$777,500 Duke Endowment grant to boost projects

DURHAM -- Where would the West End Community Center be, if not for the funds it's received from the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership?

The 16-year-old West End center in the Lyon Park community, which began as one woman's efforts to better the lives of West End children, would probably be having a pretty rough time, says founder and program coordinator Juanita McNeil.

McNeil's brainchild won't be having a rough go of it this year, however.

The center is one of a slew of neighborhood groups that will benefit from a $777,500 grant awarded by The Duke Endowment through Duke University, the school announced Monday.

The grant will go to projects affiliated with the university's Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, an 11-year-old program which aims to improve the quality of life in 12 neighborhoods near Duke's campus and to improve student achievement in the seven schools serving those neighborhoods.

The Duke Endowment is a self-described private foundation established in 1924 by industrialist and philanthropist James Buchanan Duke. It's mission is to serve the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children's welfare and spiritual life.

University spokesman John Burness said this year's grant is the largest the partnership has received. The endowment, Burness said, has funneled $5 million into the university's partnership programs with Durham communities over the past nine years.

"The endowment from the beginning has been the partnership's biggest backer," Burness said. He added that the endowment's generosity has shaped the way the partnership has been able to do business in Durham.

"I really give them a lot of credit," he said.

While some of the programs that will benefit from the funding are after-school programs like McNeil's, the money will also underwrite ongoing affordable housing programs, leadership training opportunities for nonprofits, the Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project, and tutoring and enrichment programs.

In past years, funds from the partnership have supplied the West End Community Center with items they couldn't do without. For example, without $195,000 awarded to the center in 2000, it would not have its 705 Kent St. facility, McNeil said.

The textbooks and workbooks used by kids at the center are Duke-donated, as are the 15 new computers Duke funds paid to have installed in the center's computer lab, she said. The university also provides the center with Duke students to tutor neighborhood kids.

"We've really gone from one extreme to the other," said McNeil, reminiscing about the early days of the center, when its after-school program was held inside McNeil's West End neighborhood home.

"Through God, we've been able to keep going, but Duke has really been our backbone."

Neighborhoods included in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership are Burch Avenue, Crest Street, Lakewood Park, Lyon Park, Morehead Hill, Tuscaloosa/Lakewood, Trinity Heights, Trinity Park, Walltown, Watts Hospital/Hillandale, West Durham and West End.

The seven schools it includes are the Durham School of the Arts, E. K. Powe Elementary, Forest View Elementary, George Watts Elementary, Lakewood Elementary, Morehead Montessori and Rogers-Herr Sixth Grade Center.

For more information about the partnership, visit http://community.duke.edu online.

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