The Pathways Foundation is proud to support Brilliant Detroit – this innovative, scalable, and incredibly effective organization nurtures, provides, and protects its children ‘from Belly to 8’ as well as their neighborhood communities.
Pathways has been fortunate enough to partner with Brilliant Detroit through supporting the purchase, restoration, and ongoing programming of its Fitzgerald House – one of the 15 community hubs throughout Detroit. The Fitzgerald House anchors a neighborhood with over 400 engaged young families and households, and offers a full slate of in-person and remote programming throughout the year.
One new program at Fitzgerald began is the “All Star Girls Club,” which connected Fitzgerald children to outstanding women in the community, including a female doctor, detective, and a martial arts black belt. In addition, the Fitzgerald House offered music classes for toddlers to help them explore their creativity and build social-emotional skills; STEM workshops that allowed children to engage in hands-on, at-home science experiments; classes with Arts and Scraps where kids were able to make their own art pieces from recycled materials; trauma-related support classes for adults; Zumba exercise classes for the whole family; and much more.
In addition to its innovative strategies and continued success, Pathways is grateful and tremendously impressed by Brilliant Detroit for its collaborative nature. Brilliant Detroit is a model of successfully integrating support and services from other, similarly creative models of serving the people of Detroit – including but certainly not limited to 313Speaks, Eastern Market, Arts and Scraps, and BookNook. Over the last few years, the Fitzgerald House served as a community birth center in partnership with Birth Detroit, where pregnant individuals were able to receive warm, personalized care, prenatal screenings, birth consultation, nutrition and breastfeeding support, labor preparation, and more. We’re thrilled to continue this partnership into the future to ensure we are truly supporting families from “belly” to age 8.