Project H.O.P.E.

Betty Johnson has a motto: If you can reach one, you can teach one. For 10 years, she's been reaching and teaching at Crest Street Tutorial Project.

Reared in Durham's Crest Street neighborhood, Johnson was taught the value of education. Years later, she returned to her old neighborhood to pass that message on to a younger generation and to open doors to disadvantaged children at an after-school and summer program.

Since 2002, she's been aided in her efforts by Project H.O.P.E., a collaboration of Duke University, its student tutors and at-risk Durham children. The Duke Project supplements Johnson's external grants and personal funds with money and manpower.

Project H.O.P.E is one of the signature program of the Duke Durham Neighborhood Partnership. The partnership, created in 1996, aims to improve the quality of life in 12 neighborhoods near campus and to boost student achievement in eight public schools that serve those neighborhoods.

Project H.O.P.E. works in conjunction with a sister program at N.C. Central University called Project CARE. The two programs have received a $4.5 million, four-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The effort focuses on children in Crest Street, Southwest Central Durham and Walltown neighborhoods.

Tutorial Partner Programs

Crest Street Tutorial Project

West End Community Center,

Carter Community Charter,

Community Family Life and Recreation Center at Lyon Park,

Northside Baptist 21st Century Community Learning Center,

Emily K Family Life Center

"Miss Betty is the major force behind the success of Crest Street (one of Duke's partner neighborhoods)," said Barbara Jentleson, assistant professor in education at Duke and director of Project H.O.P.E. "She is wonderfully committed and makes full use of the program's resources to complement her own passion for teaching."

Duke's support helps to fund Johnson's innovative field trips. Students and their parents travel expense-free to destinations such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina's Outer Banks. The emphasis is on education. For example, their most recent excursion, to Orlando, Fla., did not include Disney World and cartoon characters. Instead, the group explored Cape Kennedy and ventured into the Everglades on an airboat Safari.

"We visit places these students have only read about," Johnson said. "The trips I plan must be educational and a parent must accompany each child."

Parents do not come along as chaperones, Johnson added. Many of them are single parents, and sometimes they work two jobs. These trips provide quality time and opportunity to strengthen parent-child relationships.

At the center, Johnson said she encourages a positive attitude toward tutoring, which often has a stigma. Students think only slow kids have tutors, she said. But when they find the work fun rather than remedial and realize that tutors are just a different kind of teacher, they happily participate and blossom.

"Tutoring does not mean you are dumb," Johnson said. "Rather tutoring enhances your education. Duke tutors bond with our students and open up worlds to them because of their unique experiences."

Duke student tutors are the other side of Project H.O.P.E.'s support for the program. Through one-on-one mentoring and summer internships, the students are strong role models and often develop lasting relationships with children at the centers sponsored by Project H.O.P.E. (See accompanying list).

According to Liz Henderson, the program's coordinator, the experience can be eye-opening.

"It's wonderful when Duke students begin to understand that the kids can teach them just as much as they can teach the kids," she said. "They become passionate about their work and recruit additional enthusiastic Duke volunteers."

Jentleson, director since Project H.O.P.E.'s inception, is thrilled to see the friendships between tutors and children. "The children feel supported. Both they and our students take advantage of the relaxed, nurturing environment at the centers," she said. "We have a high retention rate for children in an after-school program due to the tutors' passion for teaching and education and the dedication of people like Betty Johnson."

Because of the program's accomplishments, Jentleson and Henderson, along with Sarah Anderson, school service learning coordinator, and Denice Johnson, liaison coordinator, recently received an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Award from Duke's Office for Institutional Equity.

Betty Johnson is beginning to see the fruits of her work and the work of Project H.O.P.E. Some of her first students are graduating from colleges and universities. Support from community organizations grows.

"Children are vulnerable," Johnson said. "Gangs are out there waiting for them. I've always told my students: You can be anything you want to be as long as you put in your dues."