Two Employees Receive Community Service Award
The City of Durham nominated both Duke employees for their work with the homeless
Donna Biederman is working on a Durham transitional care program to connect homeless individuals with housing, medical care and community resources.
Mayme Webb-Bledsoe is trying to find easier ways for Durham to connect with homeless youth, especially if they’re disconnected from family or age out of foster care.
Both Biederman and Webb-Bledsoe are 2016 Duke Employee Community Service Award recipients for their volunteerism involving Durham homelessness and housing.
Every year, the Duke Community Service Center accepts nominations for Duke employees who have “performed truly outstanding volunteer service to the Durham community.” The Duke Office of Durham and Regional Affairs reviews the nominations. This year’s award recipients were nominated by the City of Durham Department of Community Development.
“It’s nice to see the nominations come from outside of Duke,” said Sam Miglarese, director of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership within the Office of Durham and Regional Affairs. “That makes it even more special to see the various ways in which Duke employees are committed to their communities in service.”
To honor the award recipients, the Duke Office of Durham and Regional Affairs makes a cash contribution to the community nonprofit or department that nominated the employee. The City of Durham’s Department of Community Development received $400.
“Part of our mission is to create safe, decent and affordable housing for the City of Durham and that includes ending homelessness, and both of them have made countless contributions to that effort,” said Reginald Johnson, director of the Durham Department of Community Development. “Duke has been a partner with us as well as Duke employees, and that’s what our focus is, is to encourage that and be thankful for the people who are taking time out to support our work.”
Biederman, an assistant professor in the Duke School of Nursing, became interested in homeless transitional care while working on her doctoral dissertation regarding homeless women and service providers. One of the women she met had been critically ill and was almost discharged to her car because she had no place to live.
Now, at Duke, Biederman is co-leading the “Durham Homeless Transitional Care Program” (in tandem with two other Duke employees, Julia Gamble and Sally Wilson), in which they help connect Durham’s homeless individuals to medical appointments, benefits and respite housing.
Biederman also recruits Duke nursing students to help at community assistance fairs for the homeless and conduct outdoor headcounts of individuals who need shelter.
“It’s an integral part of nursing, the whole idea of social justice and that everybody should have the same opportunity for health and health care,” Biederman said. “If people are ill and transitioning between institutions, if we can support them, it is the right thing to do.”
Webb-Bledsoe, senior neighborhood coordinator with the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, is currently chair of the City of Durham’s Homeless Services Advisory Committee. She and her team work with Durham transitional housing providers and also examine the state of homeless youth in the city.
“Whether it’s about finding housing because you’re homeless or finding housing that’s affordable, once a person is settled in a space they can call their own, it just makes it a lot easier to deal with the other issues in life,” Webb-Bledsoe said. “If people have a dream that they want to have a place of their own, we should be able to help them figure that out.”