Teen work camp in Detroit, beyond changes lives for low-income, vulnerable residents

To some teens, summer camp might mean hikes, swims and s'mores, but to these campers, it's building hope for others, one nail at a time.

For the first time in recent years, Group Mission Trips, in partnership with co-sponsor First English Evangelical Lutheran Church in Grosse Pointe Woods, has brought work campers to metro Detroit on a weeklong mission to repair and renovate 24 homes across Detroit and surrounding cities for free.

Joined by 50 local volunteers from the church, 183 work campers as young as 14, along with about 20 staff members, packed up their vans with typical travel necessities, bedding to keep them comfortable on the floors of Grosse Pointe North High School classrooms and construction tools for their renovation work and drove to metro Detroit from across the Midwest.

Spread out across Detroit, Grosse Pointe Park, Grosse Pointe Woods, Harper Woods, Eastpointe and St. Clair Shores, the young volunteers — who paid about $500 each to go on the mission trip to cover their lodging and food — spent Monday through Friday constructing porch steps, building wheelchair ramps, doing interior and exterior painting, and working on any other projects that can be produced with good quality in five days for elderly, veteran, disabled, or low-income metro Detroiters.

Help getting in out and out of the house

Vivian Ursery, 64, of Southfield, a recipient of the program with her family, expressed just how life-changing the support is for them. Ursery and her three sisters all help to take care of their 87-year-old and wheelchair-bound mother, despite each having a handicap themselves.

At one of her sisters' houses in Detroit, where their mother lives, a 4-year-old wheelchair ramp had fallen into shambles. It was steep, uneven and lined with roof shingles to keep from being slippery, with a dip in the middle and a sizable bump at the bottom that made bringing their mother up and down the ramp like trekking a mountain — no easy feat for four women who already need a cane to walk.

Ursery searched for someone who could repair the ramp or build a new one, but any quote she received was at least $8,000.

The family began to think a new ramp was hopeless, until Ursery's nephew came home one day with a flyer for the church's upcoming July 2024 work camp. Ursery applied for her mother, and the family was fortunate enough to get picked.

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Organizing the work camp was a two-year process, shared Renata Conger, the parish education and youth ministry coordinator for First English Evangelical Lutheran Church, that started with another work camp she attended.

"Two years ago, I was at Princeton, Illinois, and that community was so welcoming. ... I've done work camps before and everyone's really grateful, you know, but there was none of that extra stuff. But it was there that I was like, 'You know, we can do this. Detroit needs this,' " Conger said. While Conger's church attended other interdenominational work camps every year, the Detroit native realized Group Mission Trips had made only one visit to metro Detroit as far back as she could remember, so she decided to kickstart the change herself.

Because the repairs are done free of charge, Conger said most of the process is taken up by fundraising to pay for lumber, hardware, paint and more, but the other biggest part is finding the residents.

Conger recalls being worried at first, when they got only eight applicants in the first three months, but after they started advertising the program in public schools, the number of applicants quickly snowballed to 83.

How homes are selected

Then they went to survey applicants' homes to determine which had the most need. Some needed repairs and renovations that fell perfectly into line with the work camp's criteria, like the wheelchair ramp for Ursery's mother, while others were more easily fixable patch-up jobs that homeowners were just hoping to get for free, and still others that were beyond repair that youths couldn't do without seriously risking their safety.

Then, after Group Mission Trips set a limit for the number of homes, there was the issue of choosing which homes to do.

"They're telling us we can do maybe 30 homes, so it's hard, you know, because you want to do everything for everybody," said Conger.

In the end, the church raised $25,000 for repairs on 45 homes — 24 of which the work camps would do and 21 of which the church would do after the work camps' time in Detroit is up.

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Not only do the work camps change lives for residents in need, but they also provide life-changing experiences for the youths who participate in them.

Nearly a decade of volunteering

For Heath Garrett, 24, of Delaware, Ohio, who's now on his ninth work camp (and would be on his 10th, he shared, if the coronavirus pandemic hadn't stopped him), said the work camps bring him closer to his spirituality.

"I used to just go for the friendships and relationships, just getting hot and sweaty and stuff because that's what, you know, young guys like to do. And then it became more spiritual, (more to) just kind of glorify and exemplify Christ in everything that I do, and help lead the (younger work campers)," Garrett said.

Kendelyn Bielawa, 15, of Aurora, Illinois, at her first work camp, shared in Garrett's testimony.

"I came to meet new people and also grow in my relationship with Christ. ... And just to spread positivity and help someone out when I can," she said. "I'm glad to be here, I feel like I'm already learning new things, I'm meeting new people and it's only been like three days."

Elena Lane, 16, a local work camper from Southfield in her second year of camp, shared in their excitement and experiences so far.

"Once I did it, it like just started feeling really good, like getting to be able to help people. It felt like a privilege and now I just enjoy doing that," she said. "It's been fun. Parts of it have been a learning curve, but parts of it, I've done before. I have a little bit of like, basic experience, so that's helpful. I mean, everything I'm doing is new, but if I have like a little bit of work experience in the past, it makes learning it easier."

Skill-building opportunity

The work camps also teach the youths unique skills, like how to paint a wall or how to build that wheelchair ramp.

"It just goes to show that sometimes our scope is so small, like we think, 'I'm 14 years old, how am I going to help someone build a wheelchair ramp?' Then you show up to something like this and you see how so much more can be done … and I just think that's what's so awesome," said Conger.

"The hope is that if it's a good experience (in metro Detroit), it can continue every other year or every three years," she continued. "We're hoping this isn't the last time (we do a work camp in Detroit); we're hoping to do it again."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Group Mission Trips: Teen campers visit metro Detroit for home repairs