DURHAM – Durham Mayor Leo Williams, after attending to other municipal duties Tuesday, needed only to see the end of the inaugural Bull City Future Fund Celebration on CCB Plaza to be fulfilled.

The celebration’s primary component included the presentation of more than $300,000 in one-time grants to 15 Bull City nonprofit organizations dedicated to serving marginalized and underserved youth.

“This is my dream,” said Williams, who introduced the public-private partnership including United Way of the Triangle and the Triangle Community Foundation nearly a year ago. “This is what I wanted to happen. We’re good.”

Grants covered services for ages in kindergarten to 25. The upper end of that range is where Derek Rhodes enters the picture.

Rhodes, executive director of the Durham Success Summit, didn’t need to sing “I Feel Good” to appear on the verge of doing his best James Brown dancing impersonation. Rhodes knew he would receive a grant but not its $50,000 value until it was announced.

Rhodes cited National Bureau of Labor Statistics and localized them to state that 40% of Durham’s Black males ages 16-24 are not on course for meaningful employment. An individual’s lifetime earnings potential, he continued, too often is projected by age 25.

“Those statistics juxtapose with the high growth of Durham right now,” Rhodes said. Job training opportunities can help, as will this grant for creating new revenue streams, and offering stipends to current and prospective participants to mitigate access impediments. “We’ve had young men say, ‘I’d really love to be in your program, but transportation is a barrier. I’m missing work, or I have day care needs,’” Rhodes said.

Recipients of $10,000 grants included Student U and Sidekicks Academy. Student U is based in the W.G. Pearson Center in the historic Hayti District. Grade level-specific cohorts of approximately 50 students are served from the summer before sixth grade through college graduation.

“Our students know each other really well, because they’ve been together for all those years,” Student U Interim Executive Director Elena Maina said. “Many of our college students come back and teach in our summer academy.”

Student U serves Durham Public Schools students on course to be the first in their families to attend college with year-round programming, including transportation from DPS campuses to the Pearson Center for after school programming. Beyond 100% of participants graduating from high school on time, the program’s 46% college graduation rate (over a six-year window) is twice the national average for first-time college aspirants.

In 2019, Freddie McNeil retired from his previous role as DPS’s executive director of human resources and returned to elementary schools with his Sidekicks Academy Taekwondo initiative. He aspires to expand the program’s reach to middle school and extend the martial arts’ cultivation of personal discipline foundations.

For McNeil, an ordered process is integral to fostering optimal academic achievement. “Once you build their self-confidence, it makes them mentally well,” he said. “Once they’re mentally well, they’re educated.”

The complete list of grant recipients: Durham Success Summit, El Futuro, Echo, Boys & Girls Clubs of Durham and Orange Counties, Made in Durham, Purpose Learning Lab, POOF Teen Center, StandUp-SpeakOut of North Carolina, Greater Ascension Community and Economic Development, Youth Mentoring Collaborative, Growth NC, Sidekicks Academy, BUMP: The Triangle, Durham YMCA and Student U.

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