Emory Report
January 24, 2005
Volume 59, Number 16

 




   
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January 24, 2005
Federal $400K grant partners Emory with Atlanta neighborhoods

BY deb hammacher

The northwest Atlanta neighborhoods of Riverside and Hollywood Court may be 10 miles from Emory’s campus, but they are now the University’s close partners, thanks to a three-year, $400,000 Community Outreach Partnerships Center (COPC) grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Awarded to Emory’s Office of University Community Partnerships (OUCP), the grant leverages an additional $1 million in resources (office space, faculty time, workshop supplies, etc.) from the University and its community partners.

“We are grateful for and excited about this opportunity to nurture a deeper relationship with some of our Atlanta neighbors in ways that will benefit both the community and the University,” said President Jim Wagner. “The Northwest Atlanta COPC is a clear example of Emory’s vision at work in the world.”

The grant, made possible because of work done by Emory’s Kenneth Cole Fellows in Community Building, enables expansion of the students’ efforts to preserve and attract community assets and to plan for future development of the partner neighborhoods.

The COPC office will be based at Benjamin Carson Honors Preparatory School, an Atlanta public middle school.

Examples of efforts that will fall under the COPC umbrella include:

•Emory psychology students and faculty will lead workshops with Carson parents.
• Emory master’s students will complete student-teaching rotations at Carson.
• Carson teachers will participate in workshops to build their capacity to collaborate with parents.
• Emory students will mentor Carson students and help them work toward college.
• Emory’s debate program, the Barkley Forum, has established a branch of the Atlanta Urban Debate League at Carson in partnership with the Atlanta Housing Authority, TechBridge and Boys & Girls Clubs.

“We said we needed help protecting affordable housing, that we wanted to take charge of how our community develops,” said Felicia Moore, District 9 Atlanta City councilwoman and a member of the COPC advisory committee, “and Emory has stepped up to help us.”

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