At 24 Chris Casteel became an amputee due to a motorcycle accident.

Chris: One minute I was a man living in the auto industry and the next day I was disabled and unemployed and now I had to ask for help.

It was a vulnerability he was unaccustomed to. But Chris did something that not many in his situation would do. He started visiting other amputees in the hospital offering to help them

Kim: It wasn’t fast enough with Chris wheeling himself so he said, “Kim, you need to wheel me to all these rooms because I can’t get there fast enough. And there were so many motorcycle victims and he wanted to talk to every one of them.

Chris’s passion for helping others grew into a new profession. He became a certified Orthotist and Prosthetist and he and Kim founded Anew Life Prosthetics and Orthotics.

Mitch: There’s been so many advances in the world of prosthetics.

Chris: We’ve been doing digital scanning to capture the geometry and then CAD CAM like in the automotive industry to modify that geometry. Now, 3D print, so devices that would be manually made. Now we can 3D print in a fraction of the time.

These advances have afforded Chris and Kim the opportunity to support a new clientele. They work alongside shelters, churches, and organizations to identify needs in the homeless community.

Mitch: And you provide these prosthetics to members of the homeless community and others for free.

Chris: As often as we can.

Mitch: Is that we’re A New Life came from?

Chris: Yes, A New seems to work very well for a descriptive for what we do for people.

An accident changed his life but this time for the better. Chris and Kim Casteel are giving the gift of mobility right here in the heart of Detroit.

Inside Troy Design and Manufacturing is a little studio where beautiful jewelry is being made. Its makers are survivors of domestic abuse. Its goal is to provide a path to healing. A process that founder Joanne Ewald understands all too well.

Joanne: I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. When I was growing up, you just didn’t talk about those things. But it caught up with me when I was an adult. Really hit me hard when I had kids of my own. I’m getting a little emotional here.

Mitch: It’s OK.

Jewelry making was integral to Joanne’s healing. So in 2015, she founded Mend on the Move to provide an opportunity for fellow survivors to take their lives back.

Joanne: We teach them how to make jewelry and it’s made from resalvaged auto parts and salvaged car seat leather. But it’s so much more than that because it provides them with a community a community of like minded women who’ve been through similar situations. And, you know, it’s in that community they create and they also learn to heal. We’re walking alongside with them and helping them through it.

Mitch: So there’s something symbolic about taking a throwaway thing and turning it into something beautiful, isn’t it?

Joanne: Yeah that’s what Mend is all about. Scrap car parts being turned into something beautiful but that’s how our women feel, they feel like scrap. They feel worthless. I felt worthless. I felt like I didn’t have anything to bring to the table. I didn’t have anything to offer and that’s not true and that’s really what we’re trying to do with this program. From scrap to splendor in more ways than one.

Joanne Ewald is helping fellow survivors who just need a little “Mending” right here in the heart of Detroit.

Katrina Watkins mission to turn blight into beauty in her McDougall-Hunt neighborhood started in 2013.  The idea was simple – clear the overgrown vacant lots and eventually build the beautiful community park we see today.

Mitch: You went from a park, but you didn’t stop at a park.

Katrina: Bailey Park is a core group of residents, and we’re working to create this change based on what the residents want in the neighborhood. So we have like Open Space, which focuses on like park development, beautification, residential strategies, which focuses on what residents need, like home repairs. And we also have like Housing Development. Hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to bring affordable housing to the neighborhood.

Mitch: Why didn’t you just move? What made you stay and say, “I’m just going to basically turn this into my life to make this neighborhood better?”

Katrina: The neighborhood mattered to my father. My father moved to the neighborhood in the 1950s, so he was one of those families who lived in Black Bottom. I wanted to build that neighborhood connection that he talked about, where you can leave a key with your neighbor and the neighbors looked out for each other back in those days.

Mitch: If all the pieces could fall in place and you were to take me on a tour of it one day when it was all done, what will we be seeing?

Katrina: You would see a really great park that’s a destination for people when they come to Detroit. You would take a stroll down our historical alleyway walk and just be mesmerized with the history and the education and the people who are there.

Mitch: We’ll take the tour together.

Katrina: Okay. (laugh)

Mitch: And I am going to hold her to it.  Katrina Watkins and her neighbors are inspirational agents of change, right here in the heart of Detroit.

Darryl: At the age of 18 I was sentenced and condemned to life without the possibility of parole for a crime I did not commit.

Mitch: Did you think your life was done at that point?

Darryl: Initially I did.  

But even while behind bars, hopelessness soon turned to purpose for Darryl Woods. 

Darryl: I started a program called The Youth Deterrent program. They would send these young men and women into our program and we was able to help change their lives.

Life change continued for Darryl.  In 2019, after serving 29 years, his conviction was overturned and he was released from prison.  Today Darryl leads SAY Detroit’s Better Together initiative that seeks to change the void between at-risk citizens and local police. 

Darryl: We bring law enforcement officials in plain clothes together with the community gang members, high school students, people with substance use disorders and they will grill meals together sit down and break bread without any labels.  Human beings connecting with other human beings.

The anonymity provides a space for individuals to talk, listen and work with one another with no judgement.

Mitch: The moment when you break the news oh by the way you are sitting next to a police officer.

Darryl: Everyone always has that hesitant look some of them would get up and say I am outta here (Both: Laughing).

Mitch: Better Together really (Darryl: Better Together) is its not just a title its kind of philosophy isn’t it?

Darryl: No doubt about it.

Once wrongly labeled as the “problem” and now part of the “solution”, Darryl Woods proves that we are Better Together right here in the heart of Detroit. 

Todd: You know, just like the entire world, when COVID first hit, we were very much unsure what it would mean for us and our guests, the people we serve, and our volunteers, for a lot of time last summer and even beyond. Much like the rest of the world, we were just waiting to get guidance as to how we could safely reengage and serve not only our guests, but keep our volunteers safe. Even in our new reality, more volunteers have been brought to us we’ve had people rally to support us financially. So it’s just really been this rebirth for us in this new identity. And we’re just so grateful.

Mitch: What does a hot shower and just getting cleaned mean to some of the clients that you serve? And why does it mean so much?

Todd: It means everything. There are people – thousands of people – living on the streets right now in our communities, many of which have not showered in months and I just want that to sink in. For most of us if we don’t shower for a day or so we definitely feel it. For people that walk up to our shower service. You know life is stacked against them. When they come out of that shower stall one of our coordinators other day said it perfectly: the smile says at all.

Mitch: Todd, we salute you for hanging in there and staying with your your dream and your project and doing so much good for people in our city. Thank you so much.

Todd: Thank you Mitch. We appreciate you

Mitch: Motor City Mitten Mission now not only continues this work, but has expanded to much more, walk us through how your project has grown from the time we first sat down.

Gail: It’s grown exponentially. We went from starting off with our mats and pillow project that you covered, to starting out with working with a handful of schools and churches to now we collaborate with over 350 different schools, businesses, organizations, churches all throughout Michigan, as well as Ohio, in Canada, we’ve recycled over 3 million plastic bags. But in addition to that we are the only operating street outreach team in Metro Detroit that operates seven days a week. And then our transitional support services. That’s when we’re helping people that are going from homelessness into housing, they don’t have anything, they don’t have any furniture, they don’t have appliances. They don’t have any clothing. And so we help get them set up in their situation. We have not missed a day of doing outreach to our unsheltered population, the city of Detroit.

Mitch: Now basically you go out every single day or every single night into the homeless communities. That’s an incredible sacrifice.

Gail: There’s just such a great need match and the world has changed so much.

Mitch: You’ve, you’ve really brought it up and we congratulate you and thank you for what you’re doing for our city’s homeless.

Gail: Oh, you’re welcome.

Mitch: Tell us how things have changed over the course of the last six years

Robby: Probably one of the biggest things that have changed is that we can’t serve downtown like we used to. We were doing like 200 hot meals a week. Now we just donate to the Veterans Foundation.

Mitch: Did you find as you got older that it meant more to you?

Robby: Oh yeah, definitely. I got a job and my paychecks weren’t that much, and that’s what a lot of people are living on. Everyone’s just one paycheck away from being homeless and I definitely have seen that.

Mitch: Tell us about some of the things you’re proudest of since we last checked in with you.

Robby: Yeah, we’re in our tenth year now. One day we were in downtown sharing, and I saw this guy walk through the field, carrying these sticks. They were carvings that we did, so I helped him carry them back to the place he was staying at. And he said he was going to lose his place soon because you can only stay there for a certain amount of time.

And I said maybe you can post these on my Facebook page and see how it goes. They sold like crazy and he got an apartment in the Bell Building now, and he’s still living there. Anyone can be homeless and with crazy times like this, it’s even more of a chance of it happening.

Mitch: Thanks for coming back and visiting with us, it’s great to see you again.

Robby: Thank you so much for having me.

Mitch: Tell us what Brilliant Detroit has been doing since we last spoke with you?

Cindy: A lot of things going on. And I think most importantly, are the results that we’re seeing. We had four locations in the city of Detroit. And as of today, we are in 13. neighborhoods. We’re working with over 7000 individuals right now. And our programming has expanded tremendously.

Mitch: What do you attribute that to?

Cindy: The neighborhoods without question, but our approach is really to talk to the neighborhood to be invited in and to include them and what they want and how they want it. Our platform is Education, Health and Family Support, belly to eight. And as a result, right now, we have currently eight neighborhoods on a waiting list. We’ve been asked to be in other cities around the country, and also internationally. And it is all about putting people first and in the middle of what happens.

Mitch: Tell us about how COVID-19 has affected Brilliant Detroit.

Cindy: We’ve pivoted in some ways we’ve providing virtual programming. What that has meant on tutoring is we’ve doubled how many kids we’re serving. So for our kids, we are seeing grade level growth of about two grades, which is great.

Mitch: Congratulations, what you’re doing with Brilliant Detroit and continued success with it.

Cindy: Thank you, Mitch, really appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Mitch: You’ve grown quite a bit with Crescendo Detroit.

Damien: We really wanted to first take on a few more kids. And then we wanted to make sure our program was a lot deeper and broader. So we started a partnership with the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance. And this is our fourth year. And I wanted our students to be able to go to Ann Arbor to be at the School of Music to take lessons to take classes, to go to University Musical Society concerts. And we’ve started a lot of new initiatives also.

Mitch: But you have really expanded you got into a new building. I understand you even had a chemistry teacher come and work with your kids.

Damien: Life skills. We had a social worker reading music, a reading specialist. We hired a physical person to do basketball and fundamentals with the kids. We had expanded quite a bit.

Mitch: Tell me a little bit about the challenges that COVID-19 has posed.

Damien: We were running like on all cylinders, and then when COVID hit, um it all stopped. And then we started having virtual private lessons and group lessons and virtual get togethers. COVID made it difficult, but it didn’t stop us for sure.

Mitch: Congratulations on all the things you’ve been able to do with Crescendo Detroit. It’s a great program.

Damien: Yeah. Thank you so much, Mitch. Appreciate it.

Mitch: Good to see you again Damien.

Damien: You too.