A Place Where Children Know Your Name
There aren't enough places in Durham that feel safe to take young children to play. Paula Januzzi heard this lament from parents over and over during her work in early childhood and education in the Durham community. The statement was often followed by the complaint of a lack of places to get information about services for families.
Those concerns spurred Januzzi to open Busy Street Hands-on Children's Museum - a nonprofit organization with inviting murals and theme playrooms. Young children can shop in a grocery shop; slide down a pole in a fire station or get admitted to the hospital - in a playroom donated by Duke's Children's Hospital, replete with admission forms and oxygen masks.
Parents can access a lending library on parenting, learn about good nutrition or how to fingerpaint if they've forgotten. The museum, which opened in the Lakewood Shopping Center in 1998, is averaging 3,000 visitors a month. Admission ($2 per parent and $3 per child) and membership covers a little more than half the organization's costs. The rest must be made up in grants and fund raising, Januzzi said.
The Duke-United Way Partnership has helped out. In May, Busy Street received a $2,000 grant from the innovative program.
John F. Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, came up with the idea to take a portion of the money raised by Duke during its yearly United Way campaign and allocate it through a grant application process to organizations and projects in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative (NPI).
The NPI works with the 12 neighborhoods and seven public schools surrounding the Duke campus - including Lakewood - to improve the quality of life, academically and personally, for students and residents.
So, though Busy Street is not a United Way agency, because it serves families in Lakewood, where it is located in one of Duke's partner neighborhoods, it was eligible to apply for the money.
Since the start of the partnership in 1997, about $150,000 has been distributed to organizations that serve people in the NPI neighborhoods. Last year, a committee of campus, community and Triangle United Way representatives awarded $60,000 in 13 grants to organizations such as Casa Multicultural, Morehead Montessori Magnet School, and St. John's Baptist Church in Walltown.
This is not the way the United Way normally does business, but the experiment is working so well, Triangle United Way president Tom Dugard said he'd like it become a model. The Triangle United Way Board of Trustees, which meets this month, is expected to renew the program for another five years.
Sam Miglarese, assistant director of the Duke Office of Community Affairs, who managed the 2000 application process, is delighted with the effect the grants have had on the recipients.
"We want to empower people and one of the ways is to help them find the resources necessary to survive," Miglarese said. "There are special moments occurring that wouldn't happen without this money."
The Busy Street grant, for instance, helped Januzzi expand outreach to schools.
"People are coming, children are playing in a way that I knew they would and adults are coming here and meeting other adults and talking about children and learning from each other," said Januzzi, who greets most of her visitors by name. "It is a community gathering place."
Duke's United Way campaign runs through Oct. 13. For more information about making a donation, contact your supervisor or go to <http://www.duke.edu/web/unitedway/>.
For more information about Busy Street, contact 403-3743.
Written by Deborah Raenette Meyer.