I have the privilege of working with a guy who wasn’t at the game or even camped out in front of his flat-screen TV.  He was at the SAY Detroit Play Center last Saturday night at 9:30, welcoming home our three football teams from their day-long trip to play games in Fort-Wayne, Indiana.

While Derrick Hayes’ son, Daelin, a freshmen at Notre Dame, was causing trouble for the Spartans last Saturday night, including a magnificent play that led to an interception for the fighting Irish, Derrick was fielding a complaint from a parent on the bus, who was upset by another adult’s cussing on the trip.

Mr. Hayes and his son Daelin

Cussing is forbidden at our center, a bright-line rule to help us live our values, and this was a flagrant violation by an adult who knew better.  Instead of rushing home to see his own son play, Derrick called the adults on the bus into an impromptu meeting, a meeting that lasted an hour as they delved into why it happened and why it wasn’t corrected by others when it did.

In the business world, we often say culture eats strategy for breakfast.  The same is true in life. The culture surrounding our kids can eat the very best strategies we have for helping them.  That is why we work so hard at building a culture based on our values of love, excellence, hard work and relationships, not just at our center, but in a way that extends into the homes and community that surrounds us.

We need more people to join us as coaches or reading mentors to help make our kids and the culture that surrounds them healthier and stronger.  It will take some sacrifice.  You may find yourself late for your own kids’ games, but you, they, and our world will be better as a result.

Pastor Joel Osteen with Karen Washington, a long-time neighborhood leader who led an effort to transform a blighted alleyway into “Bliss Lane” with local artists, the young people at our center, and volunteers from Lakewood Church in Texas.

More than 30 teenagers worked as sports camp counselors or mowed the lawns of vacant homes surrounding us, in addition to taking college trips to Eastern, MSU, U of M, and Wayne State.  Younger children had a “summer of success” with week-long camps exploring interests in activities like Lego Robotics and photography, in addition to taking field trips to places Red Oaks Water Park and the Detroit Zoo.

Our members start back to school next week, and we need more people who want to help them become great readers and great people.  Our primary need is for Reading Mentors–volunteers who can dedicate at least one hour each week helping a young person become a great reader, but we also need coaches in basketball, football, baseball, soccer and even lacrosse over the next year.  We are looking for people who love kids and have a calling on their heart to help them.  If you have that, we can help you acquire the skills you need to be a successful coach or volunteer.

If you are interested in helping, please sign up on our website or email me at mtenbusch@sayplay.org.  Thank you so much for your consideration.  A life-changing difference awaits.

Mike Tenbusch

Bad things don’t just stop happening on their own.  Left unchecked, they just cause more bad things to happen.  But good things also cause other good things to happen.  Like the inviolate law of gravity, we will get back from life exactly what we put into it.

In Detroit, one of the most historically dangerous cities in America, we have had enough hurt.  In the Osborn neighborhood, one of the most historically violent neighborhoods in Detroit, we have had enough.

We want our neighborhoods, and the lives of our children, to be safe, fun, and healthy places to play and grow up in.  We have brilliant and resilient children.  We have selfless people in and around the community giving their time and talents every day to help them grow strong.

Let’s celebrate that.  Let’s thank the men and women in blue and black–the police officers and pastors of Detroit.  They give so much of their lives and heart to make our city safe and whole.

The young people of SAY Detroit and our volunteers will be hosting a softball game for pastors and police on our new softball field on Thursday, July 21 at 2:00, followed by a concert with amazing artists on Stafford Field at 4:00.

Join us, as well as Sway Calloway and Pastor Joel Osteen and his family, for an afternoon of play and praise at Lipke Park.  Be a part of the movement for healing and health for our children and community.

The details below, and you can get your FREE tickets here. I look forward to seeing you there.

PLAY AND PRAISE IN THE PARK · JULY 21, 2016 · CENTER OPENS 1:00 P.M.

Celebrity Softball Game: Police AND Pastors

2:00PM – 3:15PM

featuring Montreal Canadiens’ Jeff Petry and Chris Terry

Perfecting Church Pastor Marvin Winans

and more local celebrities, pastors, and officers

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | LIVE DJ | BOUNCE HOUSE | FOOD | SAY PLAY TOURS

Worship Concert at Stafford Field

Hosted by Joel Osteen & MTV’s Sway

4:00PM – 5:00PM

LYA · Christon Gray · Dr. Eric Thomas · Stephanie J. Pride · Mali Music · Adrianna Philece

But when things don’t get better, when every day seems to be worse than the one before, or when life punches you in the gut so hard it sucks the hope right out of you, it can be hard to get out of bed.  You can look at the world and your role in it and just think to yourself, “It all doesn’t matter.”  This is a dangerous place to be, and the most dangerous places often have the least amount of hope.

Our work here is designed to spark hope in every person who walks through our doors, and you can find one of our best sources of hope in the café in the life and love of Mrs. Falls.

Mrs. Falls makes dinner for 70 kids each day and sends them home with a snack each night as effortlessly as if they were her own kids at home.  When we were in the midst of major capital improvements to the center to get it open in time, she was bringing in dish towels and oven mitts from home to make the kitchen her own.  She listens with a knowing look and a deep twinkle in her eyes.  With 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren of her own, you get the sense that there’s not much you can tell Mrs. Falls that she doesn’t know already.  But she makes you feel like you’re the only one in the world when you talk to her.  When you make her laugh, you may think you’ve heard the sound of a bird in the Amazon Rain Forest—but that’s just the way she laughs.

Mario, her 11-year-old sous chef at the center, says, “It would be boring here without Mrs. Falls.  She’s funny and nice.”

The thing is, Mrs. Falls has fought her own battles against hopelessness.  She was 77-years-old when we opened last October.  She had not worked in ten years, and she was not interested in working with us.  Three years earlier, cancer stole the life of her 46-year-old daughter, Karen, and the pain of her loss hung heavily.   But Mrs. Falls’ husband, Frank, and daughter, Keely, encouraged her to give it a try here.  She did, and in less than six months, Mrs. Falls has gone from fighting for hope to spreading it wildly.  She has quickly become much like a mom or a grandma to us all, and stands as a reminder that none of us, not one of us, has finished fulfilling our purpose yet.

Mrs. Falls and Mario, shortly after Mrs. Falls’ 78th birthday last week.

Seeing no good reason to slow down, my mom started a business called Wallace Scones in her mid 70’s with a good friend of hers.  They make scones and sell them in groceries stores around Michigan.  Channel 7 even featured her in the news on a segment called “My Mom’s a Genius.”

My mom will turn 77 in a few months, and she still beats me in golf.  When I tell my friends that, they all laugh at me–but none of them will play her.

When I think of the impact we are trying to have on the young people we serve, I can’t help but think it’s the impact my mom has had on me–not just to play sports, but to work hard, serve others, and keep learning and growing.

Thanks today to all Moms for helping us change the game.

The Michigan Department of Education produced a similar “Top to Bottom” schools list for every school in Michigan.  The neighborhood we serve historically has some of the highest child abuse rates, the highest juvenile crime rates, and the highest homicide rates in the state of Michigan.  Care to guess how the five high schools in and near this community rank on the list?  At the very bottom.  Two of those five high schools completely revamped themselves four years ago with new principals and virtually all new teaching staffs when they entered the Education Achievement Authority.   And still no significant difference.

Would the results be any different if we brought in the leaders and teachers from Troy High School or Gross Pointe South—two of the “Top 10” schools in Michigan?  I think not.

Our members go the “failing” schools in this neighborhood.  They are funny, caring, resilient kids.  Many of them overcome more adversity in a week than my own kids do in a year.   But we call their schools failing; place the blame on their teachers, mostly ignore the kids who go there and somehow expect things to get better.

Things won’t get better until we do things differently, and there’s only so much that can get done in the schools.  Young people need more people in their lives after school, loving them, challenging them, and giving them the one-on-one support many kids take for granted at home.

This is what happens here every day, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays when people from as far as White Lake, Michigan and as close as a few blocks away come to volunteer as Reading Mentors to our young people.  They are changing the game.

I have that same sense many days when I drive into work in Detroit.  We offer a loving sanctuary and training center to almost 100 young people each week.  And they have to walk past four marijuana stores and two abandoned strip clubs to get here, all of which are within five blocks of our center.  Last year, police put new technology in the neighborhood to record where gunshots were coming from, and we learned that there was an average of one gun fired every four hours over the course of fifteen months.

This past week, a dozen students from Howard University came to Detroit for an “alternative spring break.”  Instead of going to the beach to hang out, they came to our city to serve, including two afternoons here leading small group discussions with our kids on what college is like before playing football, basketball and volleyball with them.  One of our high school students was noticeably rude during a discussion.  When Ms. Mansfield, our academic director, took her aside to ask her what was going on, she burst into tears and said, “I’m too dumb to go to college.”  The thing is, this student is a really bright, resilient kid.  But she has trouble seeing that because there is no room for her in the house of her mother’s boyfriend, and the family members who give her shelter make her feel unwanted.

During the past week, Congress held hearings in DC to figure out what went wrong in Flint while Michigan’s legislature held hearings in Lansing to figure out what to do with Detroit Public Schools.  One expert pointed out that 91 students in 100 in Detroit Public Schools and 85 students in 100 in Detroit’s charter schools are not proficient in academics.  Charter schools were built to do what DPS and union teachers could not.  Doesn’t their failure to make a meaningful difference after 15 years suggest that it may be more than just what happens in the classrooms each day?  Doesn’t it make sense to stop bashing schools and start figuring out ways to create healthier, safer lives for kids outside of school?  If strip clubs and weed shops aren’t acceptable less than a mile away, on the north side of 8 Mile, why are they so prevalent and accepted here?

These are the lead water issues in Detroit.  They seem heavy and intractable because the army of people fighting to overcome them is so small.  But that army is growing.  More than 50 people from the neighborhood and from places as far away as White Lake and China, Michigan spend at least two hours each week as reading mentors with our young people, and some are also staying to teach guitar and debate or to work out with our kids in the gym and fitness room.

If you are tired of reading the paper about the raw deal that good people get every day, and you want to do something about it, you can.  Click here to join us in our effort to change the game for them.

Much love and thanks to Howard University students from around the country who spent their spring break in service to the Osborn High School community, including the SAY Detroit Play Center.

The first person our young people see each day is Tiara Johnson at the front desk, and when she was their age, she often didn’t have a reason to smile.

Tiara’s father used to get drunk and beat her mom while she and her sister hid in a closet.  Her mother left him when Tiara was young, but things did not get better.   Tiara looked so much like her dad that her mother directed her anger towards him at her throughout her childhood.

By the time Tiara got to high school, she left home.  The next five years were a revolving door from the streets to a juvenile detention facility to home to the streets and jail again.  Eight years ago, she was in a shelter, eight months pregnant with her first child, and spending nights in a sleeping bag on the floor of a different church each week through a program for homeless moms called Rotation, run by Cass Community Services.

Now, Tiara is a wife, a mother of two daughters, and head of the parent teacher organization at school, in addition to her role here.  She is also going to school to get a degree in criminal justice so that she can help young people who are going through what she went through.

How did she go from long stints in juvenile and shelters to a stable home and family?  Through the friendship of a stranger.

When Tiara was saving money in the shelter to rent a home when the program ended, a landlord heard her story and offered to waive the first month’s rental fee.  This unique gift was just what Tiara needed to get her own, safe, home for the first time in her life.  That landlord became the Godmother to Tiara’s baby, Aranee, and helped her through some of the tough times ahead.  Now, Tiara calls her Mom, and they talk just about every day.

In her own way, Tiara is doing the same for the young people who come here, and it starts with a smile when they come in each day.

Tiara Johnson at the front desk of the SAY Detroit Play Center

Our Youngest Warriors Preserve and Prevail

The SAY Detroit Warriors U10 basketball team had a tough road this season, not a tough stretch of road.  The whole road was tough.  They were winless after five games, even losing one game 34 to 0.  Through it all, they never argued, never complained, and never gave up.  Last Saturday, in the final week of the regular season, they won their first game, blanking the Monarchs 10 to 0.

Coach Derrick Hayes, Jeremiah, Adolphus, Jeremiah, Johnathan and Omar after the team’s first victory.

We started our team meeting at SAY Detroit last week with good news updates from the week.  It’s a good way to remember and celebrate together the good things that are happening at the center or in our team’s personal lives.

Derrick Hayes was the first to speak.  “Today is my second birthday,” he said.  Shaking off the tears that wanted to well up in his eyes, he continued.  “I got shot eleven years ago today.  God gave me a second life that day, and so we celebrate this day every year.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hayes with Xavier, Chaderra and his second birthday balloons.

Sure enough, not long after our meeting ended, Derrick’s wife, Chanese and their two children, Chaderra and Xavier, came into the center with balloons and homemade cookies to celebrate Derrick’s second birthday.

On February 12, 2005, Derrick was a Detroit Police Officer responding to a call about a cell phone stolen at gun point from a woman in a McDonald’s parking lot.  Derrick and his partner were in the neighborhood and spotted a person who fit the description.  When they approached him, the suspect ran into a backyard with Derrick close behind.  They leaped fence after fence, crossing streets and cutting through backyards for a quarter mile before Derrick finally got close enough to bring the suspect down in the backyard on a street he wasn’t sure of.  It was dark outside, and the other officers had lost track of him in their cars.

With one knee in the back of the suspect and his right hand on his gun, Derrick lifted his left hand off of the suspect’s back long enough to press the button on his radio to call out to his squad car.  As he did, the young man squirmed to his left and freed up his right hand, twisting over just enough to begin shooting Derrick.  Two bullets hit him in his vest, and four went into his legs and abdomen, before Derrick fatally returned fire.

Derrick was about to lose his life because of a stolen cell phone.  How many times have we read that headline in Detroit and shook our head in despair?

But the ending to this story was different, and that was Derrick’s good news last week.  He was given a second life to celebrate.  It has not been easy.  Recovery took years.  He gained almost 100 pounds.  He became depressed.  Bills piled up.  When he finally got healthy enough to go back to work, he found a job as a substitute teacher at University Prep.  He had a good way with young people and worked his way up over the next few years to become Dean of Culture at Southeastern High School before becoming our director of culture and partnerships at SAY Detroit.

His wife and kids were with him through it all.  You can find them together still.  His wife and daughter work concessions at our basketball games on Saturdays, while he coaches and his son plays on one our teams.  You might never have known the years of pain and trials they have gone through.  But you can see the joy of their victory when they are together, and especially on February 12 every year.

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  Our youngest members carry pizzas to the Volunteer Appreciation dinner.

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  Our own Jenell Mansfield serves pizza with Little Caesar’s CEO, David Scrivano.

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Little Caesars Love Kitchen

Much thanks to Little Caesar’s CEO, David Scrivano, and the Little Caesar’s Love Kitchen for a great night of fun and Hot and Ready’s to celebrate our volunteers on February 16, 2016.