STORY NO.

19

Emily K Center

Our plan

When Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski was growing up in Chicago's North Side, an urban neighborhood filled with immigrants from all over the globe, he spent a lot of time at his local community center playing sports with a diverse group of kids and being encouraged to dream big. Sure, his parents hadn't attended college, but that shouldn't stop him from attending school. Roughly a decade later, Krzyzewski had graduated from West Point and begun a career as a college basketball coach. In 2005, four decades after his community center experiences in Chicago, Krzyzewski had become one of the winningest basketball coaches of all time and a highly involved member of the Duke and Durham communities. But Krzyzewski had also become distressed by the lack of opportunities for local Durham students. So he decided that he wanted to open a youth center in Durham like the one from Chicago, focused on inspiring students from low-income families to become leaders and attend four-year colleges. He decided to name the center after his mother, Emily Krzyzewski. Krzyzewski began the fundraising process for the Emily K center by donating a significant chunk of his own money. Then he went to a number of corporations he had built relationships with during his coaching career and asked for donations. With the help of companies like Nike and ESPN, Krzyzewski gathered enough resources to begin construction on a building in the west end of Durham. Then he went to work on logistical planning with members of the Duke business school and program planning with local Durham school employees.

What we did

By the time the Emily K center was ready to open in early 2006, Krzyzewski and his team had hired a team to run day-to-day operations at the center. Duke students, known for spending months camping in front of the gym to attend basketball games, were signing up to volunteer as tutors. The center began with the Pioneer Scholars program, a comprehensive, sustained, out-of-school program for elementary and middle school students that helps students gain study skills and get one-on-one tutoring in specific subjects five days a week. It is expected that students enrolled in the Pioneer Scholars program will continue involvement from the time that they enter (any time between K and 8th grade) all the way through their high school graduation. This kind of long-term commitment is aimed at strengthening the resolve and resilience of students.

Our results

"The biggest difference between me now and me at the beginning of the year is heart. Now I know that I can do things without quitting." -Taleya, Pioneer Scholar, 6th Grade "It's been 18 months since Jerry first...ran through the double doors into the center. At that point, he was behind. A year later, as he begins the second grade, Jerry is reading a year and a half above grade level." -The Raleigh News and Observer (newspaper) on Emily K student Jerry Lopez, 8/19/2007 By aiming to inspire Durham students to reach for bigger goals, Krzyzewski proved that his value to the community extends off the basketball court. The Emily K center has affected everyone in its path, from students to volunteers. One Duke volunteer even decided to consider a career in teaching after watching her tutee improve from week to week. And the statistics were impressive: at the beginning of the first year of operation, two-thirds of Emily K students were reading below grade level; by the end of the year, two-thirds were reading above grade level. The success of its early programs has led the center to expand its program for 2008, nearly doubling the number of students that they'll help.

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Olivia Allen
Oakland, CA