OUR MISSION
We, the members of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations (DABO), solemnly commit ourselves and our organizations to uniting the Black community to attain its greatest possible strength for the creative achievement of the purposes.
GENERAL INFORMATION
About DABO
The Detroit Federation of Black Organizations, (DABO) is a federation of over 130 black, and non-black organizations whose primary purpose and mission is to empower, equip and to serve the organizations that belong to our federation.
History
DABO was founded in 1979 by a group of visionary individuals who were convened by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). CBTU was charged to study what structure could be created and institutionalized that would best insure that Detroit’s black community could perpetually work toward its self-interest.
After studying several other ethnic minority groups and their organizations (i.e. the Jewish Federation of America, the Polish American Congress, and the Ukrainian Council to name a few) DABO’s constitutional charge and organizational mandate was drafted. A few of those DABO organizational mandates were to: (1) achieve the maximum empowerment of the black community; (2) be an effective bridge between non-black groups and institutions and the Black communities interests of achieving mutual understanding, the pursuit of shared goals, and the resolution of shared concerns; and, (3) advance the cultural, economic, technological, and social interests of the community on all levels: local; state; and national.
DABO was blessed early on to receive a $50,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to help facilitate and to create the organizational capacity necessary to sustain its mission.
PURPOSE OF ORGANIZATION
Section 1- The purpose of this organization shall be as follows:
- To enable the Black community to come together, to work together, to reason together and to act together, consensually, in the Black community as well as the total community’s transcendent interests.
- To achieve maximum empowerment of the Black community.
- To foster and uphold the dignity and the integrity of the Black community.
- To provide the basis for a more enlightened and responsible public opinion in the non-black community on the important problems and interests of Black people.
- To advance the cultural, economic, political, and social interests of the Black community at all levels; local; state; national and international.
- To be a vigorous and unremitting advocate and preservator of the civil rights of Black people; and to be an aggressive and uncompromising defender whenever those rights are imperiled.
- To be an effective bridge between non-black groups and institutions and the Black community in the interests of achieving mutual understandings, the pursuit of shared goals and the resolution of shared concerns.
- To provide, through the establishment of a voluntary mechanism for arbitration and conciliation, creative opportunities for the resolution of divisive conflicts and disputes between Black organizations and individuals; conflicts and disputes that would otherwise erode the Black community’s unity and dissipate its strength.
- To raise and secure funds to support the educational and charitable purposes set forth above and an other kindred causes that, in the considered judgement of the Association, will serve a demonstrable, constructive, interest or need of the Black community.
- To support the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Black community’s primary civil rights organizations, and make it secure.