On Wednesday April 9th, Diallo Smith, the new president and COO of Life Remodeled joined up to educate us on the wonderful work Life Remodeled is doing.
In 2010, Life Remodeled was founded with the soul goal of helping people in the community of Detroit. Starting in 2010, they held an annual event of building a house from scratch in just 6 days. Every year, this attracts thousands of volunteers to help. A few years later, a community member made it clear to Life Remodeled that this one house would not change the entire community- so they pivoted. They started working with existing schools.
Since the peak of Detroit’s population in the 1950s and 60s, the population has only been on the decline. This has impacted schools that once held 4000 students now only hold 400, like Central High School. When Life Remodeled first started working with the school, the Board of Education was looking to either move the middle schools into the high school building, or demolish it all together. Life Remodeled helped to keep the school open and now helps with career paths for students.
In 2023 Life Remodeled purchased Dominican High School to become the next hub for the community to work out of. It is estimated to help over 18,000 people. Since 2014, Life Remodeled has renovated 4 schools, invested over 56 million, beautified over 2,652 homes, worked with over 86,000 volunteers, and boarded up over 2,000 homes. Life Remodeled was named best managed non profit two years in a row. Thank you Diallo for visiting and for all of your great work!