As we reported in a cover story last year, Brightmoor resident Jonathan Pommerville launched a one-man crusade to expose the people dumping on his hard-hit west side neighborhood. Armed with only a video camera, he has used his YouTube channel to try to shame the johns, prostitutes, dumpers, scrappers, and drug users who treat Brightmoor as a playground, and he wound up garnering the attention of local TV news. That has put Pommerville in a position to organize with his neighbors like never before, allowing him to take his activism to a new level.

6445 E. Vernor Hwy., Detroit; 313-209-3029; downtownyouthboxing.org

In a converted book bindery on the east side of Detroit, any given weekday you'll find dozens of young people gathered around two boxing rings, where fighters are being coached in the sweet science. But the facility, which opened last year, is no ordinary boxing gym. It's the Downtown Boxing Gym Youth Program, a nonprofit after-school activity where the rigors of boxing go hand in hand with training young minds. Thanks to fundraising whiz Jessica Hauser and "Coach Khali," young people have someplace to go after school, provided they hit the books as hard as the bags.