Giving Back, The Duke Way

Junior Daya Brown says you can’t know a city until you understand the challenges its residents are facing. Volunteering helps her do that.

Before enrolling at Duke in 2023, undergraduate student Daya Brown became a viral sensation after she had been accepted to more than 50 colleges with scholarship offers that totaled more than $1 million.

As impressive as the scholarship offers were, Brown’s giving of her time as a Duke student volunteer with Durham’s Purpose Learning Lab, where she tutors and mentors young people, has been invaluable.

Brown has been Duke’s top individual volunteer since the beginning of the academic year, giving her time with the Durham County Cooperative Extension, CovEducation, Meals on Wheels Durham, and the Purpose Learning Lab in northern Durham County.

Brown began volunteering with the Purpose Learning Lab during the summer of 2024. “And I volunteer till this day,” she stated in an email to Duke Today.  Giving back to the community where she lives and learns is important to Brown.

“I believe you can’t know the city until you know the people in the city and understand that the problems they are facing are real and understand from the background that I personally come from.” Brown explained.

Empowering Young People

Brown has accumulated more than 100 hours of volunteering, particularly with the Purpose Learning Lab, a nonprofit whose goal is to empower young people through STREAM-informed learning (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Math), combined with wellness and social support.

“When Duke invests in public schools and out-of-school programs like ours, it invests in the future of Durham.”

Mya McMillian, Founder of the Purpose Learning Lab

The nonprofit’s battery of services targets low-income children of color and their families in Durham. “We provide year-long programs, after school [and in the summer],” Purpose Learning Lab founder, Mya McMillian, a licensed mental health counselor, told Duke Today. “We always say when school is closed, we’re open, providing a safe place for youth in Durham County.”

Person helping young children
Purpose Learning Lab founder Mya McMillian

McMillian started the non-profit in March 2021. Each month, the Purpose Learning Lab serves about 100 budding scholars between the ages of five and 15. One year after its founding, the non-profit partnered with Duke.

McMillian said the nonprofit’s partnership with Duke expands the palette of opportunities for the teens and pre-teens.

“Duke students are incredible partners,” McMillian said. “When Duke invests in public schools and out-of-school programs like ours, it invests in the future of Durham. It shows our youth that higher education and opportunities are within our reach right here in our own backyard.”

‘A Light in the Dark’

One of those “incredible” Duke student partners is Brown, who describes her volunteer experience tutoring and mentoring students of color from modest economic backgrounds as “deeply enriching.”

She pointed to “the Duke way” of giving back to the community. “Being a Duke student, you don’t really see the hardships that everyday families are facing in Durham,” Brown said. “A guiding quote for me, both personally and professionally, is Maya Angelou’s, ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,’” she added.  

“Many of the students I serve face unstable home environments, so it is especially important — particularly for the young women I mentor — that they see education as a light in the darkness and a beacon for their future.”