Community Partners

In the months of June and July, we developed a partnership with Housing for New Hope. Housing for New Hope "is a dynamic nonprofit organization working to prevent and end homelessness one valuable person at a time." They own housing complexes in Durham and they place individuals in them and provide them with support after they have moved in. They invited us to a staff meeting in mid-June. It was decided that we would have the second small business training at their new Williams Square apartment complex beginning in late July. There is a lot of potential in this partnership because our services are very complementary. Once they have housed individuals, our role would be to provide education, training and capital to augment income to help ensure that they can stay in housing begin to build assets. (It is very common for this population to lose housing soon after they attained it because of insufficient funds to maintain rent, utilities, etc.) Our services, since they are small group classes, also provide a way to build a small supportive community within the housing complex, as another common feature of this population is isolation and lack of social networks. Housing for New Hope is a great partner for CEF because they have defined location and they know all of their clients well and can refer who they think would benefit most. So this first small business training is an experiment/rehearsal to see how this partnership plays out and to identify specific needs within the Housing for New Hope community.

Our second partnership is with the local universities, namely Duke and Durham Tech. We have continued to work closely with a few Duke students, and perhaps one of the biggest challenges has been to reconcile the difference in the two university cultures and their respective leadership styles. It has been productive and instructive to see how different universities work, but not exactly seamless. Durham Tech has been very receptive, but logistically more difficult to coordinate with simply because they are outside of the downtown area. We also have had difficulty coordinating with NC Central U, but we have been told we will have better luck in the fall when students return. It remains to be seen how college and university partnerships will develop around microfinance in Durham.

Working with CEF's main community partner, Self-Help Credit Union, has been very rewarding. One of the best aspects of the internship is meeting with our mentor, Thad Moore, the VP of Self-Help each week to assess what has been accomplished and to problem solve. The main topic we have been discussing is how to design and negotiate a type of savings account for the special needs of our population. Most of our clients do not have bank accounts. Many of them have had bank accounts in the past and had to close them due to overdraft fees that they could not pay. As a result, they are tagged in Chex Systems and cannot afford the fees to open a new account. Others don't have accounts because accounts can be garnished if one owes taxes, child support, hospital bills, etc. Another reason that some don't have accounts is because the Department of Social Servics will take away benefits if they have more than $2000 in the bank. Taking all of these factors into account, CEF is trying to find a way for clients to save and build assets. Thad has been brainstorming with us and connecting us to people that could be helpful in this endeavor. Thad is a really excellent mentor. He is very fair and supportive, and really helps us to examine problems with a critical eye.
In addition, Self-Help has been having weekly Brown Bags for the interns with representatives from each department, including Resource/Policy, Accounting and Finance, Residential Real Estate Development, Commercial Lending, and the policy arm of Self-Help, the Center for Responsible Lending. They gave us an overview of what these departments do and show how each one interacts with the others to address the overall mission of "Creating and protecting ownership and economic opportunity for people of color, women, rural residents and low-wealth families and communities."

In addition, Self-Help arranged two all-day activities for us. One was to staff the opening of Maplewood Apartments, a project that started over 7 years ago. It is an apartment complex for senior citizens in the Maplewood neighborhood and is a part of Self-Help's local mission of revitalizing impoverished neighborhoods in Durham. The Real Estate team also took us on tour of the neighborhood to show what else Self-Help has done. Essentially, their strategy has been to invest in dilapidated properties, refurbish the homes (or build new ones) and sell them to low-income individuals from Durham. They aquire properties and revitalize them all at once so that the neighborhood feels the impact in a substantial way. The other all-day activity was to go on a field-trip to meet a few of Self-Help's borrowers. One was a local, downtown restaurant and the other was a Latino-owned clothing store in North Durham. They showed us how the loan process worked and the borrowers spoke to their experience with Self-Help. The day ended with a few hours time with the founder and CEO of Self-Help, Martin Eakes. He told us the story of how Self-Help started and some of the more instructive and stories in Self-Help's early history. It was a pretty monumental day in seeing how Self-Help is directly impacting the community and how it has grown over the last 30 years. On this day as well, Self-Help announced that in honor of Self-Help's 30 year anniversary, employees would volunteer a combined 30 hours outside of their work day to help a non-profit grow and improve, and they chose CEF!! So amazingly, beyond everything they have done, Self-Help is going to come together to help us improve our loan, savings and education programs, and potentially to help us form our own independent non-profit. We were stunned and amazed that they would take time out to do this. This partnership has proven to be a substantial push of energy for CEF who is really prospering from Self-Help's tutelage and support.