Kalamazoo Students, residents team up on projects Program created by college professor in 1995

By Sebastian Fryer Kalamazoo Gazette KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) -- The property on Blakeslee Street needed some work. John Parks walked through his neighbor's backyard, stepping over upturned soil and broken glass. A few feet away, people had spray painted curse words on a shed. A woman who lived at the house wanted a fence built in the backyard to keep people from trespassing on her lawn. "She wants to put a garden in back here, but how is she supposed to when there's glass everywhere?" Parks said. "It's dangerous." Parks, along with Western Michigan University students and other Fairmont neighborhood residents, came together in June to help out neighbors in need. The project day was a part of Building Blocks, a program created by Kalamazoo College professor Kim Cummings in 1995. Cummings, now retired, incorporated the multi-week program into a social work class he's teaching at Western Michigan this summer. Since it began, Building Blocks has organized projects for more than 120 sites in multiple Kalamazoo neighborhoods. Along with the Fairmont neighborhood, the Eastside, Oakwood and Vine neighborhoods also participated this year. In addition, projects were planned without student help in the Stuart and Edison neighborhoods. Building Blocks has been a staple for Kalamazoo College for 14 years, and eight Western Michigan students enrolled in the course this summer. As a part of the program, student organizers go to neighborhoods and knock on doors to meet with residents and find out if any work needs to be done to their property. After meeting with residents a few times, the students and residents plan a project. The students then work with the residents to fix up their property. While a large focus of Building Blocks is to fix up neighborhoods, the main point of the program is to build working communities, Cummings said. "That's the way you build community," Cummings said. "It's working together." Building Blocks is funded through grants that come from United Way and private donors, Cummings said. That money is used to purchase the work materials, but the work comes from the students and residents. Western Michigan senior Nicholas Wikar, who lives at the Blakeslee Street house where the work was being done, first heard about the Building Blocks program when Cummings visited his environmental policy class in the fall. Although Wikar was unable to enroll in the class for the summer, he decided to help work on the project anyway. Building Blocks will create relationships that will last long after the project day on Blakeslee Street, Wikar said. "It was always a good street," Wikar said. "Now, it'll be better." Part of the project includes working on getting back to a community whose neighbors look out for each other, said participant Chelsea Moon, who lives in the Fairmont neighborhood. "We just want to make sure everybody has a sense of pride in their neighborhood," Moon said. Published: Wed, Jul 6, 2011