The Eastside Community Network kicked off its $10 million “Rooted in Wellness” capital campaign with the groundbreaking of the Angela Brown Wilson Gardens, an outdoor space that builds on its commitment to holistic wellness named for the organization’s beloved late co-founder.
The capital effort will bolster offerings at ECN’s Stoudamire Wellness Hub, where more than 3,000 members have access to programming centered on physical, emotional, social and environmental well-being. The surrounding garden and greenspace will pay tribute to the legacy of Wilson, a guiding force in ECN’s 40-plus-year approach to inclusive community development.
Wilson, who also served as the nonprofit’s chief operations officer, died May 4 at the age of 64 after a nearly yearlong battle with leukemia.
ECN President and CEO Donna Givens Davidson said the campaign will support ECN in building out the gardens and expanding wellness activities to its outdoor campus. It also will go toward operational costs and deepening ECN’s overall commitment to environmental health and community wellness. ECN already has secured $5 million toward its goal during the quiet phase of the fundraising campaign.
The garden, Davidson said, will enhance environmental features around the exterior of the building – currently consisting largely of concrete and surrounded by truck traffic – to match the investments and offerings inside the hub.
Although the project wasn’t originally intended as a memorial garden, Davidson said it felt right to honor Wilson and her unwavering commitment and impact in the community.
“The design for the gardens was a mother tree, and I thought, ‘she was the mother tree for the community. It was really just led by the spirit, a reflection that we had to dedicate this to her,” Davidson said. “If you go through Detroit, there are not a lot of things that are named for Black Detroiters. So, giving names to people who mean something to us means something to me.”
The first phase of the garden will scale back the parking lot pavement in favor of more greenspace.
“Our space is now dominated by parking and it’s overly industrialized,” Davidson added. “This garden is an attempt to remediate, create buffers from encroaching industry and a space for learning and connecting.”
ECN opened the wellness hub in 2022. The building, which, at one time, was meant to be used for an east side charter school, was donated to the nonprofit in 2012. Staff first began occupying the building in 2013.
Davidson said ECN also hopes to eventually connect the Manz Playfield, at Conner and Mack.
The Rooted in Wellness campaign is supported in part by Henry Ford Health System, with president and CEO Bob Riney serving as honorary co-chair alongside Valencia Stoudamire, vice president of strategic supplier engagement and community benefit reporting, and widow of Marlowe Stoudamire, for whom the hub is named.
Stoudamire, who lost her husband to COVID-19, said in a statement that Wilson demonstrated a genuine heart for the people of this community.
“It is my hope that when people visit the gardens, they will think of Angela and be inspired by her legacy and motivated to positively impact the lives of others the way she did,” she said.
A social worker by training, Wilson, a lifelong east side resident, was a community activist since her youth as the Eastside Community Network, formerly known as the Warren Conner Development Coalition when it formed in the late 1970s.
Davidson noted several campaign supporters, the State of Michigan, philanthropic partners The Kresge Foundation, Gilbert Family Foundation and Knight Foundation as well as investment spearheaded by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in 2022 that directed nearly $2 million in multi-year contributions to ECN.
Darnell Adams, vice president of Detroit community initiatives at the Gilbert Family Foundation, said the project represents “what it looks like to invest in neighborhoods in a way that is both rooted in community and built to last.”
Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of the Detroit Program at the Kresge Foundation, said the capital project deepens the capacity of the east side to create places that “belong to – and are shaped by – its residents.”
The standing-room-only crowd gathered inside the hub on April 16 ahead of a ceremonial groundbreaking, which marked a call to action.
“Our public kickoff is an invitation to invest in the east side, invest in wellness, and invest in what community can look like when we refuse to be diminished,” Davidson added.
Wilson was a founding member of the organization, formerly known as the Warren Conner Development Coalition, and worked with Davidson in the 1990s. Davidson said Wilson asked her to come back to the organization as president about 11 years ago. Davidson agreed.
Wilson did not have children of her own, but Davidson said she was regarded as a “mother of the community” who cared for people in ways that were large and small.
Wilson ran for Detroit City Council in 1993 and though she didn’t make it to the general election, her campaign caught the attention of then mayor Dennis Archer. Wilson left the former Warren Conner to serve as a top executive for former Archer, supervising 11 city departments.
She still served on the coalition’s board and when the organization raised money for an endowment, Wilson was the lead donor.
Even as she was “moving on up,” Davidson said, Wilson stayed in the community.
“She didn’t see growth as relocation,” she said.
Among those who provided remarks for the Thursday groundbreaking were Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Mayor Mary Sheffield’s Chief of Staff David Bowser and Brown’s relatives, including District 4 Council Member Latisha Johnson and District 5 City Council Member Renata Miller, who also was Wilson’s cousin.
Miller told BridgeDetroit Friday that she grew up on the east side near her cousin and not far from ECN. Over the years, she witnessed the effort that Wilson put in, working day and night for her community, she said.
“The garden itself symbolizes the work that she’s done,” Miller said. “She put everything she had into that center (ECN). Angela herself, she uplifted people everywhere she went.”
Learn more about the campaign and how to donate here.
