- The nonprofit Brilliant Detroit is working to stem the learning loss that often comes when children are out of school for the summer.

The organization has launched a citywide literacy campaign called Detroit Reads at its community hubs.

Families can participate in reading activities, field trips, and pop-up events.

Here's my conversation with Brilliant Detroit CEO, Cindy Eggleton, and one of the campaigns national partners, Adeola Whitney, who is the CEO of Reading Partners.

Adeola Whitney and Cindy Eggleton, welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- Yeah, it's great to have both of you here.

So this is a problem that I think parents face all the time.

What do you do with your kids during the summer that doesn't contribute to them losing the ground that they gained in school the year before?

Of course, that becomes more acute when we're talking about children who come from impoverished backgrounds.

Of course, children of color are overrepresented in those categories.

And so something like Detroit Reads really aims at, you know, the weak spots that we deal with in our community.

Cindy, I'll start with you talking about why this is important and why now.

- Yeah, so this is probably one of the most important things we can do is a organization but is a city.

It's really critical that Detroiters have the same and/or just excellent information, resources, and learning around summer reading loss.

And it's more than that, Stephen, I just wanna say that the Detroit Reads is about a celebration of literacy.

It is about Detroiters coming together across the city along three paths in which you're gonna talk to one of our favorite partners here on tutoring, that's filling a gap for sure.

One is, how do we build a level of reading, right?

How do we make sure that books are in kids' hands, and that it's a family affair, that families are equipped with everything they need, and that we're celebrating things within that, we have Men's Read Day, we have Black Storytellers, we have all kinds of things that make reading and literacy fun.

And then we have the fundamentals, which is tutoring, which is critically important for summer reading loss.

You hit it, this is important.

It's critically important during the summer, because in particular, children of color don't have the same resources, they can fall behind.

And this is a chance to both not fall further behind but also to potentially catch up.

So we lean in heavily.

Detroit Reads is in 14 locations across the city.

We're serving every district.

And it is a moment for Brilliant Detroit, where we can now see citywide action, movement, and of course, with the residents and neighborhoods.

- Yeah, yeah.

Adeola, your organization is playing a pretty key role here, you know, with the infrastructure of helping to not only teach kids to read, but you know, like that spark for them about what reading means.

I think I'll never forget with my own children that transition from the kind of rote idea of putting letters together to words and phrases and ideas and expression.

And when you see that happen, there is almost nothing, almost nothing else like it.

- You're absolutely right, Stephen.

I was saying before we started this conversation that one of my colleagues got an opportunity to work with a kindergartner in Detroit who's learning to read, and she was teaching her about compound words.

So that impacted her day, the adult, the tutor's day, all day.

And to the example that you brought about your own children, you're absolutely right, kids go from kindergarten to third grade or preschool to third grade to learning to read.

And then by third grade, the beginning of fourth grade, they're reading to learn, right?

And so, everything that we do, not only during the school year, but especially during the summer, only is going to help, you know, support children on their literacy journey.

And when we're talking about young children who may have finished elementary school, you know, this past late spring, not quite at grade level, you know, the summer for them is even more important.

- Yeah.

- And even more urgent.

And so, ensuring that we're not creating a further slide for them, there's this notion of, that's called the Summer Slide.

We wanna do everything that we can.

And so to be able to partner with this incredible organization, Brilliant Detroit, and certainly with Cindy and her amazing team was just music to our ears.

We're so excited to expand our program into the great city of Detroit and to continue to find ways to be a partner and resource.

- Yeah, yeah.

Cindy, for viewers who aren't familiar, tell us a little more about Brilliant Detroit.

I, of course, you and I know each other, and we know each other's organizations.

(laughing) But talk about how it started and how you got to this point, this kind of work.

You know, there's always that journey that organizations take.

- Yeah, you're kind of filling in for me when I was gonna say the journey of, long story short, Brilliant Detroit exists to create what we call kids success neighborhoods, neighborhoods where kids and families have everything they need in the middle of the neighborhood.

Stephen, that's how you and I are connected 'cause we have similar visions on things that we both do.

And we started this in 2016.

And in reality, there are many statistics that add up to that, we need to do more, and we need to do things differently.

We firmly believe that people, residents, neighborhoods should have the agency of what they want for their kids and their families.

And we've been able to show that it works because of that.

So our platform is education, health, and family support.

It's belly to eight.

We serve kids, we serve adults, we serve families.

And we've seen three reading levels grow with different partners, we work with 160 partners.

We've also seen significant and very significant improvement on education, health, and family support.

The secret sauce is people and neighborhoods that want what is best for their kids.

And we just provide and walk alongside to make sure that's happening.

- Yeah, yeah.

Adeola, your organization is a national organization, lots of different places.

Talk about, I mean, to Detroit and how key that is.

- Absolutely, yes.

So we've been in existence now since '99, so about 23, 24 years old.

And we're in 12 metropolitan areas across the country, but we were not yet in Detroit, Michigan, up until this opportunity of us being able to partner with Brilliant Detroit.

This means the world.

I mean, the data doesn't lie.

And I think it's really critically important for us to go where we are needed.

And as a national nonprofit, what's really important to me and to all of the colleagues that I work with on a daily basis is that we do this work with our communities, not to them or for them.

And I think the best way of us entering a space like Detroit, Michigan, had to be with an organization that understands the communities, that has been doing work, that has a strong brand, that has shown, you know, significant levels of success, and that is Cindy and her team at Brilliant Detroit.

And so, the moment, you know, my first conversation with Cindy and hearing her talk about the mission of Brilliant Detroit, the years that they've been in existence, the successes that they've seen and why they do this work, it was a match made in nonprofit heaven.

It was like, "Okay, this is exactly the type of partner "we strive to partner with," and mainly also because this literacy crisis is a huge one, the challenges that families and young people are facing, not just because of the pandemic, they existed long before, the pandemic only exacerbated them.

As a, you know, literacy nonprofit that's been around for 24 years, we know that we do no good to anyone when organizations purport to be the panacea, we're not the panacea, we have one resource, and there are areas where we are not experts and organizations like Brilliant Detroit are.

And if there are ways that our resources can provide support to their families, we, you know, we wanna sign up and help.

And so we are just thrilled.

And Stephen, while this is just something we've started for this summer, I think through conversations I've had with Cindy, our hope is to continue to partner along after the summer.

And so yeah, we hope that we're here to stay and can continue to find ways to support the amazing young people in Detroit.

- Yeah, yeah.

- If I may, just for a second here, I just wanna lift up what it takes, and we all know this, it's head, heart, and shoulder's work.

- Yes.

- I used to say it's head and heart, it was magic for us together, but also Reading Partners just went into action after we talked, when we said look at these groups aren't able to provide tutoring.

There's a shortage of volunteers, what can we do?

And they came back and said, "Basically, we can do anything, "and we're ready to do it in a couple of weeks," which was incredible.

It takes sometimes moving mountains, because who's at the center of the work are the kids that deserve better and more.

- Yeah, and they need it, they need it so desperately.

That's gonna do it for us this week.

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