HOPE will be taking on new meaning for some Durham residents this winter.
Approved in July and backed by $2.25 million from the nonprofit W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the University's Holistic Opportunity Plan for Enrichment seeks to assist low-income Durham children by intensifying its seven existing after-school programs in the Walltown, West End and Crest Street neighborhoods.
Beginning in January under the HOPE program, a support team will create individualized development plans based on each student's interests, needs and performance. Members of the support team will come from all angles of the students' lives--community centers, Durham Public Schools, Durham Social Services, Durham Parks and Recreation, faith communities and the students' families.
Duke Director of Community Affairs Michael Palmer said the program recognizes the importance of tailoring plans to each student--a practice that is difficult to implement across a large school system.
"We're approaching this in a way that is not being done already, and that may be why Kellogg was willing to invest," Palmer said.
Funds from the Kellogg Foundation will cover the entire program, including costs such as teacher stipends, transportation and learning materials.
"If life is a race, then somewhere in that race you may have to sprint to catch up," Palmer said. "What we hope to do is build a support team around each center and thus around each child."
The University applied for the grant in collaboration with North Carolina Central University, which will also receive $2.25 million. The grants are the largest that Duke has taken for community engagement for the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative, and the largest NCCU has ever received from a private source.
For its part, NCCU will channel its resources into its Community Access to Resource Enterprises program. CARE's main focus will be on creating family resource centers within four existing community centers in Eagle Village, a community with a 1.5-mile radius surrounding the institution.
The most formal collaborative link between the two universities will be through NCCU's Saturday Academy. Starting next spring, 50 to 100 students from NPI communities will join the nearly 200 students already enrolled in the Eagle Village program.
"Kellogg wanted to try to concentrate their resources, instead of spreading them all over town," Palmer explained. "Given NCCU relationships and Duke relationships, we in essence capture the core urban majority of Durham. If the grant money was spread among 11 universities around the country, there would be much less bang for the dollar."
Beverly Jones, the administrator of the grant at NCCU, said the collaboration not only helped secure the grant but also set the groundwork for future cooperation between the universities.
"As we do our separate work, there will probably be some really poignant policy issues out there that we can come together on," Jones said. "For example, if we think the social services cap is too high, we can tell them that we think they should lower it in order to really help members of the community. If we approach these issues as a united front, it's much better than to do it separately."
Jones said the unique partnership between Duke and NCCU can also serve to build bridges beyond the Durham community.
"What we are creating with the synergy between a private and public institution, one historically black and one historically white, can really create a national model," Jones said.
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