Duke Endowment Eyes Neighborhood Projects

Friday, January 26, 2001

In a significant boost for neighborhood revitalization projects in Durham, The Duke Endowment's Children and Families Initiative has given $417,994 to the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative, university officials announced Thursday. The new grant brings support from the Charlotte-based charitable trust for low-income neighborhoods near Duke's campus to $1.7 million over the past three years. The Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative (NPI) was created in 1996 to improve the quality of life in the neighborhoods and seven public schools closest to Duke. Mamye Webb, a longtime community activist and leader in West End and former director of student activities at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has been named as community program coordinator in the Duke Office of Community Affairs. She also is vice-president of the Lyon Park Neighborhood Association and a board member of several community organizations, including the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC). The community plan is expected to identify goals for affordable housing, crime reduction, health care, youth programming, job training, literacy and support for the emerging Latino population, as well as steps to achieve them. Webb first will undertake the coordination of the creation of a neighborhood playground in the Lyon Park Community and Family Life Center. "We are fortunate to be able to add Mamye to our staff," said Michael Palmer, director of the Office of Community Affairs. "She is well respected in the community and has a thorough knowledge of both it and university environments. We're looking forward to her assistance in accelerating our work in the neighborhoods, especially the West End." The Duke Endowment grant also will support the following ongoing projects:

Self-Help Credit Union -- $175,000. The nonprofit credit union has been renovating housing, creating opportunities for home ownership and promoting community development to support its collaborative revitalization work in the predominantly African-American Walltown neighborhood. With help from $2 million of affordable housing loans from Duke, Self-Help has completely rebuilt 34 homes and has control over an additional 19.
Partners for Youth -- $65,119. The award-winning mentoring and job skills program is designed to improve the lives of teens from Southwest Central Durham. Twenty-four teens identified by the community have received support from a variety of organizations for their educational and personal growth.
Partners for Success - $66,251. This program is designed to improve the effectiveness of Duke student tutors and their host classroom teachers in the public schools. More than 300 Duke students and other members of the community volunteer regularly in seven partner public schools.
Juanita McNeil & Joseph Alston West End Community Center - $60,124. This teen center offers an after-school program with tutoring, inspirational speakers, computer classes taught by Duke's Office of Information and Technology, field trips, and art and cultural awareness seminars sponsored by Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. The center was purchased in 1998 by the West End Community Center with a $182,925 grant from The Duke Endowment and rehabilitated with support from Duke.

"We are happy that the endowment could provide these grants, but we are even happier about the partnerships that are growing between Duke and its neighbors," said Elizabeth H. Locke, president of The Duke Endowment. "Many of these grant requests have changed both in focus and in amount over the last three years. This is not the result of poor planning -- it is the result of the neighborhoods having a voice and beginning to determine what they want to do and what they can do for their children and families.

"When power and responsibility evolve, wants and needs change," Locke said. "As funders, we want to be flexible enough to allow and encourage this wider participation."

Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane said one of the university's highest priorities is "helping our neighbors achieve their goals for better housing and schools. We are so grateful, once again, for the support that makes these collaborations so successful."

In addition to ongoing programming, an innovative new initiative benefits schoolchildren at Lakewood Elementary, which draws from disadvantaged homes around the city. The Duke Endowment gave $12,500 for a gardening project developed by the school, members of Duke University Retirees Outreach (DURO) and South Eastern Efforts Developing Sustainable Spaces (SEEDS), a community based learning-through-horticulture program. DURO, which comprises more than 60 retired physicians, nurses, professors, administrators, deans and secretaries, "adopted" Lakewood in 1998 and regularly supports teachers and students at Lakewood. An earlier DURO-Lakewood project involved the refurbishing of a greenhouse and garden.

Experts from the SEEDS staff are helping Lakewood teachers maintain the gardens year-round and use them as teaching and learning spaces to grow food, to compost waste, and to help students learn about tools, soil composition and plant biology. The goal is to develop a model for other schools.

"It's so fundamentally sound an idea and so low-cost, it's just in the spirit of the Duke-Durham Partnership -- making good ideas available to others," said George Maddox, a Duke professor emeritus and president of DURO. "I've seen students become rapt attendees out in the garden. That's why we're so excited about the endowment's support."

In addition, The Duke Endowment last June gave $335,000 to the Duke Divinity School to aid its partnership with the Walltown Neighborhood Ministry Inc., a group of five area churches involved in grassroots community work. This was the second year of a total $623,299 grant.

The Duke Endowment, started in 1924 by industrialist, philanthropist and Duke University founder James B. Duke, is one of the nation's largest foundations, with assets of about $2 billion. The Duke Endowment supports health care and child welfare organizations in North Carolina and South Carolina, rural United Methodist churches and retired ministers in North Carolina, and four educational institutions: Davidson College, Johnson C. Smith and Duke universities in North Carolina and Furman University in South Carolina.