If you’re a Detroit enthusiast who is active on social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, you have probably noticed a positive narrative there about what’s happening in our city.

Many in the social sphere are excited about the signs of revitalization happening in Detroit, and we at The Skillman Foundation are, too.

But a lot of that conversation – and to a degree, what the media coverage focuses on – is limited geographically to what’s going on downtown and in Midtown. Of course, we think those advancements are exciting. A walkable, safe, vibrant downtown is a good thing, and vital to the future of Detroit. We cheer those efforts on.

But we don’t want the smallest residents of our city to be overlooked. When we picked the six neighborhoods to focus our Good Neighborhoods initiative on, we did so after consulting the best data available to find where the largest numbers of children are.

Children aren’t in large numbers living downtown or Midtown. So while we think that those parts of the city are important, and we cheer for the positive developments in those areas, we also want to remind people who care about Detroit’s comeback that it isn’t the full story.

In Brightmoor, in Chadsey-Condon, in Cody Rouge, in Southwest Detroit, in Northend Central and in Osborn, in these neighborhoods that don’t get quite as much attention, high numbers of children live and attend schools. What happens downtown or in Midtown doesn’t often impact their lives. Some of the kids there have never even visited downtown. To many of them, their neighborhood is the only Detroit they know.

The Skillman Foundation operates with the unique lens of putting children first, and we hope that you’ll agree that our most vulnerable citizens deserve some of the attention in the conversation about turning around our city.

If you want to help support our efforts to make children a central part of that dialogue, why not follow us on social media? It’s a small action step that can help change the conversation about Detroit.

You have options. You can bookmark our Rose for Detroit blog, which you can find on our homepage at skillman.org. There, we keep you updated about what our partners, our grantees and our staff members are doing to improve the neighborhoods and schools where our children live and learn. If you see something you like, it’s easy to leave a comment, or click the share button to get that message out to a wider audience on social media.

Speaking of which, you can follow us on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. On both sites, we share links to content that covers our work and kids in the city, and we invite you to converse with us about topics that impact Detroit children.

We want to build a movement for children in Detroit. The Detroit comeback we see includes a strong network of adults, agencies, volunteers and stakeholders who put kids first, who do not accept the current conditions children face and who work together to change them.

Social media is one more place, one more way we can come together to talk about what that looks like, and we hope you’ll join us there.

-- Krista Jahnke is communications officer at The Skillman Foundation. Contact her at kjahnke@skillman.org.