The leaders of the Skillman Foundation in Detroit recognized an important obstacle in the foundation’s efforts to help needy children in its home city.

The children whom it sought to serve lived in some of the Motor City’s most hardscrabble neighborhoods.

But the foundation’s offices were housed in a high-rise office building in the city’s more prosperous business district.

As a result, it was physically disconnected from the problems it was working to solve — and it was not as effective as it could have been in fulfilling its mission.

In recasting the foundation’s efforts, one of its first early steps was to move out of the downtown digs — and set up a much more humble office, said Stephen Ewing, the Skillman Foundation’s chairman, during a session here.