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Shirley Lung reads with Durham student Jade Kirkland as part of her Summer 2009 volunteer placement at the West End Community Center. Lung says, "From my DukeEngage experience, I've learned that teaching is a tough profession, but I've also become more assured that this type of career is exactly the type that I want to be engaged in.”
DukeEngage students find local service opportunities meaningful, encourage others to consider hometown Durham an option
Shirley Lung loves to read. A Duke University senior English major from Clemmons, N.C., Lung has her sights set on teaching one day and cherishes any opportunity she finds to help kids fall in love with reading too. She got that chance this past summer, through a DukeEngage experience less than a mile from campus at the West End Community Center—a non-profit Durham organization that offers enrichment programs for students, ages five to 12, including efforts focused on child literacy.
While DukeEngage in 2009 took hundreds of Duke students to far-away places like Arusha, Tanzania; Beijing, China; and Santiago, Chile; Lung was one of nearly three dozen Duke students who elected to remain in Durham for their immersive eight-week service experience. “I believe that service starts at home,” she says. “And I wanted to have a meaningful exploration of a site in which I could continue service even after my DukeEngage experience ended.”
One of the newest and largest co-curricular opportunities for Duke students, DukeEngage is only in its third year of operation, but the program has already placed more than 800 students in cities, towns and villages worldwide to help meet varied community needs. A $30 million endowment—$15 million each from The Duke Endowment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—funds the summer experiences which are primarily intended to help students explore civic engagement at a deeper and more reflective level, respond to a diverse array of issues facing underserved communities in the United States and abroad, and learn about themselves in the process. The program also challenges students to see the world—including their local community—through a new and more astute lens.
“As I hear stories from our returning DukeEngage students, of political, moral, intellectual, cultural, personal, and spiritual transformation, I’m reminded each time why civic engagement is such an important part of a liberal arts education and why this work is so richly rewarding” says Eric Mlyn, director of DukeEngage and the Duke Center for Civic Engagement.
“It’s perhaps most thrilling to hear such stories from students who didn’t have to cross an ocean to find such self-discovery,” he says. “Some of the most illuminating experiences can come from challenging experiences one finds close to home.”
That more than 10 percent of the 347 DukeEngage taking part in the program during summer 2009 pursued their experience in Durham speaks both to the expanse of local non-profits with which students can volunteer—nearly 30 in all—and the fortitude of the Durham program in its management and oversight. One of the original “pilot” programs launched by DukeEngage in 2007, DukeEngage in Durham, appropriately titled “Think Globally, Act Locally,” has folded more than 100 Duke students into its summer civic engagement initiatives over three years.
Headed by Elaine Madison, associate director of DukeEngage and director of the Duke Center for Civic Engagement–Durham Programs operation, and Sam Miglarese, director of community engagement for Duke’s Office of Durham and Regional Affairs, the program seeks to offer participants a more enriched understanding of Durham and its unique needs.
Each DukeEngage participant is matched in advance of the program with one local agency from a choice of over 30, including community partners of the nationally recognized Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. In addition to working directly with the staff of a local agency, participants join in a variety of orientations, trainings, readings, special presentations, historical and neighborhood tours, and weekly reflection sessions to deepen their knowledge of Durham and the ways local citizens engage their city.
Says Madison, “DukeEngage students in Durham are meeting critical needs that might go unmet without their hard work. The ‘Great Recession’ has taken a devastating toll on many of the public programs Americans expect to keep communities safe, healthy and educated. This is as true in Durham as many, many other towns and cities across the country. When programs for the public good scale back or disappear, non-profits often make the critical difference. Because times are also tough for non-profits, the need for talented and dedicated volunteers is at an all-time high. In this time of great need, DukeEngage students serving in Durham play a vital role.”
SERVING ACROSS DURHAM
The West End Community Center where Shirley Lung volunteered this summer is one of the many agencies in Durham facing tough times finding itself increasingly in need of capable and committed volunteers.
This summer, Lung was one of two DukeEngage volunteers at West End who helped plan and organize a ten-week summer camp experience for children, focusing on environmental education, entrepreneurial activities, performing arts and recreational activities.
Each morning, Lung taught a class for students struggling with reading comprehension. In the afternoons, she joined students on field trips and set aside time for one-on-one interactions.
Says Lung, “I chose the West End Community Center as my site because I have tutored there before for one of my service-learning classes. I also chose West End because I want to teach in a community that is in great need of teachers, which usually points to highly rural or urban places. From my DukeEngage experience, I've learned that teaching is a tough profession, but I've also become more assured that this type of career is exactly the type that I want to be engaged in.”
Meanwhile, a few miles away, at 706 Gilbert Street in Durham, DukeEngage student Thomas Gebremedhin (right), from Colombus, Ohio, and also a senior English major, often found himself working amidst colorful gardens, spilling over with echinacea plants, sunflowers, and assorted vegetables, belonging to SEEDS, non-profit community garden which endeavors to teach community members to care for the earth, themselves and one another other through a variety of garden-based programs. SEEDS’ Community Garden Program enables city residents to grow their own produce by providing garden space, tools, instruction and other resources. The program also has initiatives aimed at youth, helping to teach them about food security, healthy eating, and organic gardening. When Gebremedhin wasn’t tending to SEEDS’ gardens in preparation for an upcoming community festival, he did research for an upcoming SEEDlings Camps aimed at elementary school children or spent time with SEEDS staff to familiarize himself with how the organization worked “from top to bottom.”
Says Gebremedhin, “I opted for a placement that would allow me to see the inner-workings of a non-profit. SEEDS was one of the programs that came to my attention whose name and work I recognized, and I was eager to help the organization because of their commitment to environmental and health sustainability—two things I feel need to be emphasized universally.”
It was also the opportunity at SEEDS for significant and meaningful community interaction that excited him about his Durham placement. “The pieces of ourselves that help to build us as a whole person are found outside ourselves, ironically--at least this is what I believe,” he says. “These pieces are found and come together when we have led a life that is rich in new experiences and relationships. DukeEngage is wholly invested in this concept. Durham is where we live. We breath its air, we drink its water, we eat its food. This program was not so much about helping people in Durham, but rather serving side by side with them in an effort to create community.”
Lucy Harris, executive director of SEEDS says that a program like DukeEngage emboldens non-profits with limited resources, making volunteers like Thomas an immense value.
“No small non-profit ever has enough staff hours to complete what we wish to accomplish,” she says. “There are always special projects and research that we just don’t have time to do. With a full-time summer intern, like a DukeEngage student, we can broaden our horizon, while giving the student a great opportunity to learn and feel like he’s making a real contribution.”
The concept of “building community” was also on the mind of DukeEngage student Laleh Bahrami (below), a senior French major from Charlotte, N.C., who spent her summer volunteering with El Centro Hispano, a local non-profit that seeks to strengthen the ever-growing Latino community in and around the Durham area. The organization offers numerous programs focused on education, health, women and youth.
Bahrami’s placement centered mostly on the preparations and planning needed for a major health fair. She says, “I chose El Centro Hispano because the health fair I was going to be helping with fit very closely to my personal interests in that it revolves around the principle of prospective health care. The fair provides health-related information and services that keep people healthy and out of the hospital through preventative care.”
Collen Blue, director of programs at El Centro, found Bahrami’s assistance invaluable.
“Laleh was extremely instrumental in helping our 11th Annual Health Fair be the biggest health fair we have had yet! Because of her hard work, we had more agencies providing information and health screenings than ever before. She also helped us to recruit volunteer dentists and dental hygienists to serve the enormous need in our community for dental care.”
Bahrami wrapped up her DukeEngage placement with a feeling that she had contributed in a meaningful way. “I found very fulfilling the idea that all my hard work paid off in a health fair that helps community members in the Latino community find a primary care physician, get dental care for free, receive free health screenings, and get in touch with almost a hundred local organizations that can provide services to them.”
Just a few blocks away located on one of the top floors of one of Durham’s tallest downtown buildings, one finds Shodor, a national non-profit serving students and educators by providing materials and instruction related to computational science education. This past summer, Shodor was also home to DukeEngage student Navid Nafissi (below), a senior biology major from Plano, Texas. Nafissi originally sought to do an independent DukeEngage project in his birthplace of Tehran, Iran, but the project didn’t come to fruition.
Says Nafissi, “I knew when planning my summer that I wanted to perform service in a community that was important to me. I had spent the previous two summers taking classes, and I did not want to leave Duke without taking advantage of DukeEngage. After my independent project did not work out, I heard that there was space still available in the DukeEngage in Durham group project, so I applied and was accepted. Of the available opportunities, Shodor best matched my science background, and the people I met there were all friendly and welcoming.”
At Shodor, Nafissi worked closely with staff member Victoria Crockett (above, left), Shodor’s computational chemistry mentor, who assigned him to projects involving proofreading and formatting web content, developing workshop curricula, and teaching lessons both at Shodor and in Research Triangle Park. Says Crockett, "I think a program like DukeEngage allows the students to really focus on the service they are providing and the importance of it, which is something that might be over looked by others in a different position."
Nafissi was also intricately involved in the development and instruction of a web skills workshop for middle school and high school students. “The environment at Shodor is very collaborative, so I was free to help with whatever I found interesting,” he says.
Reflecting on his experience at Shodor, Nafissi says, “I have certainly transformed into a competent teacher and a somewhat decent computer programmer, but my greatest transformation has been in my perspective on Durham. I was surprised by the sheer number of activities and opportunities I was able to take part in that I found interesting, and I regret not having tapped into these resources from the start of my time at Duke. I have realized just how much Durham has to offer, and I thank DukeEngage for guiding me towards this realization.”
Across town in south central Durham, Joy Tsai (below) spent her summer volunteering with Communities in Schools (CIS), which seeks to connect necessary community resources with local schools to help young people successfully learn, stay in school and prepare for life. A sophomore from Florence, S.C., who is exploring her academic options, Tsai focused her volunteer efforts on the summer reading program, Durham READS, which this year enrolled 235 students in Durham. The program provides teachers lesson plans on vocabulary skills, sponsors a book fair where 4th and 5th graders select books within their appropriate reading levels, and involves a book distribution mailing—all intended to combat the two-month average reading loss common among struggling students.
Says Tsai, “My day-to-day jobs included meeting with elementary schools to discuss our program, collecting permission slips from students, and creating a database on Excel with student and book codes. I also ran the book fairs at four local elementary schools, where the students got to choose the books they wished to receive over the summer. Afterward, I placed a mass book order with Scholastic and devised a system for organizing the 180 titles throughout our office. With so much time spent organizing, my final task of mailing out two books every two weeks for each child became a lot more manageable.”
She adds, “My understanding is that Communities In Schools plans to continue the Durham READS program every summer, and expand it to include even more students in the district. Part of my volunteerism included writing a report detailing every step in planning and carrying out READS. The instructions, tips, and suggestions will help CIS when they bring in new staff next summer. I am most pleased at the thought that we ultimately have such a great impact on young lives.”
Bud Lavery, executive director of Communities in Schools of Durham, called Tsai’s work “invaluable” noting that the DukeEngage program placement provided much needed staff that helped the organization save significant funds. “The staff at DukeEngage have been wonderful to work with and very supportive of our work. I find Duke to be a great corporate citizen.”
THE COMING YEAR FOR DUKEENGAGE
Given the plethora of community needs in Durham and the successful placements of DukeEngage students with non-profits throughout the city, this particular program,” one of 30 underwritten by DukeEngage, will continue to serve as the largest DukeEngage initiative, incorporating up to 40 students throughout Summer 2010.
Following its pilot summer program in 2007, DukeEngage also increased the number of opportunities for students to serve in Durham by offering a second local program called the Durham Enterprising Leadership Inititiave (ELI), led by Professor Christopher Gergen. Through the program, roughly a dozen Duke students will work with a select group of nonprofit organizations on entrepreneurial projects. (Learn more about DukeEngage’s Durham programs by visiting dukeengage.duke.edu/immersion/durham.)
DukeEngage this year also will place an even greater focus on the opportunities afforded by its array of domestic programs, which will sustain key initiatives in New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, Tucson and Crownpoint, N.M., as well as add a new domestic opportunity tied to the non-partisan national effort “Rock the Vote” in Washington, D.C.
With respect to potential placements in Durham, Madison says, “Students serving in Durham through DukeEngage have a unique opportunity to see their summer service through to the next level of impact when they return to school. Virtually all of the schools and non-profit agencies that participate in DukeEngage welcome our students to continue their work during the academic year. This is an open-door opportunity that gives DukeEngage “alumni” the chance to develop a progressively more responsible role in a community organization and to strengthen their practical skills.”
Adds Mlyn, “By serving in Durham or elsewhere in the United States, Duke students have a natural advantage in making an immediate, effective and efficient impact with their volunteer service. With fewer cultural and linguistic barriers, they are primed to listen and to act upon responsively what the people in their host community identify as an imperative need.”
The application for applying to DukeEngage in Durham or to other domestic programs, as well as the application for independent projects, is Jan. 14, 2010. The application deadline for international programs is Nov. 9, 2009. Students are able to apply online through the DukeEngage web site at http://dukeengage.duke.edu.
And for any prospective DukeEngage participants interested in serving in Durham, past participants offer this advice:
Says Gebremedhin, “Don't feel the need to walk on water, or turn water to wine. As much as you can give, and the desire to serve—that in itself is a tiny miracle. Remember that you are a valuable resource to these organizations, and what you have to offer is worth more than you think.”
Nafissi adds, “Make sure you have a good reason for wanting to volunteer at your specific site. For me, what made the experience worthwhile was learning and contributing to a city that I call home. There is so much more to Durham than you can glean from living on campus, and there are so many different opportunities out there to give back. If you find one that matches your interests and you go in with an open mind, you will find a new side of Durham that can give you the enthusiasm to cherish this city and ultimately get more out of your Duke experience.”