Community Based Initiative in Detroit

Andrea Picones Castro grew up in Daly City, not far from the southeast San Francisco neighborhood known as Bayview-Hunters Point. Until 1969, Bayview-Hunters was home to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, which decontaminated naval ships exposed to atomic weapons testing, causing widespread radiological contamination in the area. The neighborhood was also home to the coal and oil-fired power plants that provided electricity to San Francisco from 1929 until 2006.

“This is a community that was and is predominantly African American and Latino. Low socio-economic communities are targeted to home our societies’ environmental pollution. From my perspective, certain policies are in place that our society values that allow these environmental injustices to occur and perpetuate. I am passionate about the environmental justice movement and decided to pursue my master’s in both Social Work and Public Health because the two are intertwined. It’s not possible for me to think of one without the other.”

Assistant Professor Desmond Patton, a graduate of the CBI program, challenges me to think more deeply about my values and what I hold to be true. In his class, students push back on each other, not on the individual person, but on the ideas. It forces us to evaluate what we each believe to be true, and to welcome and evaluate each other’s truths as well.

Castro studied Sociology, Environmental Studies, and Health Care and Social Issues at UC San Diego, and worked for the San Francisco Department of Public Health after graduating. The job – and a desire to explore other cultures and areas of the country – motivated her to apply to U-M to earn her MSW/MPH.

Selected for the Community-Based Initiative in Detroit (CBI), one of two Community Scholars Programs offered by U-M SSW, Castro is studying advanced-level urban community action and social change. CBI coursework and field placements are based in Detroit and surrounding areas. CBI classes are held at Boulevard House, the CBI’s home base, and in Ann Arbor. Castro values the experience she’s gaining by working and learning in the urban environments that are encompassed in the CBI program.

“I come from an urban community. And I appreciate the opportunity to be engaged in the Detroit community. I want to take a social work framework and apply it to environmental injustices in urban populations. The CBI is really invested in teaching me the skills I need.”