Family Center of Northern Durham

For my service-learning project, I volunteered at the Family Center of Northern Durham, which is a bilingual preschool.  The mission of the organization is to “support families and to foster children’s healthy development and learning by partnering with parents to develop leadership support networks, provide services that respond to the changing needs of families and communities, and facilitate collaboration of and access to community resources.”  In sum, their goal is to “meet the needs of the families in the northern part of Durham County.” The preschool’s enrollees have come mostly from the northern part of Durham County and the southern part of Person County.   Some services offered are Friday play mornings and a wide variety of education and fun activities. The Center also partners with a Durham Literacy Center, which holds English teaching classes.

When I began volunteering at the preschool, it was in a state of decline.  Funds were running out, few children were enrolled, and staff members were not getting paid.  It was clear that they needed to make some changes. During the time I spent at the Center I helped to achieve many things.  I reorganized the library, played with the children, developed marketing tools, rewrote a vague mission statement, brainstormed recruitment ideas to attract a diverse clientele, and further defined job descriptions for the staff members.  Moreover, I was able to help reduce their financial risk by searching for grant opportunities. 

As this course was my first real introduction to human rights, the service-learning project, along with the class project, really helped to inform my understanding of the importance and applicability of the concept.  Like those two gentlemen who came in to speak about their experiences of leaving Mexico and starting a life in America, I had encounters with people who were going through very similar situations.  The language barriers were certainly an issue, signifying the importance of the Durham Literacy Center and the educational classes it offers.  I also had the chance to sit on some of the Board meetings, where new ideas and strategies were discussed.  Behind everything that was said was the underlying thought and concern about how the families would be affected.  A place truly for the families, the Center provides people who otherwise would not be involved in the community an awesome opportunity to participate.   Aside from community involvement, there were other rights that the Center helped to achieve for families, including, but not limited to, the right to respect and protection of family, right to adequate standards of living, and right to social assistance.  While I have been a part of many volunteering projects in the past, I have always focused on productivity and sustainability of an organization and never thought in terms of human rights and how those were or were not being met.  Through my service-learning project, I now have a greater understanding and appreciation for these rights that are often taken for granted.