In honor of The Land’s third anniversary, we’re catching up with a few of our 50 community journalists. Learn more about our community journalism program here. The Land’s Lee Chilcote talked with Moses Ngong, a Detroit Shoreway resident who has published multiple stories for The Land since completing our program.
Tell me about your background and what brought you here.
I’m originally from Louisville, Kentucky. I went to college in Kentucky and then after school I went to the Peace Corps. I was an environmental education volunteer there for two years, and my job was to teach environmental themes in all the schools in the town I lived in.
I was in south central Mexico, in Oaxaca, about 10 hours south of Mexico City. One of the issues there was wood stoves. Everyone cooks by fire there, so a lot of people had stoves that didn’t have chimneys. There were women spending hours a day in kitchens breathing in smoke. Also, deforestation was a huge issue. There were still trees there, but less and less trees because of people collecting wood. We helped build stoves with chimneys that reduced the wood use of a typical cooking day in half. So, there were less lung issues, especially for women who were almost exclusively the chefs. That was an amazing experience. It made me appreciate investing in my community. I came back because of Covid; I had five months left and we were evacuated.
When I got back, I worked for a think tank, and my wife was looking at where she would go for her medical residency. She’s an orthopedic surgeon. I kept advocating for DC, saying I really didn’t want to go to Cleveland. But it’s been an amazing experience.
You work in community development at Slavic Village Development. Why did you get into that field?
While I loved the job at the think tank, I felt like I was missing out on the human side. Getting back into that has had its ups and downs, but it’s definitely a happy place for me. It’s also been a wonderful way of getting to know Cleveland civically really quickly.
Right now, I’m just really interested in building community here in Cleveland. Last week we held the first Neighbor Night in Detroit Shoreway, which is where I live. About 55 people came, which is amazing, and probably 15 kids on top of that. It was at Nehemiah Mission.
What made you interested in doing that kind of community organizing work?
I’ve been interested in community building since I was a little kid. When I was in fourth grade, I tried to start a newsletter for my elementary school, but the only thing that people appreciated was the word search. I was like, ‘This sucks.’ Then in college I had a community service scholarship. I went to school in a small rural community in Kentucky. The first year, I was like, ‘I don’t know anything about this town I’m living in.’ So the community service scholarship, which had me meeting local families and mentoring local kids, was sort of my bridge to that.
I think the default path of gentrification is, new people move in, they do or don’t have relationships with each other, but they definitely don’t have relationships to the community that existed before they got here. Here in Detroit Shoreway we have an opportunity to change that. If we have neighbors who are in hurting positions but we don’t know them, how can we expand our generosity to people close to us? The Neighbor Night we organized was racially and socioeconomically diverse. That’s my goal, to create a space where the two versions and two generations of this neighborhood can come together and get to know each other.
What drew you to the community journalism program?
Honestly, it was a dream opportunity for me. I love writing. My favorite kind of writing is what you see in The Atlantic. But it’s hard for me to feel confident presenting ideas in that way. I love to write, but I don’t usually know where to begin. What was so cool about the community journalism program was the promise of mentorship, being part of the cohort with other community members who are similarly interested in smaller scale stories, and figuring out how to tell stories that weren’t being told.
I was fortunate to have an idea right away – my friend JJ’s gym. The cohort was such a wonderful, warm, and supportive group. Then, having Sharon and Charlotte there holding my hand and supporting me, literally helping with the logistics of editing the piece, all of that was tremendous. The combination of mentorship and accountability was amazing. Getting to tell stories that I care about and getting a platform for them is amazing.
Learn more about The Land’s community journalism program here.
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