Last month local community members, Amazon volunteers, and Amazon vendors gathered in the cheerful walls of the Detroit Achievement Academy (DAA) to celebrate their newly renovated space. Over the past several months, DAA’s makeover was made possible through the efforts of the Amazon program Local Love.
Local Love united over 100 volunteers and local service providers who spent days creating a new outdoor play area, getting classrooms ready for the opening of their new school, and installing new kitchen appliances so students could learn to prepare and enjoy healthy meals. Local Love also pooled together over $50,000 in product donations.
During this celebration, there was so much heartwarming support for DAA and its sister school, Detroit Prep. As we walked around the beautiful new grounds, local Amazon employees pledged to continue to give back to these Detroit charter schools.
“My local colleagues and I are excited to start a reading program, which is the foundation of Amazon,” said Mark Lacombe, a Senior Sales Account Executive at Amazon’s Detroit Corporate Offices. “And if we help develop better readers, we develop better citizens in the short and long term.”
“DAA and Detroit Prep are addressing a serious need in our community,” added Sylvester Friend, a Site Leader in Detroit’s Sort Center. “That’s why my associates and I are adopting them as our local nonprofit for the next year. It’s important for these students to know their community cares about them.”
I’m so moved by the initial support effort from Morris Assembly, Insinger Machine, and Thermal Pros to give the students at DAA an awesome school where they can grow, learn, and have fun. Local Love was just the beginning of our engagement efforts in Detroit, and I’m excited to see what comes next.
