Parents, Students Welcome Homework House, the Newest Addition to Highland Park

Avalon Village The Homework House Mama Shu Shamayim "Mama Shu" Harris Community Helping Kids to be Better at School detroit Anonymous Donor Urban Oasis

By Jo Anne Hubert , Parent Herald Nov 05, 12:30 pm

Avalon Village just keeps getting better with its newest installment - the Homework House.

The Homework House is now opening its doors for students who are in need of a meal and a quiet place to study and do their homework.

This is the newest resource for kids in the community of the Avalon Village located at Highland Park, Detroit.

The Homework House is a big, renovated brick house where kids receive healthy meals and where adults and teachers are present to offer help with their homework.

The house features a computer lab and STEM lab, a kitchen, laundry and shower facilities, a recording studio, and a lot of comfortable corners to study and learn. Tennis, volleyball and basketball courts and seating are available outside.

The Homework House should have been available to kids at an earlier time if the budget did not take a shortage of about tens of thousands of dollars, Click On Detroit revealed.

In a miraculous turn, an anonymous donor reached out to Karen Drew of Local 4 volunteering to pay all the bills needed to finish the project.

A safe and efficient place to study for kids

Yusef Muhammad is a high school senior, and one of the students that are greatly benefitting from the Homework House.

The 17-year-old regularly stops by the house after school as he can get his homework done in a quiet place. He boasts of his cumulative GPA that is at 3.75, crediting it to the Homework House, where he was able to find a good and chill workspace, without too much noise, and where he is able to do what he needs to do.

Retired Highland Park teacher and the current director of education in Avalon Village, Boniswa Brock, stressed the significance of the ability to understand and complete homework. In the Homework House, they focus on this and on how these assignments should get done, CBS News reported.

She further stated that they help kids to learn how to do research and how to study because most of them do not know how to.

Shamayim "Mama Shu" Harris, a mother, a community activist, a former school administrator and the founder and CEO of the Avalon Village, emphasized that the kids have a hard time understanding because they cannot concentrate at home.

"Sometimes the grandparents are taking care of them. Some parents are incarcerated. Sometimes they're just overloaded and they have two and three jobs and they have to go to work and it's hard to sit down and actually help, you know, the child with their studies," Mama Shu expressed.

Building a family

"It takes a village to raise a child," as they say. Mama Shu, as everybody fondly calls her, took this motto literally and decided to build the Avalon Village, a sustainable eco-village inside the city of Detroit.

She pushed herself to create this "urban oasis" after the tragic death of her 2-year-old son, Jakobi RA, in 2007 who was killed by a hit and run driver.

Instead of falling into anger and depression, Mama Shu chose to heal and honor her son's memory by "transforming blight to beauty" and building something beautiful for the community of Highland Park by assembling a team of engineers, futurists, artists, urban farmers, volunteers and donors from around the world to help her make the village come to life.

She said that the village aims to literally raise children. The project is all about "building the whole child and family."

The Homework House is said to be currently looking for qualified tutors, who have the heart to teach and take care of kids.