News Release

Wachovia Foundation gift benefits community, Fuqua

From left: Walter McDowell, president of the Carolinas Wachovia Corporation, Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, and Jack Clayton, regional president of Wachovia.

The Wachovia Foundation is giving Duke University $1 million for afterschool programs for low-income Durham school children and for Fuqua School of Business programs, including one that encourages MBA students to share their expertise with Durham nonprofit organizations.

“The partnership projects Wachovia has funded are examples of philanthropy at its most enlightened,” said Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University. “Project HOPE will enhance our cooperation with the Durham community through the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership and improve academic achievement of at-risk school children in the neighborhood schools. The programs at Fuqua that are supported by Wachovia promote leadership, ethics and social entrepreneurship in our community.”

Jack Clayton, regional president of Wachovia and a Durham native, said: “We are very pleased to be able to effectively leverage our dollars by partnering with Duke University to make a joint commitment to the youth of Durham. One key focus of the Wachovia Foundation is to assist secondary education in the communities we serve. Working in conjunction with the Fuqua School of Business, our gift will enhance entrepreneurial leadership not only in Durham but well beyond the borders of North Carolina.”

Project HOPE (Holistic Opportunities Plan for Enrichment) is a comprehensive after-school program designed in collaboration with the Durham Public Schools and local leaders to help children from low-income families in Walltown and Southwest Central Durham to do better in school. It is a program of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, which marshals resources to improve the quality of life and boost student achievement in neighborhoods and schools near campus.

Project HOPE will receive $500,000, which will help extend the program by a minimum of five additional years by supporting salaries for key personnel. Last year, more than 165 children received individualized tutoring, mentoring and arts enrichment programming at community centers located in their own neighborhoods -– both after school and during the summer. Duke students volunteer as tutors. Passing rates on reading and math end-of-grade tests for children in the program have improved in one year from 50 percent to 69 percent and from 60 percent to 80 percent, respectively.

“Project HOPE is the best thing that has happened for my center,” said Juanita McNeil, the youth coordinator at the West End Community Center’s Child Enrichment Program which serves children from pre-kindergarten to fourth grade. The genesis for the center began in 1992, when McNeil started taking children into her home to get them off the streets. “I don’t know what we would do without Project HOPE. We have just started a mental health component for children to work on social skills.”

The Fuqua School of Business will divide $500,000 equally between the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) and the Center for Leadership & Ethics (COLE).

CASE is a research and education center created in 2002 that is dedicated to promoting entrepreneurial leadership in the social sector. It will use the money to launch an integrated scholarship and summer internship program that will provide some scholarship support to nonprofit managers to pursue a MBA education and encourage MBA students to consider careers with social-purpose organizations.

A number of Fuqua CASE students are participating as members of boards of nonprofits in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. For instance, some students are working on an economic development assessment of the transitional commercial district of West Chapel Hill Street in Durham.

“I’ve been very pleased with their work –- it’s exceeded my expectations,” said James Haywood, owner of MADDWAX record store. “They’re using demographic measures to evaluate the economic future of the neighborhood and investigating aspects of the neighborhood that would have to change for certain stores to come to the neighborhood.”

COLE will use its $250,000 to provide scholarships for community-based organizations and nonprofit groups to send participants to Fuqua’s annual Conference on Leadership. It also will use the money to develop leadership and ethics curriculum to establish higher standards in the for-profit and nonprofit worlds.

The Wachovia Foundation recently made another million dollar gift toDurham through N.C. Central University to support academic scholarships for students.

More information : Susan Kauffman, (919) 681-8975, susan.kauffman@duke.edu