By: Jasmine West
When Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School student Vanessa Roberson learned she had an opportunity to travel to Senegal, leaving the country felt almost too big to imagine.
“I was really like, ‘No way,’” Roberson said. “The idea of leaving the country was just so crazy to me, but I knew I wanted to do it.”
By the time the rising senior returned to Detroit, the trip had given her a sharper understanding of something she already valued: education.
“I learned that education is really the key to everything in our society,” Roberson said. “Education is still really important because that’s the one thing that nobody can ever take from you once you get it.”
Roberson was one of 21 Detroit Public Schools Community District high school students who traveled to Senegal in July through buildOn, a nonprofit organization that combines youth service work with leadership development.
The students represented seven buildOn partner high schools across DPSCD. Two district staff members also joined the trip, including Pershing High School Principal Bryant Tipton.
Their assignment in Senegal was clear: work alongside residents of a rural village to help build a school.
The students did not pay to participate. According to buildOn, the trip, including international airfare, was fully funded by the organization. Students were selected from 2,946 Detroit students who participated in buildOn service-learning programs during the 2025-26 school year, with spots awarded based on service and leadership.
For Tipton, who is entering his 27th year with DPSCD, the experience became as much about observing community as constructing a building.
He traveled with roughly 20 students from across the district and watched them compare life in Detroit with what they encountered in Senegal.
“A lot of things we take for granted here, that they take for granted there,” Tipton said. “They don’t have the violence and all the other things that our kids have to go through just to get to school. But on the flip side, they don’t have the resources that we have to a regular school building.”
Students stayed with host families in a rural village, where homes did not have the same access to electricity and running water many of them were accustomed to in Detroit. They spent roughly four hours a day helping with construction, often in temperatures around 95 degrees.
But Tipton said some of the biggest lessons came after the physical work was done.
He was struck by the closeness of the families and neighbors around them.
“They were very close knit, very family oriented, and it’s a real sense of community,” Tipton said.
Tipton said students noticed how much work women in the village carried each day. Watching that labor prompted some of them to think differently about their mothers and caregivers at home.
“One of the kids [was] like, ‘I’m going to help my mom out more when I get home,’” Tipton said. The student told him the experience made them realize “how much my mom actually do.”
Students also participated in daily discussions centered around solidarity, courage, resilience, empathy and what buildOn calls a “passion for the possible.” Cultural activities included farming, couscous making, Senegalese wrestling, a traditional wedding ceremony and discussions about gender roles.
Their time in Senegal also included a visit to Gorée Island, one of the locations associated with the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
For a group of predominantly Black students from Detroit, the trip placed African history alongside present-day African life. The students were not encountering the continent solely through slavery or a history textbook. They were living with families, sharing meals, working beside residents and learning how people built community in the village around them.
For Roberson, that experience added another layer to what service could mean.
She described buildOn as a program where students are given space to identify problems they care about and develop service projects around them.
That has already played out in Detroit.
Roberson said concerns about immigration enforcement, ICE, and students being separated from their communities moved her to bring the issue to buildOn. Students later worked on informational “whistle kits” containing material about people’s rights and what to do during an encounter with immigration enforcement.
“They heard me,” Roberson said of the organization.
Her experience with the program has also been tied to the relationships she has built within DPSCD.
Roberson has attended King throughout high school and said one of the things she values most about the district is the way educators form personal relationships with students.
She remembered walking into King as a ninth grader and being surprised when a staff member already knew her name.
More recently, after returning from Senegal, she ran into one of her former middle school teachers during a post-Trek gathering. The teacher had not seen her since she was about 12.
“She made sure she got my phone number and everything,” Roberson said. “She told me about how proud she is and how much I’ve grown.”
Tipton said those connections are part of what has kept him in Detroit education for nearly three decades.
“I’m proud of the way that the district and the direction the district is headed in, but I’m also proud of just being able to lead Pershing,” he said.
This year will carry additional significance for his school.
Tipton said the Class of 2027 will be the final class to graduate from Pershing’s current building before the school transitions to a new facility.
“Pershing is a historic school,” Tipton said. “You have a lot of historic and famous people that came out of there.”
The students’ journey to Senegal began with service much closer to home.
Throughout the school year, buildOn students volunteer across Detroit, working with children and older adults, addressing hunger, supporting environmental projects and responding to issues they identify in their own neighborhoods.
BuildOn reports that 93% of students who remain involved throughout high school graduate on time and that participants are 21% more likely to enroll in college.
For the 21 DPSCD students who made the trip, Senegal offered an opportunity few young people receive. But the experience was earned through work they were already doing in Detroit.
They went thousands of miles away to help another community build a school.
They came back thinking about what it means to strengthen their own.
