Bringing Pocket Parks to ‘Kid Success Neighborhoods’ in Detroit

Windee Brown remembers growing up in Detroit. “It wasn’t easy,” she says. Her family moved away from Detroit when she was eleven. Now, two decades later, she has moved back with four kids of her own. Things are still tough. “Coming back home, it’s a complete shock for me,” she says. “I see the lack [of resources] in my community.”

Brown now works as a community engagement coordinator at the local non-profit organization Brilliant Detroit, which provides needed resources to families in underserved neighborhoods. Its mission is to create “kid success neighborhoods”: areas where young people and their families have everything they need — education, health, and family support — within twenty minutes of home. Now, the nonprofit has launched a program to build pocket parks at each of its twelve “home bases.”