Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2015 | Page 19

injustices that were commonplace in my childhood.”
Howell is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in urban sociology under
prominent sociologist Michael Emerson at Rice University, and remains
involved in a local CCDA organization.
“Effective research requires continual involvement in the community,
and community engagement requires effective research to progress
forward in its tactics and techniques,” she says.
When the two intersect, promising paradigms and practices are created.
And many Wheaton alumni are busy putting the best ideas into practice.
Alumni in Urban Renewal:
putting ideas into practice
You’ve likely heard plenty about Detroit’s downfall: how
manufacturing woes led one of America’s largest and wealthiest
cities to lose half of its 1.8 million population, file the nation’s
biggest municipal bankruptcy, and become synonymous with
abandoned buildings and unsolved crimes. Yet have you heard of
Peaches & Greens, a delivery truck turned grocery store that brings
affordable fruits and vegetables into Detroit’s poorest inner-city
neighborhoods? Or CDC Farm & Fishery, a liquor-store-turnedaquaponics-farm that grows microgreens and raises 6,000 tilapia?
These are just two of the success stories shared by Lisa Johanon ’82,
one of many Wheaton alumni at the forefront of renewing America’s
cities, one neighborhood at a time.
“I wanted to live as someone who speaks justice for the poor,” says
Johanon, whose Central Detroit Christian Community Development
Corporation (CDC) just celebrated its 20th anniversary serving one

of Detroit’s roughest neighborhoods. “Where are the poor? The highest
concentration is in the city.”
The community development trend that most excites Johanon:
socially conscious businesses. CDC has been part of this up-and-coming
wave in community development for a decade.
“We’ve been developing businesses with a social purpose, employing
people who are hard to employ, such as ex-offenders, substance abusers,
and the impoverished,” says Johanon. “It’s not until we start employing
people and taking care of their physical needs that they can open their
ears to the gospel.”
CDC currently runs eight such operations, with businesses number
nine and number ten in the works. In addition to a grocery truck and
aquaponics farm, her ministry operates a healthy soul food restaurant, an
orchard, a garden, a landscaping company, a property management firm,
a security company, and soon a laundromat/fitness center, aptly named
“Fit & Fold”—all within Detroit’s 140 square miles.
David Doig ’87 is most excited by the increased focus on sustainable
buildings. And he knows a thing or two about buildings. After launching
Lawndale Christian Deve