Detroit Free Press publishes community service retrospective by Ben Falik

The Detroit Free Press published an article by Ben Falik looking back on the first decade in the life of Summer in the City, the community service volunteer organization he co-founded as a college sophomore.

Summer in City is a community organization that brings youth volunteers to Detroit to spend the summer painting murals, planting gardens, and educating inner-city children. Falik said that from the outset its intention was to "change the impact that volunteers had on Detroit — and the impact that the city had on them."

Falik's retrospective discussed the recent celebration of Summer in the City's tenth anniversary, which centered around painting a two-story tall mural of a scene from The Lorax. In the first decade of the group's existence, its volunteer membership has grown to more than twenty times its original size, and it has gained a permanent home. Falik is optimistic about its future.