Photo Gallery: Visit to Flint | Detroit News Article | Video: Giving Back
FLINT, Mich. (3/8/2016) -- Chea Taylor felt like she needed to do something. What she helped start turned into a highly successful campaign as the University of Detroit Mercy Department of Athletics received and donated dozens of cases of water for Flint.
The Detroit women's basketball team visited Flint on Monday afternoon, dropping off cases of water, laundry detergent and other items to a warehouse at Flint Community Schools. The water will soon be distributed to children and families at schools in the Flint area. Several areas of Flint has been stricken with contaminated water since April 2014, leading to public health problems. Many residents of Flint are still unable to get clean water.
Taylor, a sophomore at UDM, has family roots in the area, but really just wanted to help with the cause. She started a GoFund Me page to help raise money for the effort and to buy cases of water for the residents in the community. Flint is about an hour north of Detroit.
"Once I heard about it, I was waiting and saw that really no one was doing anything about it on campus," Taylor told the Detroit News in February. "Since we're only 45 minutes away from Flint, and we're talking about us being part of the community, I felt this was something we should do to get it out there and help them up there."
The Detroit men's basketball team also visited Flint in late February, dropping off water on Feb. 22. Men's basketball senior student-athlete Anton Wilson grew up in Flint. The Titans teamed up with Absopure to drop off 1,500 cases of water and hand out water to families at the Broome Center in Flint.
The Detroit women's basketball squad is busy preparing for the Horizon League Championship, which starts Thursday in Green Bay. The Titans are the No. 4 seed and plays in the tournament's first game at 1 p.m. ET against Valparaiso.
