Invest in Your Community

Arnold Joseff and his partner, George Hill, are founders of Diversified Chemical Technologies located in Detroit, Michigan. Here Arnold talks about their strategy to use profits to bring a struggling neighborhood back to life.

HATTIE: The place is buzzing. I watched director of local accounts, Julius Gray, arrive at the office.

JULIUS: Never take no – never -- never give up.

HATTIE: Did your Mom teach you that?

JULIUS: Persistence pays off. My mother taught me; my father learned lessons in many places. You don't need to experience things in life to learn from other people's experiences. So, that is the key to it. Grasping other people's experiences and applying them when it is appropriate.

HATTIE: Like Julius, Arnold is running. He doesn't have an office, so he can be anywhere anytime.

ARNOLD: Even though you have to make profits and you have to be businessmen, it doesn't dismiss the fact that you can have moral values.

You can have ethics and you can have the desire to renovate and to be an uplifting spirit within an area. What we have done on a consistent basis is to take over, literally, abandoned properties and bring them back to life.

We don't sell them -- we continue to use them. They become economical method of establishing a business that then creates employment, technology and growth.

And, really, it's who we are and what we want to become. It's what we want to share with others. Because, if we can do it in our own small way – others can do it in a much bigger way.

This video serves as an illustration of caring for the poor in "Concern for the Poor (Luke 6:17-26; 16:19-31)" in Luke and Work at www.theologyofwork.org.