Stories of Impact

Transforming Southeast Michigan

Every day, the NEW team is hard at work alongside mission-driven leaders organizations across SE Michigan. But so much of our work happens outside the public eye, it’s hard to fully understand the impact of what we do. So we’re making a better effort at bringing the stories of our work to light. These are just a few of many…

For our friend Kallista Marie at Our Community Reads, the vision of a future where Black children feel empowered and academically confident is worth striving towards. Since 2020, OCR has been creating safe spaces for Black children to be seen, valued, celebrated, and empowered. They host monthly spaces for girls (3rd through 8th grade) and boys (4th through 10th grade) that foster connection and provide mentorship. They offer workshops that create opportunities for self-awareness and create confidence. And they even provide opportunities for students to travel, letting them explore and discover their world in new ways.

“Thank you so much Ms. K and your team for giving these girls this opportunity they will never forget. Love it. You rock.” – Queens Club Parent

Since our time together, Kallista often reflects on the conversations she was part of. “They opened me up, challenged my perspective, and expanded my heart. It’s helped me be a more evolved person, a community member, a mom, all of the things.”

“Kallista’s passion for literacy in particular with youth is contagious. She does a great job at connecting and collaborating with others in our Learning Communities. Even long after the programs have finished, she finds ways to still connect with other folks from other Learning Communities, such as Black Men Read. It was obvious that Kallista was not there to just learn for herself, but to nurture her sense of community and action, and other folks organizations. We feel so lucky to know Kallista and are honored to have her be a part of our community.” – Carly Friedrich

In 2023-24, NEW brought another seventy-nine (79) of SE Michigan’s leaders through our learning communities. We’re proud and grateful to work alongside Kallista and Our Community Reads in pursuit of our shared vision of a just and thriving society.

For our friends at Care-Based Safety (CBS), providing a non-police response to crisis, and growing life-affirming support and opportunities for all community members in Washtenaw County is work worth doing. They deliver a community co-created program with two mutually reinforcing aspects: Community Building and Crisis Response. They respond to conflict and crisis with trauma-informed care; prevent destructive conflict and crisis through skill-building and social support; and collaborate with community partners in addressing the root causes of crisis in Washtenaw County, MI. They are peer-led, and center those most impacted by state violence—our community members who are Black & brown, live with mental illness and disabilities, use substances, or are housing insecure and/or poor.

In Washtenaw County, nearly thirty percent (30%) of 911 calls are about mental health or housing—problems policing was never meant to solve. CBS works hard to provide alternatives that are rooted in care, not criminalization.

In the last two (2) years, CBS helped secure $2.4 million in County funding for homelessness intervention efforts alongside the Grassroots Homelessness Network in Ypsilanti. CBS successfully launched two community-based response pilots, demonstrating the impact of non-police crisis response in Ypsilanti. In 2024, CBS and its partners successfully advocated for Ypsilanti City Council to request Washtenaw County’s support in establishing a permanent homeless shelter and launching an unarmed crisis response team in Ypsilanti. Additionally, CBS has facilitated skill-sharing for over eighty (80+) community members through two Preventing Harm & Crisis Workshop Series, covering topics such as conflict de-escalation, harm reduction, and safety planning. CBS also participates in Ypsi Pull Over Prevention, a mutual aid fair that provides attendees with free mechanic support to address common causes of traffic stops that disproportionately impact communities of color.

“I’ve had enough of the police showing up when things go wrong. But with you, it feels like there’s a real chance at peace.” – CBS Community Member 

Despite their powerful impact in our community, Care-Based Safety was faced with an ultimate-level challenge. “Building a new organization is hard. We often say we are building the plane and flying it at the same time.” – Liz Kennedy, Culture and Operations, Director, CBS. That’s when they turned to NEW for help, and we’re glad they did! “NEW has been huge in helping CBS. In particular, bookkeeping services at NEW have been super supportive. We are now an expanded staff of six (6) people. Recently, we have received over fifty (50) applications for our winter response crisis position. NEW provided us with an entry ramp. They have helped us go forward. We already closed the fundraising goal to cover operations at the current level for the year. There would be no way to steward six (6) figure grants with as much ease and organization without NEW’s support!” 

Over the last two (2) years NEW’s IT team, financial services team, and fiscal sponsorship team came alongside CBS staff to support them in their growth. Since our time together, CBS’ impact has been “expanding and we wouldn’t have been able to do that without NEW. I consider myself a nontraditional nonprofit leader. I am queer, Black, and a survivor. NEW has supported me in building the skills to be a leader, and to show up in all of my identities. I am very grateful for the support from NEW. From leadership support to bank accounts to taxes and laptops, NEW has been essential to CBS’ growth these last two years.”

From July 2023 to June 2024, NEW supported over one hundred (100+) organizations in SE Michigan with IT and financial services, including fiscal sponsorship. We’re proud and grateful that Care-Based Safety is one of them. “Working with CBS is inspiring – their commitment to building new ways of supporting community, and how they lead the organization rooted in their values makes them a joy to work with. Their work expands our ideas of what’s possible when facing community conflict or emergencies that require care rather than policing.” – Megan Featherstone, Financial Services Program Manager, NEW.