Arab American Oasis Presents Hopeful Sign
Thirty years ago, Jordanian immigrant Haifa Fakhouri talked some fellow immigrants into giving her $40,000 to start the Arab American and Chaldean Council.
Today, the nonprofit offers human service, cultural and employment training programs in three counties. But the centerpiece of the council’s work is a four-building oasis along a stretch of Seven Mile Road between John R and Woodward Avenue in Detroit.
For years, I’d heard of the council’s dream of creating a strip rivaling Mexicantown or the Arab strip of shops and restaurants along Warren Avenue in Dearborn. Last week, I finally toured the four buildings, and I see how close that dream is to reality.
The four buildings — used for after-school learning and recreation, health clinics, adult workforce courses, English-as-a-second-language courses and a cultural/arts showcase — represent $16 million of the $36 million the ACC projects it would need to complete its goal.
The council’s programs serve both new immigrants and Detroit residents with workforce and computer training. Already, through contracts with the city of Detroit, 1,400 clients have gone through training.
“We’re diversity in action,” Fakhouri says proudly.
In addition to Seven Mile, the ACC works with immigrants in Detroit’s Warrendale neighborhood on the Dearborn border, in Southwest Detroit and in Hamtramck, where the immigrant mix includes newcomers from Iraq, Sri Lanka, Croatia and Bangladesh.
On Fakhouri’s wish list is the ability to raze burned-out and boarded up homes on the blocks within eyesight of the Seven Mile complex. Detroit is plagued by such eyesores, but prioritized demolition could help ACC’s redevelopment plans.
If such eyesores are razed, Fakhouri and Isa Hasan, who runs neighborhood development for the council, hope to find partners who will work on new housing in the neighborhood. They’re talking to the Rev. Marvin Winans, whose Perfecting Church is less than a mile to the south.
Meanwhile, the ACC is gearing up for an influx of 12,000 new immigrants — mostly Iraqis approved by Homeland Security to move to Michigan before Dec. 31.
In the 2000 census, were it not for immigrants moving into Michigan, the state would have had a population loss. In 2010, immigrants probably won’t save our numbers; fewer people mean a lot of things, including reduced representation in Congress.
But immigration may yet be the answer to our future because Southeast Michigan’s elaborate mix of ethnicities and nationalities can help draw new residents.
Mary Kramer
Crain’s Detroit