ADRIAN — De’Angelo Boone is the recipient of the Lenawee County Continuum of Care’s Norma Dell Courage to Care award.
The honor — named for Norma Dell, an Adrian Dominican Sister who was the first executive director of the Lenawee Emergency and Affordable Housing Corp., now Housing Help of Lenawee — is given each year to someone who has done notable work in alleviating homelessness.
Boone’s community service work, however, encompasses a wide variety of needs.
He currently is a parent navigator for the Align Center for Workforce Development, working on ways to help people get access to quality, affordable child care. He helped found the All About Adrian Resident Coalition while in a previous role at Habitat for Humanity of Lenawee County. And he’s the founder and pastor of the Adrian church of City of Refuge Ministries International.
Ed Larkins, executive director of the Family Medical Center of Michigan, introduced Boone at an open house on Nov. 14, calling him “a godsend to this community and a godsend to many other communities.”
Boone said he is grateful for the opportunities he’s had to be of service and to live in a caring community.
“I am grateful to be in a community that is concerned about the well-being of others,” he said.
He added that “I was raised in a marginalized, disenfranchised community and it was the investment of someone else that has made me who I am.”
One of his projects has been developing a smartphone app to make accessing City of Refuge Ministries’ food pantry easier for people in need.
He started working on the app in January 2020, and the church’s food pantry opened in March of that year. The app was originally supposed to be rolled out in June, but the schedule was moved up due to overwhelming need during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boone said his goal with the app was to make it user-friendly and something older people would be comfortable with.
Those in need of the services provided by City of Refuge Ministries’ meal assistance program can use the app to place an order, which they can then pick up or — because many do not have a car or have other obstacles that prevent them from getting to the food pantry’s Tecumseh location — have delivered.
A team of three volunteers makes deliveries on the second and fourth Saturday of every month. Boone said they typically deliver to about 80 people. Overall, the app has about 1,000 users. It can be accessed under the name “City of Refuge Ministries Intl” on Android devices or “City of Refuge Ministries App” on Apple devices.
The app is still in beta testing, but Boone said he hopes it will ultimately be available for other food pantries to use.
Speaking at the Nov. 14 award presentation, Boone said that improving quality of life in a community is “a collective effort,” and commended anyone who takes the time to help even one person.
“Assisting one person at a time is how we change a community, how we change a nation,” he said.
