Feature: New Horse Power For Motor City

NEW HORSE POWER FOR MOTOR CITY

Eventer-turned-schoolteacher David Silver plans an equestrian center in urban Detroit to encourage homegrown leaders and help revitalize a great American city.

By CHRISTINA KEIM

Detroit’s inner-city streets are a long way from the galloping lanes of a cross-country course, but former three-day event rider David Silver is equally at home in both. e Westchester, N.Y., native competed up to the CCI* level before taking on another daunting challenge: teaching a class of energetic fourth- and fth-graders at Burns Elementary and Middle School on Detroit’s west side. Silver arrived there in 2012 as a 22-yearold with Teach For America, a program that places teachers in under-resourced and poverty-stricken districts in rural or urban areas. His two-year stint at Burns gave him a “crazy idea” for an urban equestrian center that will reclaim some of Detroit’s vacant city land and bring horses, the original horsepower, back to the Motor City to drive positive change. By any measure, Detroit is a large city. Nearly 140 square miles fall within city limits and provide a home for almost 700,000 people. But the population was close to 1.8 million in the 1950s, and the decades-long shift in demographics and changes in the local economy have left a city that is ripe with opportunity or teetering on the brink of collapse, depending on whom you talk to. Darlene Walker grew up in Detroit, and she’s now raising her four children there. Her two youngest—daughters Shatese, 11, and Ariel, 9—attend Burns, where Darlene volunteers, and Shatese was one of Silver’s students. Darlene is frustrated, and she worries about her children’s future.

“ ere are no resources here,” Darlene says. “It’s not just the school. ere are not enough resources to help families and kids in Detroit. “Mr. Silver is great,” she adds. “To see how he interacts with the kids and how much the kids look up to him gives me such joy.”

Silver forged deep bonds with his students, and at the end of his tenure, he determined that his work with them was

not done. “ is is an area where students experience neighborhood violence, residential transiency, and limited resources and support in their schools,” says Silver. “ ese are obstacles which prevent kids from reaching their full potential. “My experience with horses as an event rider [gave me] a deep belief that I can tackle new challenges and set goals,” he adds. “Having the right people around me allowed me to rise to new levels. I started to think about the connections between the experiences that I had as a kid with horses and what they could do.”

In August of 2014, Silver left teaching behind, inspired now by an idea for a new nonpro t, Detroit Horse Power, which brings together urban youth and horses to provide opportunities for social and emotional growth. According to its mission statement, the organization—which received its tax-exempt status in April 2015—intends to “address two persistent problems … the shortage of opportunities for metro Detroit’s vulnerable populations and the abundance of vacant land.” And it will focus on developing six character traits in its students: responsibility, empathy, perseverance, patience, self-con dence and con ict resolution. But if Silver’s full vision comes to fruition, Detroit Horse Power will do even more—it will help to rebuild and unify a community and provide hope where, for some, there is little left.

Detroit Horse Power founder David Silver (far right) has a personal tie to the transformative power of horses. “My experience with horses as an event rider gave me a deep belief that I can tackle new challenges and set goals,” he says. As DHP expands, Silver hopes to bring horses to the heart of the city by building an urban barn and community center.

From Barn To Classroom

Growing up in Westchester County, Silver had the sort of childhood that most equestrians dream of: a supportive, horseloving family, a horse of his own, and opportunities for lessons and competition. An H-A graduate of the U.S. Pony Clubs, Silver was a working student for Boyd Martin as a teen and trained with many

notable equestrians up and down the East Coast. He spent time riding and competing in Ocala, Fla., and Aiken, S.C.

Silver competed successfully through the CCI* level, nishing eighth at Bromont (Quebec) in 2009 on With A Rush. But the horse’s soundness issues began to limit him, and after a few unsuccessful attempts at

Ariel Walker, 9, is one of the participants learning to work with and ride horses through Detroit Horse Power. “They’ve all grown so much,” her mother, Darlene Walker, says of the DHP students she knows. “Most definitely, this program can succeed here. We need it.” intermediate, Silver retired him from upper- level competition. Horses took a back seat to his studies at Dartmouth College (N.H.), from which Silver graduated in 2012 with a degree in government and a minor in educational policy. “Growing up with opportunity and privilege, it’s been a journey to gure out how to use my experience to lift up others,” says Silver. “I became much more set on increasing opportunity for underprivileged youth in the U.S.”

His longtime riding coach and mentor, Jeanie Clarke, encouraged Silver to join Teach For America. Coming from a background that placed a high value on education and the resources to make it possible, Silver was profoundly a ected by his experience with Teach For America.

“I have a deep respect for classroom teachers,” says Silver. “[Teaching] is the most challenging thing I will ever do.”

“ is is a population of kids who hasn’t had people want to do things for them,” says Clarke, who saw how teaching in Detroit solidi ed Silver’s commitment to educational reform. “ e path he has taken keeps building on itself. He is drawing on all of the experiences and practice and thoughts to bring this forward.”

City At A Crossroads

rough Teach For America, Silver also met Paul Mack, a fellow educator and advocate for Detroit revitalization. eir friendship led to long conversations about how to better serve the needs of Detroit youth. “All parents want better for their kids,” says Mack, now the president of Detroit Horse Power’s board of directors. “Right now, for an impoverished parent in Detroit, the options are not good.”

“Kids give up,” says Darlene. “We just push our kids to try to get through poverty now. But so many kids don’t make it.”

Mack says Detroit’s population is 80 percent African American and is demographically segregated, mostly by neighborhood. And while the central downtown area is seeing economic growth and development, the rest of the city isn’t keeping pace. “ e downtown area of Detroit extends about three to four miles out in most directions,” says Mack. “[ ese] 10 square miles are seeing a boom in economic development. Which begs the question: What is happening in the other 98 percent of the city?”

Detroit’s shrinking population has left nearly 23 square miles of vacant land within its borders—a surface area equivalent to the

size of Manhattan. ese lands were once homes, factories and schools, but a lack of human and nancial resources have left many buildings to rot. Most will require total demolition; some land is contaminated, while other properties have become weedy, overgrown elds where people dump trash. Local residents try to mow or maintain these grassy areas themselves because the city lacks the resources to do it.

Mack believes the only way to bring money into a city is to attract people with money to spend, and there are pockets of Detroit that are enticing the lucrative 25- to 35-year-old demographic, as these “neoDetroiters” recognize they can a ord good housing and lifestyles there. Property values in these neighborhoods are rising, but Mack explains that it’s a tricky balance to bring desperately needed nancial resources into the area without simultaneously creating a gentri cation gap between the new residents and those still living in poverty.

Detroit’s public schools haven’t been immune to the economic contraction. “ e student population has decreased precipitously,” says Silver. “Some schools are in a deplorable condition, and there is a lack of resources to support teachers and students. Charter schools have become an option for some, but they pull students and resources away.”

Many of these former schools stand vacant. Some, abandoned and vandalized, have been destroyed. Others remain standing on acres of land, creating eyesores and havens for pests and waste that frustrate the surrounding neighborhoods. But Silver sees them as nearly ideal sites for Detroit Horse Power, and he believes an urban equestrian center could be a bridge over the gentri cation gap, a way to restore a sense of unity, joy and pride to the local community.

“ ere are not enough recreation centers for kids here,” says Darlene. “I am in favor of any program that can help our kids get out of poverty.”

KAT NETZLER PHOTO Before the Teach For America program took him to Detroit, David Silver competed through the CCI* level, finishing eighth at Bromont in 2009 on his own With A Rush.

Life Lessons From Horses

Mack says teaching urban kids how to succeed is a unique challenge. “You hear that kids just need to go to school and try,” says Mack. “But learned helplessness is real. ese are kids who are totally capable of learning and solving problems, but they don’t think that they are worth it. It isn’t that the challenge isn’t worth it. It’s that these kids need to learn that they are worth it.”

Mack’s voice wavers. “ e behavioral problems associated with urban youth are just things which come into the empty space left by a lack of self-esteem, self-con dence and self-e cacy,” he says.

In pilot programs last summer, Detroit Horse Power brought 18 children, aged 8 to 13, from inner-city Detroit to facilities like Liz Snoblen’s Equinox Farm in Highland, Mich. Many of the participants were former students of Silver’s, but some also came from Alternatives for Girls, a program for homeless and at-risk girls. Detroit residents and members of the local equine community volunteered to help run the programs.

“ ey got to feed the horses,” says Darlene, whose daughters Ariel and Shatese attended the course. “ ey got to train the horses. ey got to clean the horses. [Shatese] was too sheltered from the outside world, and it enhanced her social skills when she got introduced to this program. She talks more now and is more con dent.”

For Darlene’s girls, horses were a new experience. “I told my kids that someone has to take care of the horses like people take care of [them],” says Darlene.

“Urban kids have no frame for the horses,” explains Mack. “ ey have never been around something like this—a docile, giant animal, but one which is sizing them up, too. It breaks down a barrier. You have to nd a balance between being con dent and a leader with being too strong and aggressive in order to interact with horses.”

Mack grew up in a rural area but had

little previous experience with horses before Detroit Horse Power.

“ e process that we take kids through in a week is world-shattering,” says Mack. “ e comments at the beginning are typically super-negative and self-derogatory. But being around the horses and learning how to care for the horses gives an opportunity for [students’] de cits to be matched exactly with the opportunity to grow. ey go from thinking, ‘I didn’t think I would ever be the kind of person who could …’ to thinking, ‘I could be the person who ...’ ”

Darlene knows many of the young people who attended the 2015 program, and she’s witnessed positive changes in those children, too. “ ey have all grown so much,” she says. “My girls are so excited and ask all the time when they are going back. It brought me joy to see how much fun they really had.”

Forging Community Connections

Growing up as an equestrian, Silver recalls, meant the barn was a place to go and to belong. It was where his mentor, Clarke, provided guidance and direction, not just with horses but also at critical life milestones. Silver sees an opportunity for Detroit Horse Power to create a similar safe haven where urban youth, local residents and educators can work together.

“I see an urban barn as being like a school, a community hub,” says Silver. “An urban barn can host community events, birthday parties and barbecues. It can be a place where students can get tutoring and where residents are always welcome.”

Detroit is poised to make such a place possible. A decades-old ordinance prohibits residents from keeping livestock within city limits, although some do keep chickens, goats and bees there illegally. But via a draft ordinance expected to come before the City Planning Commission and the City Council this year, Detroit could approve horses and other urban livestock on a case-by-case basis.

Silver and his team have been working to educate city leaders and residents about the bene ts and the logistics.

“We prepared a 30-page research document on urban horse care best practices,” says Silver. “We have spent a lot of time trying to answer the question of why horses should be a part of the urban environment. We have a lot of local support. e revision to the law is just trying to catch up with where people are at in the city today.”

Silver sees repurposing a 15- to 20-acre parcel of vacant land as a chance to bring Detroit Horse Power close to the people it’s most intended to serve—underprivileged urban youth. e parcel must not be contaminated from its previous use, it must be big enough and close to a dense population of children, and nearby residents must support horses as part of their community’s future.

“ is center is an opportunity to promote synergy with other resources within Detroit,” says Silver. “For example, open areas could be used to grow hay. We have a big problem with dumped tires. Could components be extracted to make synthetic footing? ere is also a strong urban gardening movement, and so our composted manure could be useful there.”

DHP’s model calls for city residents to board their horses at the facility, which would provide income to support operations

DETROIT HORSE POWER PHOTO Until Detroit Horse Power can use some of Detroit’s 23 square miles of vacant and blighted land to build its own facility, it is partnering with area farms to bring horses and kids together. DHP teaches children like Shalma Torres (left) to care for and ride horses, but it also focuses on developing responsibility, empathy, perseverance, patience, self-confidence and conflict resolution.

“It isn’t that the challenge isn’t worth it. It’s that these kids need to learn that they are worth it.” –Paul Mack

In its next phase, Detroit Horse Power plans to bring its programs into schools. “I see an urban barn as being like a school, a community hub,” says David Silver (center) shown here with Alexis Lawson (left) and Xavier Lawson. DYNAMIC

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while strengthening the residents’ ties to the city. e boarding operation should make the DHP center self-supporting, so when grants come in, they can go entirely toward developing youth programs. e center also would run equestrian events, adding value for the community. But these activities are not the main objective; they are a means to get horses around the kids in urban Detroit.

“What is unique here is the community connection and making links between groups in the community that don’t usually do so,” says Mack. “Detroit Horse Power’s facility will be deeply connected to the people around it.” is summer, DHP’s expanded activities will bring 75 kids to a series of ve-day programs over a total of six weeks. Area farm owners—including Snoblen of Equinox Farm—will once again provide facilities and horses.

“ e goal is that these intensive ve-daylong programs will serve as a launch point for after-school programming,” says Silver. is fall, DHP will bring its activities to Detroit schools to teach horse management and help students translate the social and emotional growth they experience with horses to their everyday lives.

In the meantime, DHP leaders have a short list of potential sites for the proposed equestrian center, and they’re preparing to move ahead as soon as city ordinance allows. While the political gears turn slowly, DHP is focusing on both the small steps and the big picture.

“Detroiters are working people, and they will nd a way to thrive,” says Silver.

With Detroit Horse Power, young residents may soon get a leg up on that brighter future.

“I wish I could be the kid that could get to do it,” says Darlene. “I am praying that the year-round program happens, and we can be a part of it. Most de nitely, this program can succeed here. We need it.”

DETROIT HORSE POWER PHOTO