About Us

The Vision

The Core Orchards’ vision is to create a green campus in Detroit’s East Side that will increase access to fresh, nutritious foods for those in our neighborhood, and thus encourage healthier lifestyles. Additionally, Core Orchards is designed to create a community space that welcomes members of neighboring communities. The campus will center around an 11 acre U-Pick Apple Orchard with accompanying Orchard Market and ADA-Accessible Community Gardens. Core Orchards Detroit will become a unique urban farming model that offers educational, vocational, and nutritional opportunities to the immediate neighborhood and the greater Metro-Detroit community.

Our Mission

The mission of Core Orchards is to plant the seed to empower children and communities through education, partnership, and caring.

The Story

Our parent company Wolverine Human Services has been a community and neighborhood pillar for over 25 years on Detroit’s Eastside. In fact, we’ve been taking care of a portion of our proposed footprint for nearly 20 years, even though it was city owned property. After seeing mass decline in population and a growth under managed blight, it was time to make a decision. Would we stay or would we go?

Wolverine’s Executive Board made a commitment to stay in the community and become a direct positive impact to change an entire neighborhood. Adopting the vision of Matthew Wollack and the guidance of Isaiah Wunsch the idea of Core Orchards Detroit was given life. The idea basic, create a recognized symbol of growth that would draw people from across Michigan to become active stakeholders in a community they would otherwise not know.

The Brand

Core Orchards Detroit is potential. The name was chosen because we view the apple core as a metaphor for the cities and the people that we serve. When the average person looks at an apple core it is often looked at as trash to be thrown away—unless you have the soil and the means to produce more apples and here at CORE Orchards Detroit we do. No matter how wilted an old apple core looks, it still has the potential to bring forth new life. The core represents what was once an apple and the untapped potential is what concerns us because it represents what we see in the city and the people who we serve every day.

Wolverine Human Services

Wolverine Human Services is a social service agency providing safety, sustenance, and nurturing and therapeutic intervention to children. Wolverine’s programs focus on adolescents suffering from the social injustices of abuse and neglect and those involved in delinquent activities. Wolverine’s continuum of services and effective network of referral sources provide a responsive and cost-effective system accessible at the community level. We continue to use new treatment approaches, expand our services, reach out to collaborate with other service providers and utilize input from our many clients, constituents, funders and supporters.

• Residential Juvenile Justice Low-Security and High-Security
• Residential Foster Care and Child-Welfare Services
• Foster Care, Adoption, & Independent Living
• Community Center and Soup-Kitchen
• Vocational and Educational Support
• Individual and Family Counseling
• Assessment & Referrals Services