- Telling It
- East Quad Garden
- Freedom House Detroit
- Spanish Language Internship Program
- PALMA
- Semester in Detroit
- Prison Creative Arts Project
- Center for World Performance Studies
- Shakespeare in the Arb
- Migrant Worker Education Program
- Why I Fight, or Team Wristband
- The Community of Food, Society & Justice Conference, October 2019
- Robertson Lecture
Freedom House Detroit is a temporary home and lifetime community for people from across the globe who are fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in the US or Canada. Freedom House provides a continuum of services designed to support clients throughout their asylum journey--from shelter and legal aid to language and customs skill-building to preparation for living and working in the US.
Underpinning these services are staff, volunteers, donors, partner organizations, community groups, and Freedom House alumni who form a community of support around every client.
The Residential College offers a course in which students engage with the clients at Freedom House.
French Service-Learning RCCORE 309.011
(Butler-Borruat) (Excl) (2 or 3 credits)
The objective of this service-learning course is to offer advanced students of French an opportunity to engage in experiential learning related to community service work. It provides French students with unique service learning opportunities by connecting them with partnered community organizations outside of the University setting which deal with French-speaking immigrant communities. Currently, students volunteer at Freedom House in Detroit, an organization which offers shelter and legal help to victims of persecution seeking asylum in the US, many of whom come from French-speaking Africa. The academic component of the course focuses on the Francophone African countries Freedom House residents are from and introduces students, although superficially, to these countries’ historical, social and cultural contexts. In addition, the US asylum process is explained and discussed. Students are given the opportunity to collaborate with Freedom House’s legal department by doing supervised translation work and they are in charge of organizing a fundraising event benefiting Freedom House. This course can count for the major/minor in French and Francophone Studies and in Romance Languages, as well for the Community Action for Social Change minor under certain conditions. Please contact Dominique Butler-Borruat (dborruat@umich.edu) for more information.
Read about how volunteering at Freedom House set RC student Brett Graham on his graduate school trajectory at this link.
