What is One Stop Shop?
On December first and second, twenty-one of our DP Planning Team members participated in One Stop Shop, our long-standing annual partnership with the Redford Brightmoor Initiative. We partner with RBI, an amazing non-profit organization based in Detroit, throughout the year through OSS, DP Day, and other events. OSS is a holiday store where Detroit residents can stop by and shop for gifts, personal care items, appliances, linens, and anything else they may need at no cost! For the past few years, DP members have volunteered to help set up the store and work as personal shoppers. Personal shoppers are there when residents come in to shop and direct shoppers through the different areas, carry their shopping bags, and sometimes even recommend gifts if the shopper is looking for ideas for their children or grandchildren!
OSS is an incredibly rewarding volunteer experience as you can directly see the impact you are having on those who come in to shop! When reflecting on her experience at OSS, our Education Director, Grace, revealed that one of her favorite moments she experienced at OSS this year was “when I was the personal shopper for a mother of five girls, we were perusing the section full of gifts for children, and she carefully picked out gifts that she knew they would love. The look of joy and excitement on her face when we had finished shopping made me so excited for her and her girls.”
Shichi, DP’s Executive Director, expressed a similar sentiment: “I loved getting to individually know each person I was shopping with. The few minutes that I spent with each community member allowed me to learn so much about them, their families, and what they were looking forward to for the holidays. The highlight was definitely helping family members choose the perfect gifts for the kiddos!!” Shichi also noted how different this was than in previous years when there was minimal contact with community members to ensure the health and safety of the community. Shichi explained that in the two previous years she volunteered at OSS “our job as volunteers was mainly to help transport items directly to clients’ cars. However, these past two years, we were able to better engage with the residents! From being with them every step of the way through the shop to helping them weigh their options when it came to selecting the perfect toy for their kids, it has been incredible for us to get to know the community members.” RBI has done a phenomenal job adapting to the pandemic to protect public health while also supporting the needs of the community.
While OSS is an incredibly impactful program and has been a wonderful experience for our volunteers, we need to be mindful of our role in this event and the community it serves. As we are going into a community which most of us do not belong to, we need to be conscious of the fact that we do not understand the complexities of the needs of the community. The DP Planning Team educates our volunteers going into communities on how to work with the community rather than for the community. We emphasize that, as we don’t live in the community, we cannot fully understand the experiences of the community members and therefore cannot decide how to support the community. We actively listen to the needs of the community as articulated by our wonderful community partners to ensure that we are not doing more harm than good and that our presence contributes toward the goals that the community has set for itself in the way that they decide is appropriate. Overall, One Stop Shop has been an incredible experience for our volunteers for many years, and we hope that our volunteers will be able to volunteer at OSS and work with RBI for many years to come.
Written by Grace Schaefer (Education Director 2023-2024) and Shichi Dhar (Executive Director 2023-2024)