‘This work is the work of my lifetime:’ Brilliant Detroit Partners with BCBSM Foundation to Bring Vital Fitness and Nutrition Programs to 24 Detroit Neighborhoods

Community,Physical Health,Children's Health,Whole Person Health ,BCBSM Foundation

‘This work is the work of my lifetime:’ Brilliant Detroit Partners with BCBSM Foundation to Bring Vital Fitness and Nutrition Programs to 24 Detroit Neighborhoods

05.30.2025 | 5 min read

Detroit resident Karlita Johnson loves talking about the impact Brilliant Detroit has had on children from the city’s east side. One of her favorite topics is the nonprofit organization’s gardening program. As kids have watched their vegetables grow over the years, Johnson has enjoyed watching their faces light up. Their enthusiasm is her reward.

“At one of our hubs we learned how to grow plants and vegetables hydroponically, and the kiddos got to see their vegetables grow over time,” said Johnson, a Brilliant Detroit senior community engagement manager. “They’d look forward to seeing the progress every day and they’d go and tell their friends about it every day. They couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Brilliant Detroit’s gardening program is one of the many components of its Building Healthy Neighborhoods initiative. In partnership with the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) Foundation, Brilliant Detroit equipped Eastside Detroit community members with the tools needed to lead public health campaigns in their neighborhoods. The outfits know the most effective messengers to drive change are the everyday people living in these communities.

“What I tell people is, organizations provide programs and services while a community is there for one another,” said Cindy Eggleton, the cofounder and chief executive officer of Brilliant Cities, Brilliant’s parent organization. “Brilliant Detroit is both. And that’s why it works.”

The Foundation’s $20,000 Community Healthy Matching grant helped Brilliant Detroit to provide fitness, nutrition and wellness support training to community members in four Eastside “hubs,” or neighborhoods: Morningside, Osborn, Chandler Park and McDougall-Hunt. The skills and certifications from these trainings not only helped community members find jobs or start businesses in the health and fitness field, they also helped to impart knowledge onto kids in these hubs through organized fitness classes, gardening programs, nutrition lessons and much more. Brilliant Detroit now provides training, programming and the rest of its services to 26,000 Detroit residents.

“When we started, we had a really unique model because we repurpose houses into community hubs,” Eggleton said. “Today, we have 24 neighborhoods we’ve committed to, which will allow us to make population-level change in the areas we work in. “

Building a physical fitness platform and nutrition and wellness program that is implemented with, for and by community members

Rooted in fitness and nutrition, Brilliant Detroit focuses on teaching young kids how to read, to give them a strong foundation heading into kindergarten.

“Our focus is how to build something in community, and have the community sustain it,” Eggleton said. “In this part of Detroit, we were looking to develop proof points around a model where we trained families and participants to actually start their own business. To deliver things like Zumba classes, and then they are able to do it at our sites as well as at their own businesses. That is what we were able to do with this grant.”

On Monday, May 19, Eggleton and Johnson looked on as more than a dozen kids in the Chandler Park hub participated in a “Power Up” fitness class, where kids zoomed around and cheered for one another as everyone enjoyed a much-needed afterschool energy release.

Chandler Park and the other three Eastside hubs enjoyed quarterly, sometimes weekly physical fitness classes throughout the life of the grant, including everything from kid-focused classes like Power Up and Detroit Improv – designed to foster creativity and social-emotional development – to adult classes like Taekwondo, African Dance, yoga and a walking club.

Then there is the nutrition and wellness aspect, which Johnson helps facilitate.

“We have dining clubs, cooking classes where we teach kids how to read the labels, how to cook the food, what to look for when you go into the grocery store,” Johnson went on. “We also have the garden club where we’re teaching you how to grow fruits and veggies. We’re doing garden beds at these hubs, at the sites, so they’re that getting hands-on experience in learning how to take care of a garden.”

Foundation grant represents the latest in a long line of partnerships between Brilliant Detroit and BCBSM since 2016

Brilliant Detroit has partnered with various philanthropic divisions of BCBSM since its inception in 2016, including the Social Mission and Community Responsibility teams. Eggleton said these partnerships helped build a community-centric model the organization plans to nationally, and perhaps even globally, in the future through Brilliant Cities.

“Blue Cross Blue Shield has been an important partner with us, almost from day one,” she said. “It’s not just the funding. They have volunteered with different groups across the city, they have included us in different initiatives they’ve done, and we have had staff from Blue Cross Blue Shield sit on our board to conceive ways in which we can (extend this model) to other cities. So, they are a part of who we are.”

“Brilliant Detroit’s core values align extremely well with the Foundation’s,” said BCBSM Foundation Senior Program Officer Melissa Boguslawski. “That’s why we’re always excited to help them further their proven neighborhood-driven model to promote healthy habits among families in Detroit. We can’t say enough positive things about the Building Healthy Neighborhoods initiative and how sustainable it is becoming.”

Eggleton’s ties to Eastside Detroit run deep. The Chandler Park block she stood on with Johnson to watch a Power Up fitness class was the same block her father once delivered mail on as a postal worker. There’s always more work to be done, but she’s proud of how far Brilliant Detroit has come in just nine years.

“This work is the work of lifetime,” Eggleton said. “The kids that come through the door and the parents that come through the door, are my family. To be able to see community come together in the way that it does, is simply the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation plays an integral role in Blue Cross' commitment to affordability. By funding programs that address maternal health, food insecurity and whole person health, the Foundation ensures underserved communities receive the care and access they need, ultimately reducing costly health complications and enhancing care for all Michiganians. Learn more about our commitment to affordability here.

Photo credit: Brilliant Detroit