It is the height of irony that Tyson Gersh is shy a handful of credits until he graduates from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
At 24, the president of one the fastest-growing, most successful Detroit nonprofits that hardly anybody (over 30 years old anyway) has ever heard of, is short a French class and another class he could probably teach blindfolded.
“Yeah I know,” the collegiate rower and triathlete says, head down, in a rare display of self consciousness. “I failed ‘Urban Entrepreneurship: Doing Business in Detroit.’ ”
Judging from the speed at which Michigan Urban Farming Initiative has taken off, Gersh was likely doing business in Detroit during class time.
In March 2012, Gersh, and his co-founder, Darin McLeskey, also an accomplished twentysomething who holds a masters in civil and environmental engineering, began the multifaceted nonprofit with a purchase of a uninhabitable three-story, six-unit apartment building on 7432 Brush off East Grand Boulevard.
In the span of a little over two years, the nonprofit is transforming several city blocks in the North End community of Detroit. What began as a small experiment in urban farming aimed at tackling food insecurity has morphed into several innovative projects.
While 7432 Brush is slated to be the headquarters for the nonprofit, complete with an educational center for nutrition classes and a commercial kitchen, across the street, the once-barren, almost 1-acre lot produced close to 12,000 pounds of fresh, organic last year. The majority of the produce goes to the North End residents and vendors, most notably the nearby Firewater Bar and Grill on John R, which bought them out of collard greens last year.
Farm manager Pinky Jones is a long-term resident whose house sits directly across the street from the garden. “At first we bonded over our mutual love of agriculture and then it turns out she’s freaking awesome,” Gersh says.
Jones is readily available to harvest produce for customers via a knock on the door; her cell number is posted outside on a sign. Produce is then weighed and “sold” at a suggested donation based on market value. “But,” Gersh says, “it’s strictly based on ability to pay.”
In addition to 7432 Brush, five more abandoned homes (most bought at auction from the city for a few hundred bucks apiece) are in the process of being gutted, thanks to young volunteers willing to don hard hats and construction masks. Plans are to convert them into a storm management system and retention pond, a veterans’ center called “Boots take Roots,” a building to train and house interns, a site for a for-profit business to fund the nonprofit, and, thanks to a recent collaboration with General Motors, the city’s first occupied shipping container homestead.
“It was never supposed to be this big,” Gersh says, “but we soon realized it just wouldn’t be valuable if we built this little garden and then left.”
Amazingly, all of the farming initiative’s projects are accomplished by volunteers, with a capital “V.
“MIUFI is 100 percent volunteer-run; 100 percent nonprofit,” Gersh declares. “We have 3,000 who have put in in over 30,000 volunteer hours. No one here has been paid for anything they’ve done here. Not a dime.”
To that end everybody at MIUFI — from the volunteer coordinator to the community liaison to the farm manager — wear several different hats, as well as carry day jobs. To wit: when she‘s not learning how to put in electrical wiring and planning crop rotation, Molly Hubbell (who at 28 is the self-described “old lady here”) works as a harbor master at the Grosse Pointe Club. Co-founder McCleskey works full time as an environmental engineer for Soil and Materials Engineers Inc. Volunteer coordinator Shelby Wilson is a behavioral analysis aide at The Children’s Center of Wayne County. Even Gersh, who works for a social psychology research lab in Ann Arbor, has been known to accept odd jobs on Craig’s List, cleaning out elderly people’s attics to pay his rent.
Here’s where you come in: the bulk of the farming initiative’s funding comes from online contests sponsored by corporations. With their formidable force of Facebook followers numbering close to 14,000 ready and willing to vote at a moment’s notice, Gersh estimates they’ve been awarded close to $70,000 from companies like Aveda and the granola bar company, Nature Valley.
In April, MIUFI was named as one of five finalists in the country to win a community garden from Garnier Green Garden Project. It could mean a nice chunk of change for a really deserving nonprofit that has an inestimable supply of goodwill. Let’s keep ’em going.
Vote green
If you’d like to help Michigan Urban Farming Initiative win the Garnier Green Garden Project, vote online for at green.garnierusa.com/#/vote/detroit.
mkeenan@detroitnews.com
