Thursday evening Corner Brewery had a full house, but they weren’t just serving up beers brewed in house. A healthy dose of community pride came with every glass of Maori, a special beer on tap for the evening, because of a fundraiser for Ypsi Pride.
Ypsilanti Pride is an organization dedicated to restoring and developing the town, which was started in 1995 by the graduating class of Leadership Ypsilanti, part of the Ypsilanti Chamber, and has continued putting on an annual event ever since.
“We get participants from throughout the community,” chairperson for the Pride planning committee and Eastern Michigan University graduate Jane Carr said. “People pick a public space and they adopt it for the day.”
This year’s event will be held Saturday, May 21. Past volunteers have done everything from picking up trash to planting flowers to pulling tires out of Ford Lake.
“People turn up in the morning to do what needs to happen at that site,” she said. “Then we have a thank you brunch and encourage them to spend their afternoons in their own yards. It’s about showing pride in your community.”
This year, Pride has started to try to get churches involved in the effort to beautify Ypsilanti as well.
“We’re encouraging churches to do a clean up on that day,” volunteer coordinator Gretchen Kopmanis said. “We want them to encourage congregates to participate. We try to get everybody to do a little bit.”
The level of success the program has had in Ypsilanti has given the group the ability to expand beyond the city.
“We’re able to include sites in Ann Arbor and on the Washtenaw border,” Kopmanis said.
Pride has had its ups and downs in its decade-and-a-half long run. It felt the sting of the financial troubles when it lost big contributors to the cause, but while the days of providing matching t-shirts to all of the volunteers are behind them for now, they still have plenty of local support.
“When GM and Ford disappeared, a lot of our major funding dried up,” Carr said. “We were looking at alternative fund raising.”
That’s how Corner Brewery entered the picture. Through fundraising opportunities like Thursday’s event, as well as local companies encouraging employees to volunteer time, they’ve been going strong, even through the recession.
“It’s drawing in local businesses,” Kopmanis said. “Traverse City has an event where they plant begonias. Everyone loves going to Traverse City and Frankenmuth.”
For those involved in the event, it’s all about showing pride in their community.
“I did it last year and it was a great event,” Greg Peruski, member of the Ypsilanti JCs, who are heavily involved with the event, said. “There should be more events like this. This is an established event, something that Ypsi definitely needs.”
Others are coming together with coworkers in support of project.
“I just want to help out,” Corner Brewery’s brewer Logan Schaedig, who will be participating with the event with other Corner employees, said. “It sounds like a good way to pick up trash and take down some really bad graffiti.”
For Schaedig, the city of Ypsilanti isn’t the only beneficiary from the program, the volunteers are too.
“It’s a good way to bring people together and do something positive outside,” he said.
For others, the feeling of community involvement makes the few hours of work worth it.
“I believe in the connection everyone has here in Ypsi,” said Erik Simmons, who plans to go to the event. “A lot of people here know each other, they help schools, donate to co-ops. I feel like a part of this area and I want to help out as much as I can.”
For Simmons, it’s not just the environment that can be improved through this program, the stereotypes Ypsilanti has been saddled with can be changed too.
“It shows that people care about it,” he said. “They want to see it looking nice, showing that the stigmas are untrue. Ypsilanti has strong, historical context and we need to keep it up.”
For more information on the event or to volunteer, visit www.ypsipride.org.
