GM Hires Students

Community service effort

GM hires 110 students to help clean up Detroit

They’ll spruce up parks, plant gardens, learn skills

By Nathan Bomey Detroit Free Press Business Writer

   General Motors has hired 110 high school students, mostly from Detroit, as summer interns to help clean up the city, perform service projects and learn life skills.

   GM North America President Mark Reuss said the two-month GM Student Corps program would give the students invaluable work experience and connections with a global company. The students, selected from 11 United Way Network of Excellence Schools, will be paid minimum wage to perform work in Detroit-area neighborhoods.

   Their service projects will include sprucing up local parks, planting community gardens and establishing food banks. They will also gain skills, such as budgeting and career planning, through a program created by Junior Achievement.

   Sixty GM retirees, 12 interns from the University of Detroit Mercy and GM employee volunteers will participate in the program and mentor the students. Former GM market analyst Mike Di-Giovanni is playing a leadership role.

   Reuss said the program could expand if GM can recruit more local companies to hire interns.

   He pitched the idea to GM CEO Dan Akerson, who approved the project as long as the students were paid. Many companies use unpaid interns for a variety of purposes.

   “We said hey, what’s the opportunity in the city in the summer? And there’s not a lot, as we all know,” Reuss said. “This will be the first job that a lot of these students have ever had that pays money.”

   The new program comes as the city’s state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, looks for a solution other than bankruptcy to Detroit’s long-festering financial crisis.

   Asked whether GM is concerned about the possibility that Detroit could file for bankruptcy, Reuss said it’s “worrisome.”

   “Certainly there’s the negative emotional effect,” he said. “But if that’s what it takes to get it right and really move on with the city, then maybe that’s going to happen.”

   GM, one of the city’s largest employers, has also supported other community institutions, including Focus: HOPE, the Michigan Science Center, the College for Creative Studies, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Habitat for Humanity.

   Akerson has taken a personal interest in the revitalization of Detroit's Morningside neighborhood, donating $1 million last year to Habitat's efforts to rehabilitate the area.

   For the GM Student Corps program, the company hired student interns from Central Collegiate Academy, Detroit’s Cody High School, East Detroit High, Hamtramck High, Harper Woods High, Detroit’s Henry Ford High, Madison High, Melvindale High, Detroit’s Os-born High, River Rouge High and Van Dyke Lincoln High.

   The automaker said it would also provide vans and pickups for adults to deliver materials for the community projects.

   Contact: Nathan Bomey: 313-223-4743 or nbomey@freepress.com  . Follow him on Twitter@NathanBomey.

General Motors North America President Mark Reuss has lunch Monday with Henry Ford High School students — among the 110 Detroit-area high school students being hired by GM as paid summer interns to staff the new GM Student Corps.

General Motors' 110 Detroit-area high school paid summer interns who make up the new GM Student Corps. PHOTOS BY JOHN F. MARTIN FOR GENERAL MOTORS

Bing tees up more business help for Detroit

   Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said Monday that his Active and Safe Campaign has already raised $24 million of its $60-million, three-year target to support public safety and recreational programs, and that another major donation will be announced in the next week or so.

   “There’s not another city in the country where the business community and the foundations have stepped up to this degree,” Bing said prior to an event announcing that General Motors has hired 110 summer interns from local high schools to perform service projects in the city.

   Efforts like the GM Student Corps project, along with keeping parks and recreation centers active during the summer, Bing said, “are huge. We’ve got to keep these kids engaged.” Bing launched the Active and Safe Campaign last fall, tapping fund-raising specialist Peter Remington to help coordinate it.

   Major donations to date have included 23 new ambulances for the Detroit Fire Department’s EMS unit and 100 new patrol cars for the Detroit Police Department; $14 million to support recreational centers and programming; 150 new mattresses last Christmas Eve by Detroit furniture mogul Art Van Els-lander, and $23,500 last week by AAA Michigan to pay for the inspection of 20 aerial ladders and 4,600 feet of ground ladders used by the Detroit Fire Department. Other major corporate donors have included Quicken Loans, Penske Automotive, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Platinum Equity, Lear, Ford, Chrysler and Strategic Staffing Solutions.

   “We have some really fun announcements that we’re close to finalizing. The fact that we’re halfway through to the goal already is amazing,” Remington said, “and a lot of it is due to the abiding respect that corporate leaders in this town have for Dave Bing.”

   Bing, speaking six days after announcing that he will not run for re-election as mayor in November, struck an upbeat tone, while acknowledging a host of challenges facing the cash-strapped city.

   “We’re moving the ball forward,” he told GM North America President Mark Reuss, who agreed.

   Bill Nowling, spokesman for Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr, said Orr applauds Bing’s efforts. “He wants to make sure that the mayor gets credit for what he’s already started,” Now-ling said of Orr.

   Michael Brennan, president of the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, said he feels that “more than any time in the past 20 years, Detroit is at a pivot point.”

   “I’m encouraged on many fronts,” said Brennan, who was present for the rollout of GM Student Corps, which is being funded by an undisclosed sum of GM’s corporate cash. The automaker’s philanthropic GM Foundation made a $27.1-million grant, the largest in its history, in 2011 to the United Way, enabling creation of a “Network of Excellence” program in seven Detroit high schools, focusing on small class sizes and science, math and technology curricula.

   When I asked whether he will endorse a mayoral candidate, Bing said the November election is too far off and there’s too much work to be done.

   “It will be easier for them than it was for me,” he said of his successor’s task, before quipping at the GM event that his four years in office “have been like a 20-year career for me already.”

TOM WALSH TALKS WITH MAYOR ABOUT HIS FUND-RAISING CAMPAIGN