FCCPS Teacher Donates Time to Help Beautify Detroit

DETROIT – Jon Pepper grew up just outside Detroit city limits but that doesn’t stop him from claiming the entire area as home.

Friday, along with about 40 other volunteers armed with paintbrushes, Pepper helped bring a little hope to an old auto body shop in a dilapidated Detroit neighborhood. Pepper has volunteered with Summer in the City since 2005, a non-profit organization, started by his former high school classmate, whose mission is to change the impact of volunteers on Detroit and of Detroit on volunteers.

“People are very tainted about Detroit,” Pepper said Friday at a post-volunteer barbecue hosted by Summer in the City. “With the program, you go into the city and see neighborhoods you may not have seen before. Yes there’s blight, but people love Detroit.”

Pepper, president of the Falls Church City Education Association and a teacher at , made the recent volunteering opportunity a part of his trip home last week. Through the program, he has helped tear down abandoned crack houses, plant flowers in empty lots overcome by weeds and painted colorful murals along the sides of old, decaying buildings. Michael Goldberg, co-founder of Summer in the City, said the organization is in its tenth year. He said creating the organization allowed people to do real volunteer work in Detroit. Volunteers can gather at one of nine carpool sites and then head into Detroit city limits to do beautification projects four days a week for eight weeks during the summer.

Pepper drove through the rundown streets of Detroit early Friday morning heading to the site where he would join other volunteers to paint. Just about every block he passed, there was a story of what used to be and what’s not anymore. Pepper, accompanied by his girlfriend and two teenage volunteers, picked up cups of vibrant colored paint and went to work painting a mural of triangles over old, eroding red bricks. As the volunteers progressed with their painting, the once semi-overcast day gave way to the hot, bright sun.

“I love doing it,” Pepper said about volunteering in Detroit. “It lets me see the city.”

For friends Essence Patterson and Kristin Roberts, both 15-years-old, volunteering is a way to give back to a city they still call home.

The two high school students said helping paint the mural Friday gave them a sense of pride in their hometown.

“I feel good about it,” Patterson said. “I feel like I’m helping Detroit out.”

Even though he was more than 500 miles away from his Falls Church classroom, Pepper couldn’t resist thinking how he could organize something similar to go do similar programs in Washington, D.C. Seeing the affects of volunteering has changed Pepper’s views on life.

“You feel like you’re doing something positive for a place that needs it,” Pepper said. “It makes you appreciate what you have.”