Volunteer, Detroit, MI

Ray Wright, 50, has been involved volunteering more than 10 years and is particularly committed to grassroots community development activities in Detroit, MI.

Ray is currently serving at the Just Aim Motivate and Move (JAMM) Project, a program he started in 1998 to help children combat drug abuse and child molestation. Ray has engaged the same networking and communications skills that he used as an AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer to start the JAMM Project, which features an after-school and summer program for inner-city youths to learn computer technology.The AmeriCorps program at Oakland University in Pontiac, MI, has been a strong partner of the JAMM Project, and has serviced thousands of youths and their parents across the Pontiac and Metro-Detroit areas.

Previously, Ray served as a community outreach coordinator at a grassroots pan-African social service agency in Detroit called Operation Get Down, which identified self-help solutions in the Detroit community including shelter and support to the homeless, youth development programs, and family emergency services.

After spending a year at Operation Get Down, Ray became an AmeriCorps*VISTA member at the organization’s warming center for homeless residents, where he was responsible for transporting homeless adults and children to the center during the winter seasons.

AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) is a program that provides full-time members to nonprofit, faith-based and other community organizations, and public agencies to create and expand programs that bring low-income individuals and communities out of poverty. AmeriCorps*VISTA members leverage human, financial, and material resources to increase the capacity of thousands of low-income areas across the country to address challenges and improve their lives and communities.

While volunteering at the warming center, Ray was appointed an advocate for residents’ rights at the new NIA House – the largest transitional housing unit in Michigan at that time. There, Ray was part of an extensive effort to provide meals, and create warm and safe surroundings for the homeless.