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Dinner and a kickstart

Beenish Ahmed, DetroitOctober 5, 2013

Detroit recently filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. The Motor City has come into hard times in recent years, but one group of residents refuses to see their city fall any further.

https://p.dw.com/p/19tx1

Following the collapse of the city's manufacturing industry and the global financial crisis, Detroit has become a record-holder - in a negative sense - in a number of areas of measurable development inside the US.

The city's unemployment level is now near 16 percent and, according to the FBI, it is the second most dangerous city in the US, just behind the nearby city of Flint, also in the state of Michigan.

Detroit, whose population has dropped dramatically to 700,000 in the last 20 years, also has levels of illiteracy and poverty considerably higher than the national average.

Detroit Soup is an organization that sets to tackle some of these problems by allowing residents to take part in a monthly dinner, which provides funding for micro-grants for projects to improve the lives of locals in Detroit.