Don Bosco Hall reenergizes community with unique resource center

DETROIT — Lots of lawn-mowing and odd jobs were all that Tim Holiday had planned for the summer.

In a shrinking employment market, a 19-year-old Detroiter’s options for earning money are fairly limited, and Holiday had his heart set on a goal that would further his long-term career vision of becoming a music producer: keyboard lessons.

Thanks to a neighborhood initiative of the historic Don Bosco Hall, located on Detroit’s west side, Holiday has avoided spending his days cutting grass in the hot sun – and didn’t sacrifice his musical goal. Funded by The Skillman and Kresge Foundations, the Don Bosco Community Resource Center has provided free professional training and instruction for youths and young adults in everything from keyboarding to financial leadership and martial arts. Not only has Holiday become more proficient in creating beats and rhythms, but he says he’s picked up a few talents in the kitchen by taking the Center’s cooking class.

“Anything that I can learn, I’ll go to,” says Holiday.

He describes the two-month keyboarding class as “excellent,” adding that he has a better handle on the technical approach to making music, an advantage over other aspiring producers.

“I used to just do whatever sounded good,” he recalls.

A $150,000 Skillman grant is what has helped more than 2,000 participants like Holiday add substance to their talents and vocational interests, says Charles Small, CEO of Don Bosco.

“We’ve done two sessions of services for young people, a network of services that ran from March through the first part of July, and our summer session, which runs through July and August,” Small says. “What we are using it to do is really develop a network of community services that treat and develop children from the ages of 4 into adulthood. We’ve partnered with some other non-profits that were offering service in the area, but really needed a place to provide their services.”

The result was a planning strategy with Skillman, which issued the grant to enrich the city’s Cody-Rouge region as part of Skillman’s Good Neighborhoods program. Now Don Bosco’s Community Resource Center boasts classrooms and conference space, a full gym and auditorium stage, plus a kitchen and cafeteria. The exterior grounds will be used for a “Back-to-school Family Fun Day” at the end of August when participants in the summer program will showcase their skills and the Center will “celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of the new semester,” Small says.

An extension of the historic Don Bosco Hall youth home, the Center, located at 19321 West Chicago, was a welcome addition to the neighborhood for Ashley Gomillion.

“I came to a cooking class because I enjoy cooking and I wanted to see if I could enhance what I already know,” says Ashley, 15.

Chef Diallo McCaskle and his wife Tonya, who teach the cooking class, say they enjoy the “chemistry” with youth.

“My thing is that I like to have fun, on top of everything else,” adds “Chef D,” as he’s called in the community.

Small agrees that fun is part of the Center’s programming goals, adding that community enrichment is both the short- and long-term objective.

“We want the Center to be a safe place where children, families and young people can go to have great activities, and we think we’re off to a great beginning,” says Small. “What we’ve learned is that it’s important for the children to have strong neighborhoods to grow up in.”

— By Eddie B. Allen Jr., a Detroit-based freelance journalist