The Duke Endowment Awards $527,500 for Duke-Durham Neighborhood Programs

The Duke Endowment has awarded $527,500 to Duke University to support programs of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, President Richard H. Brodhead announced Friday.

The money will help underwrite several of the Neighborhood Partnership's priorities, including affordable housing initiatives, leadership development for community and university groups engaged in community activities, and extensive after-school tutoring and enrichment programs for at-risk youth.

Begun in 1996, the Neighborhood Partnership connects the university with local organizations and residents in 12 neighborhoods close to Duke's campus to improve the quality of life and to boost student achievement in seven nearby Durham Public Schools. Since its inception, the university has raised more than $12 million to support Neighborhood Partnership programs, of which more than $4 million has been provided by The Duke Endowment, a Charlotte-based charitable trust.

"While Duke collaborates in many ways with the City of Durham, a principal focus of our community engagement in recent years has been through the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, which increasingly is recognized as a national model for university-community interaction," Brodhead said.

"We have been uniquely fortunate to have the backing of The Duke Endowment, which understands the importance of these collaborations to both local residents and to members of the university community," Brodhead added. "With this latest grant, The Duke Endowment will have invested more than $4 million in our nonprofit, faith-based and public school partnerships in Durham over the past eight years. They could not have achieved the success they have without this support. We are extremely grateful."

Rites of Passage, a mentoring program for 56 African-American teens at Northside Baptist Church in Walltown, is one program that will benefit from The Duke Endowment's grant. Northside Baptist Church's pastor Brian Irving, who directs the Rites of Passage program, said without support from Duke and The Duke Endoment "many of the activities in support of the teens with whom we're working would not have been possible."

Irving, who also chairs the Walltown Neighborhood Ministries, a five-church coalition devoted to improving the quality of life in Walltown, cited an example of a troubled young man who went with Irving on a camping trip to the beach and came back a more motivated person. "This guy is like one of those hard street guys who hangs out with the worst thugs," Irving said. "But he was so excited. That was a moment when we really connected with him. He is still in a rough environment, but his outlook and attitude has changed. He is even talking about going to college."

Durham Mayor William Bell, who in 1996 was a consultant as the Neighborhood Partnership was being launched, also expressed appreciation for the grant, which in addition to benefiting Durham neighborhoods also fosters community-based leadership, such as the Quality of Life Committee in Southwest Central Durham. The community members on the Quality of Life Committee spearheaded a 15-unit affordable housing development in the West End on Pauli Murray Place, Carol Street and Jackson Street. 

"Supporting the Pauli Murray Place development involved residents, the city, Self-Help, the Durham Community Land Trustees and Habitat," Bell said. "It is just one example of how Duke University through the Neighborhood Partnership, with the generous support of The Duke Endowment, is helping improve the quality of life in that neighborhood and serving as catalysts for future developments of this type in Durham. It's a tremendous boost in terms of physical improvements in the communities where the money is invested and in the schools that Duke University has adopted."

Over the past year, the Neighborhood Partnership has undertaken a strategic planning process that established four thematic areas for institutional priority and investment. "Rather than focus on the more than 40 individual programs that comprise the Neighborhood Partnership, the move to the four thematic areas gives the Neighborhood Partnership an ability to respond to specific needs as they arise," said Michael Palmer, Duke's assistant vice president for community affairs. "This gives us more flexibility to support our community empowerment structure and will allow us to have a greater impact."

The Duke Endowment grant will support nearly a dozen distinct programs in the four thematic areas:

-- Education enrichment and youth development: $145,000. In close collaboration with Durham Public Schools, the university is working to improve the quality of education and to close the achievement gap between white, African-American and Latino students. Highlights of work in this area include in-school and after-school tutoring and mentoring programs that annually involve more than 600 school-aged children and 300 Duke tutors and mentors.

-- Neighborhood stabilization: $258,500. With help from The Duke Endowment, three nonprofits -- Self-Help Community Development Corporation, Durham Habitat for Humanity and the Durham Community Land Trustees -- are working together to increase the supply of affordable housing in neighborhoods in Southwest Central Durham and Walltown. Since 1994, more 120 houses have been purchased for rehabilitation for first-time homeowners under the city's affordable housing guidelines. More than a third of the houses already built and sold have gone to qualified Duke employees.

-- Strengthening community organizations: $66,000. Empowering community organizations and individuals is a primary goal of the Neighborhood Partnership. Local nonprofit partners receive staff support and expertise from such Duke programs as the LawSchool's Community Economic Development Clinic and from Fuqua School of Business students working out of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. Law clinics, for example, provide assistance to nonprofits, such as the Durham Community Land Trustees, with small staffs that don't have the time or experience needed to comply with a multitude of legal and financial requirements.

-- University engagement: $58,000. More than 35 Duke departments and programs are actively engaged in community efforts that will benefit from The Duke Endowment's grant. Students, faculty and staff volunteer as tutors and mentors for at-risk students, coordinators of specific construction projects and nonprofit consultants. Student-initiated programs such as Girls' Club, C.A.R.E. for Carter and Duke-Durham Arts Collaborative are examples of such programs.

"The Duke Endowment is pleased to provide funding to Duke University for the Neighborhood Partnership program," said Eugene W. Cochrane, Jr., president of The Duke Endowment. "The university is playing a key role in improving the quality of life for all citizens in the Durham area. We applaud your innovation and commitment."

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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.

For more information about the Neighborhood Partnership, and a more complete listing of its activities, see http://community.duke.edu/index.html.