Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

There are cleanup and fix-up days, volunteer days, street party days — and then there's Neighborhoods Day in Detroit.

Today's 10th-annual Neighborhoods Day was all of that and more.

Under sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-80s, thousands of volunteers took part at hundreds of sites.

"This was an amazing display of pride, work and determination," said Luther Keith, executive director of the nonprofit Arise Detroit!, which recruited for Neighborhoods Day more than 300 churches, block clubs and community groups. Keith said some events — such as the daylong festival of food, games, and bounce houses for kids at Fountain Worship Center — were a reward for volunteer efforts throughout the year.

Veterans just out of military come to Detroit to volunteer

Others, like the peace marches and poetry readings, raised community awareness to social concerns. At the Detroit Historical Museum, curators and educators led forums to discuss plans for the Detroit 67 Project, aimed at chronicling and understanding the Detroit riot of 1967.

But mostly, Neighborhoods Day was about the hard work of securing abandoned houses and cleaning up the city. Standing on Evanston, near Harper and Chalmers on the city's east side, 47-year-old Xzun Bellefant scanned the block where he grew up.

"I've been bringing young kids here every year for five years," said Bellefant, who founded a small volunteer corps he calls Man Power Mentoring, which lives off grants from DTE Foundation and the Wayne County Action Agency.

"We cut the grass. We shovel up the dirt. We sweep," he said. Pointing at 3 p.m. down the street, now half shoveled and swept clean, he said: "These young men are part of my program. That's my daughter. The woman on that porch — she sent her two daughters out to help. Those little girls are picking up the trash.

"And the neighbors — when they saw us working, they came out to water their lawns. That's the kind of response we want," he said.

Attired in matching Neighborhoods Day T-shirts as they chopped at, shoveled and swept Evanston Street's weedy curbsides were teens Zaire Thomas and Taran Sherman, both of Detroit and Keyshawn Hadley, 15, of Southfield.

"I was just hanging out with my cousin and he said we're going to do some community service. So here I am, picking up garbage," Keyshawn said with a laugh, adding: "But this gives me a sense of satisfaction."

Detroiters "get a bad rap sometimes," but today's cleanup helps turn that image around, Taran said.

Contact Bill Laitner: 313-223-4485 or blaitner@freepress.com.