Summer camps that cost Detroit families $450 are now free thanks to new private funding

Melvin Alston still remembers the doors that opened for him after he joined a summer program as a teen - the internships, the jobs and the mentors who stayed in touch. Those connections, he said, set him on a different path.

"Once you start making those connections and getting yourself jobs, getting yourself opportunities, getting yourself internships, just keeping in contact with these people who may always be beneficial to you," Alston said. "Just having that opportunity alone, I think that that speaks volumes."

City officials said Mayor Mary Sheffield's "Occupy the Summer" initiative, launched this month, has reached 10,000 young people and aims to reach thousands more across the region. The program expanded recreation-center hours and started a late-night basketball league this summer.

Officials said the initiative has a total investment amount of $157.5 million, which covers Southeast Michigan, but half in Detroit.

"Oftentimes you have to pay, oftentimes you're worried about safety, oftentimes you gotta drive pretty far out," Alston said, describing barriers families faced before the new investment.

With funding from the Ballmer Group and United Way for Southeastern Michigan, camps run through the DiscoverWorks program that used to cost families $450 are now free, city officials said.

"We have 93% of our families that are saying that this program helped ensure that their young people were ready for school the next year," Dr. Darienne Driver Hudson, president and CEO of United Way for Southeastern Michigan, said.

The new investment, officials said, will allow programs to reach 60,000 young people in Southeast Michigan - about 30,000 of them in Detroit.

"I've never seen this much focus and investment in attention on our young people, and our young people deserve it," Mayor Mary Sheffield said.

For Alston, the scale of the effort offers a personal vindication. "It kind of gives me hope for my community, and it makes me just feel better about everything that the mayor is doing," he said. Keeping young people busy and safe is the stated goal.