center for Design and Technology, located in Midtown Detroit. The collaboration was in two parts, each providing students with an opportunity to work with DWEJ, as their nonprofit client, and giving them real-life experience and project credentials. 

In one part of the collaboration, students worked in teams to design and produce promotional pamphlets and donation cards for DWEJ. The selected materials would be distributed to the public, our partners, at events and meetings, and via mail. Representatives from DWEJ met with students to review their proposal, provide feedback, and view the presentation of their completed work. 

Students Design their Vision of Sustainability 

In the second part of the collaboration, we worked with the same graphic design students and a class of industrial design students. They worked in teams to develop recycling and waste reduction pilot projects to support the waste management community in Detroit. Once again, we provided feedback, as well as advice on community outreach, launching innovative programs, and waste reduction/recycling in Detroit.

Two of our staff members, one with a strong recycling background and one with experience in social science and outreach/education programs, helped coordinate the project and shared resources and contacts. Our Community Engagement Coordinator arranged a field trip to Recycle Here!, one of Detroit’s first individual drop-off recycling centers, in order to give the students an up close and hands-on experience of the recycling process and what it entails. As with the promotional materials, the teams met with DWEJ to review proposed projects, get feedback, and present their work.

We are very proud of and thankful for the work they have done and we look forward to working with LTU more in the future!