Ben Falik
By Tunde Wey
September 12, 2012
It is possible that one could stand anywhere in Detroit and see vacant property or vacant fields. The effects of this near-certainty could be demoralizing, but groups like
Summer in the City have surveyed Detroit’s pockmarked cityscape and are giving people an opportunity to act decisively.
Ben Falik has a mop of curly hair framing a more solemn, angular face; an interesting juxtaposition considering that Falik’s work also involves blending the serious and playful. Falik is co-founder of
Summer In The City (SITC), a nonprofit volunteering and service organization that mobilizes volunteers around three initiative areas: paint, plant and play. SITC, through its volunteer corps, paints murals around the city, helps at community gardens and partners with relevant organizations and groups to develop and staff youth enrichment programs through the city. With SITC, Falik has managed to create excitement and inspiration for volunteers interested in doing work in Detroit while effectively sourcing volunteer help (something with which nonprofits often struggle).
SITC offers a different kind of volunteer opportunity for people looking to participate in the city. According to Falik, the balance of rewards has historically been uneven, with the organizations receiving most of the benefits while volunteers were left feeling unsatisfied, or sometimes "projects catering to volunteers at the expense of organizations". “There wasn’t an effective marketplace for creating value through volunteerism,” Falik says.
Through SITC, Falik set about “making volunteering work equally well for the volunteers and community partners.” Falik, who is very fond of crisp alliterative phrases, describes the benefits for SITC volunteers as “fun, flexible and fulfilling” and the benefits of SITC community partners as “practical, productive and purposeful.” It takes a lot of intentional thinking to distill what Falik calls “substantive engagement” into such a concise proposition but he has been considering this for the better part of decade.
SITC was founded in the summer of 2002 by Falik, Neil Greenberg and Michael Goldberg, three twenty-year-old friends. Falik, now 30, grew up in Bloomfield Township, an affluent suburb about 25 miles northwest of Detroit. Unlike his peers, Falik says he grew up in a “pro- Detroit household”-- admittedly with a narrow exposure to the city. Falik left Michigan for New York to attend Columbia University where he majored in Urban Studies, an extension of his fascination with cities and their complexity.
September 11, 2001 was a significant day for hundreds of millions of Americans, and Falik was no exception. The tragedy prompted him to evaluate the kind of world in which he wanted to live and raise a family, and how he wanted to positively affect it. He realized pretty quickly that Detroit was the place he wanted to impact.
This realization, though crystallized by the tragedy of 9/11, was actually forged in the summer of that year. Over the summer months Falik spent his school break volunteering in Detroit at different locations throughout the city.
For the first time he felt that he was engaged with Detroit on his own terms. Instead of the bus tours or school field trips he had been accustomed to, he was actually experiencing the city authentically through the volunteer work he did. Falik says, “You don’t get the whole Detroit if you just come for the social aspect, or if you just come to volunteer. When you get the entire city -- social, cultural -- then you start to get a sense of what a dynamic place it is.” While still a college sophomore, Falik co-founded SITC.
Falik’s experience continues to inform the important distinction between volunteering and charity work that SITC strives to maintain. According to Falik, volunteering (as opposed to charity) is “really
doing with rather than
doing for.” This definition of volunteering is at the foundation of SITC. Falik says that in starting SITC he and his friends “weren’t trying to save Detroit, we just wanted to bring different people from different backgrounds together.”
In the decade since SITC was founded they have indeed brought many different people together to volunteer in the city. In their first summer of operation they averaged 12 volunteers. By their tenth summer (2011), SITC averaged 220 daily volunteers. In that same year, through the support of grants, $25,000 from
The Jewish Fund and $30,000 from
Detroit Harmonie, SITC purchased and renovated their permanent home in Mexicantown, dubbed “The Collaboratory.” This full-time presence in Detroit is further acknowledgement of SITC’s commitment to impacting the city through volunteerism.
Like their beautiful historic home, the community impact of SITC is also visibly impressive. Falik says SITC volunteers will paint about 50 murals this year alone throughout the city, partnering with businesses and organizations such as
Neighborhood Services Organization (NSO) to beautify the city. SITC volunteers, as part of their PLANT program, have helped local farms and gardens such as
D-Town Farm and
The Catherine Ferguson Academy, providing much-needed manpower.
SITC’s PLAY program, which pairs elementary school-age kids with supportive and enthusiastic volunteers, will work with groups like
Focus: HOPE to offer kids safe and fun experiences like weekly field trips, art projects, sports and tutoring.
In Falik’s mind the reason for starting SITC was clear: reduce the barrier of entry for volunteering. “The idea was to capitalize on the summer -- the weather is good and the days are long," says Falik. They could create a whole season of service. The summer time also allows for more flexibility in the schedules of college students and high school kids to give more of their time. Flexibility is key -- SITC is also very intentional about providing flexible volunteering opportunities; they allow volunteers to show up without signing up for activities in advance, having noticed that such formality was a hindrance to some volunteers.
Falik, ever the urban enthusiast, muses philosophically about cities. “Cities are perpetually complex, intriguing and sometimes frustrating,” he says. “The greatest asset of cities is the way they bring together disparate parts … the real capital in cities is the people.” Underlying SITC’s work is this understanding that people are important, and their substantive engagement is necessary to the health of any city … especially Detroit.
Photograph by Marvin Shaouni Photography.