Renee Fluker - Founder - Midnight Golf

Renee Fluker a single mom started the Midnight Golf program in Detroit in 2001 to give kids an alternative to street life. Patterned after the city’s successful Midnight Basketball, the golf counterpart starts its program at 5:30 pm with a three-course, sit-down dinner.

Kids learn good manners, golf skills and personal development. A highlight of the schedule is the annual college tour. The trip includes visits to a variety of schools and allows Midnight golfers to experience campus life.I

nner-city Detroit might be the last spot you’d expect golf to crop up as a tool for pushing kids to college. But that’s the tool Renee Fluker latched onto a dozen years ago when she founded Midnight Golf. Three weeks ago, more than 400 high-school seniors, many of them from this city’s roughest neighborhoods, showed up for the program’s orientation session. Three hundred returned for interviews and 127 were finally accepted.*