A Way to Make Meaningful Social Impact

Duke graduate student Kassi Bouraima grew up in Benin, a West African country whose economy largely depends on agriculture.

During childhood vacations, Bouraima, now an MBA student at the Fuqua School of Business, would visit her paternal grandmother and work in the fields of her farm, where oranges, tomatoes and peppers were among the crops harvested.

“I really loved it,” said Bouraima, who owns AGRO-PAA, a business in her homeland that produces teas from the moringa tree. After earning a graduate degree next year, she plans to pursue a career in business strategy “to help organizations grow and create meaningful social impacts, with entrepreneurial food systems or a technical startup.”

In August Bouraima completed an internship with Quality Life Foundation, a nonprofit in South Durham. Duke’s Center for Community-Engaged Scholarship facilitated the internship; the center supports collaborative scholarship between community organizations and Duke students, staff and faculty to address critical social issues such as food insecurity.

Three years ago, the center established the Community-Engaged Internships & Fellowships program to advance the goals of Duke's Strategic Community Impact Plan and “to provide experiential opportunities for students with [community] organizations,” said Camry Wilborn Mercer, assistant director of community-engaged scholarship at Duke Community Affairs.

“It gives students a chance to apply and deepen the knowledge and skills they have learned in the classroom in the community context,” said Mercer. The program began in 2023 with 20 students and now has 60 interns and fellows across 40 community organizations, Mercer added.

In late August, the Center hosted the interns and fellows, along with the nonprofit partners they were paired with for the summer, for a showcase. Attendees browsed lines of posters, created by the interns and fellows, to learn more about the projects and organizations supported by the program. 

Meeting Residents Where They Are

The centerpiece of Quality Life Foundation is Sacred Soil, a multi-tiered, above-ground community garden in the 800 block of Elmira Avenue in South Durham. The produce is planted, cared for and harvested to meet nearby residents’ basic food needs under the watchful eye of its operations manager, Tamette Farrington, an entrepreneur who worked in higher education for more than a decade before going to work at the Quality Life Foundation in 2024. 

Sacred Soil’s produce stocks the food pantry’s shelves at the Southside Church of Christ, which started Quality Life Foundation. The church operates a pantry each Thursday, when neighbors can pick up food, and distributes about 600 boxes of food each week to residents. Volunteers from Duke and nearby North Carolina Central University participate in “community days,” which entail harvesting, distributing and delivering fresh fruits and vegetables. 

Farrington was excited when Duke called asking if she’d like to work with an intern. 

Interns and fellows created posters for a showcase. Photo by Samantha Everette Photography
Attendees browsed tables highlighting different Duke experiential learning programs. Photo by Samantha Everette Photography

“We’re trying to teach food literacy, so folks understand how food impacts the body and how we think,” Farrington explained. “If you control how people eat, you can control how they act. This is a way to liberate folks, to empower and inspire folks for generations to come.”

Bouraima arrived at Sacred Soil in May, the peak time of the summer planting season.

The graduate student loves making an impact through agriculture. She did just that with Sacred Soil. In addition to planting, cultivating and harvesting the garden’s produce, Bouraima organized the nonprofit’s infrastructure, a succession plan and standard operating procedures.

Because of Bouraima’s work at Sacred Soil, the nonprofit can now track the food grown and determine how many families it serves. She also created a tool inventory, a digital financial sheet, social media content plans, and set up the online platform, Eventbrite, for fundraising activities. She also canvassed the community, produce and literature in-hand, to educate residents about foods they may not be familiar with, such as eggplant.

A person carries a bowl of cucumbers
Kassi Bouraima collects cucumbers.
Two people smiling and holding brochure that say community garden
Bouraima with Farrington

“That girl worked,” Farrington said.

Before interning at Sacred Soil, Bouraima was an MBA consultant with Griffith Foods/Global Foods Product Development & Innovation, an environmentally conscious, global food giant. 

She discussed the differences and similarities between Griffith Foods and Sacred Soil’s community garden.

“Griffith Foods is designed to serve customers across markets, and it has a layered organizational approach,” she said. “Sacred Soil, on the other hand, is community-centered and directly connected to the people living in the neighborhood. At Sacred Soil, I could see the impact immediately.

“Both organizations,” she added, “made me think deeply about food systems and how people access food. One operates on a global scale, while the other creates change on a local level.”

And that, says Mercer, is a goal of the internship and fellowship program: “We want students to see how community-based organizations create meaningful change locally, while also helping them understand the larger systems shaping the issues communities face.”

Internships and Fellowships Programs

Applications for next summer’s internship and fellowship placements open in spring 2027.  For more information, visit Duke Community Affairs. 

For graduate students interested in economic mobility, see the application for the HomeGrown Fellows program.