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Alumni Get Engaged

Duke alumni service projects to open in 20 cities

Duke alumni and the university community are working with the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership on Saturday, Oct. 31, to clean up Ellerbe Creek and the Walltown neighborhood.

This local event is part of a nine-day effort in which Duke alumni in 20 cities are partnering with local nonprofits on civic engagement projects. Sponsored by the Duke Alumni Association (DAA), "Duke Alums Engage" has invited alumni, parents, friends, students and others to join service projects in their local communities. Partnering agencies include Meals on Wheels, Teach for America and the Alliance for the Great Lakes, among others.

"We are calling these ‘launch' cities so we can test the concept and format, and then plan to roll out this idea to the broader Duke community a year later," said DAA President Ann Pelham, a 1974 Duke graduate.

Duke Alums Engage is in step with Duke's strategic focus on using knowledge in service to society, Pelham noted. It also borrows from a program for undergraduates called DukeEngage, which sends more than 300 students each year on summerlong learning and service projects both in the United States and internationally.

Initiated by the DAA board of directors' Civic Engagement Committee, the program began in 2008 with pilot projects in five cities. In Kansas City, alumni volunteers worked with Collegebound, a college-preparatory program for teens; in Winston-Salem, packaging meals for Stop Hunger Now; in Detroit, Beyond Basics, tutoring in a literacy program for children; in San Francisco, a community garden project with Literacy for Environmental Justice; and in Atlanta, MedShare International, packaging medical equipment for communities in need.

From Oct. 30 to Nov. 8, "Duke Alums Engage" will launch one-day projects in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Durham, Fairfield County (Conn.), Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tulsa, Washington, D.C., Wilmington (N.C.), and Winston-Salem.

"The idea is to highlight alumni community service as one of our featured new programs and to expand and broaden our outreach beyond traditional alumni programming," said Chris O'Neill, '95, assistant director of regional programs for the DAA. "Career networking, DukeReads, cross-campus partnerships and Forever Duke send-off and welcome parties are other examples of new offerings."

For more information, visit www.dukealumsengage.com.