(WWJ) Welcome to Voices of the Community, I’m Lloyd Jackson and today we are speaking with Joyce Moore a resident of Detroit’s Virginia Park Community for over 50 years and founder of the Virginia Park Community Coalition. We’ll hear how she has stepped up to advocate for her neighbors and how she brings resources to the community to help stabilize the neighborhood and preserve opportunities for longtime homeowners.
We kicked off the interview, as I always do, with a lighting round of questions so our listeners and readers get to know Joyce a little be better by having her give me the first thing that comes to mind after I ask her some questions…starting with : First car which Joyce says was a Grand Torino..I asked if she prefers dogs or cat and she said both. Then I asked her if she had any hidden talents and she said the talent to learn form her mistakes.
When it comes to her favorite Detroit food she says very matter of fact that it's “Bar-B-Que”.
So as we start the interview I asked joy to let us know where exactly the Virginia Park neighborhood of Detroit is located. The Community is bounded by West Grand Blvd to Clairmont and from Linwood to the Lodge Freeway.
Even though Joyce has been in the same neighborhood for 50 years, she says there are even more that have been in the Virginia Park Community longer than that. One family has been in the neighborhood for 5 generations.
Joyce says the Virginia Park Community Coalition started out as a block club because there were community block grant funds available that a few people knew how to apply for. But once it was learned that several blocks in a community could apply, the block club turned into a coalition.
Being in the Virginia Park neighborhood so long Joyce has seen people come and go but for the ones who stayed I asked how did she advocate for the newcomers that came in to stay and she says it was the homes in the community. Most of the homes are brick and structurally sound and a lot of the young families moving in are taking advantage of the beauty of the homes.
There are neighborhoods across the city of Detroit that are in need of resources and need that one person or coalition of people to help bring resources... Joyce says although the coalition is her Idea you have to have others that have a vision to go after the resources needed for their neighborhood.
The old saying is that a takes a village to raise a child… and Joyce says that Virginia park Coalition and other neighborhoods that are part of the coalition still believe in that saying but she says sometimes its just not practiced like it used to be.
Joyce says by practicing that old saying it goes a long way into also stabilizing a neighborhood which is one of the objectives of the Virginia Park Community Coalition.
Joyce has been in Virginia Park for over 50 years and could have left Detroit and lived anywhere she wanted to… but I asked her what made you stay and she says she saw things in Detroit that others didn’t see.
And as Detroit continues to grow Joyce says what she sees next for the city is more of a focus on the community and not so much downtown.
If Joyce could take a visitor to one place in Detroit, she said very matter of factly it would be the Virginia Park Community. She would like to tell the person how it was and show them what it is today.
I asked Joyce is it a Misconception about Detroit and what she thought it was and she said that people think everything is bad in Detroit. She says the good in the city outweighs the bad.
Joyce Moore is founder of the Virginia Park Community Coalition and an over 50-year resident of the city of Detroit … She will also be one of 7 women honored during the Power of one Dedicated women virtual awards on Sept 22nd sponsored by the organization “Michigan Community Resources”.
You can find out more about the awards and the women being honored by going the Michigan Community Resources Facebook page or their website www.mi-community.org.
And if you know of a voice in the community that needs to be heard please drop me an email at voicesofthecommunity@wwjnewsradio.com