Patty Clark introduced her niece (also Dane’s niece and Jane’s granddaughter), Sarah Clark, who is program director at Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision where she manages the Clean Neighborhood as well as the Initiative for Healthy Business programs and is also a grant writer. She earned her BA Degree at and played hockey for Dartmouth and received a professional certification in Landscape & Nursery Management from MSU and is now pursuing a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan.
 
Sarah’s primary role with her employer is to work to improve the environmental quality of southwest Detroit addressing primarily pollution, contamination and blight issues in order to improve the quality of life of the people living in and around the area. One program she manages is the Clean Diesel Program. Sarah works with various industries to retrofit trucks to make them burn cleaner. She said that grants from the government have helped considerably and keep the program going. Another program she manages is the Walk to School Days program that encourages kids to walk to school in an effort to counter obesity. Sarah said that the Tire Seat program is her signature event in light of the fact that tires are plentiful in the Motor City! Through this program tires are sent to a company that mulches them for use in playground materials.
 
Her biggest project, she said, involves revitalizing vacant lots. She has been working with a group called “Ideal” in the Clark Park neighborhood near what used to be an old Cadillac plant that involve residents and other businesses in the area who have already invested over 6,000 man hours to develop a perennial and recreational garden which is actually a series of interlocking circles which Sarah designed herself!
 
On the very same street, residents were looking for a way to grow vegetables so across from the Clark Street plant on what was once an enclosed executive parking lot now vacant. Shipping crates from General Motors that were re-purposed were laid on top of the asphalt lot to grow vegetables! This area of some 3,000 square feet has become a great gathering place for residents who get together every Saturday to take care of the garden and take whatever they need for their own use.  Everything that is taken from the garden that can’t be used goes to a local compost site. Kids also help out by bringing used tires into the garden, paint them and hang them around the fence surrounding the lot. They then take the used paint cans and place flowers in them and stick them in the tires!
 
Sarah deserves much credit for bringing people together, re-purposing materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill, ending blight in rundown neighborhoods, and providing food for area residents! Very informative presentation, Sarah. Keep up the wonderful work in this part of Greater Detroit! Her work has appeared in many national magazines.