Carolina Summer of Service
"The summer of service, aside from fulfilling a scholarship requirement, serving a community or even bonding with fellow scholars, has effectively been a summer for reflection through action. Literally a revisiting of the Carolinas, it provides the time and space to go back to basics and ponder, percolate, and perfect the gems from freshman year and place them within a more meaningful and expansive context outside of Duke."
-Hannah Hellebush, Hometown: Winston-Salem, NC
The first B.N. Duke summer experience focuses on building community within the freshmen class of scholars as well as within the rural town in which they are placed. For eight weeks, scholars live together and participate in a service-based internship in North or South Carolina, thus giving back to the Carolinas while deepening their understanding of what it means to be from the Carolinas. The internship placement reflects each student’s particular interest and skills: for example‚ a pre-med student might work in a rural health clinic‚ a drama student with the youth arts program‚ engineering student with the public health department. Each student has a mentor within the community-based organization. Living together allows scholars to support each other and process what they are learning, helping each other meet the challenges such conmmunity work entails.
During the Carolina Summer of Service‚ scholars provide a valuable service to the host organizations and communities. In addition to having an impact at their work‚ the scholars are also transformed by their work. By listening‚ taking action‚ and reflecting over the course of the summer‚ the students learn invaluable lessons about leadership‚ service, and social issues. Upon returning to campus in the fall‚each scholar is encouraged to propose a project that continues the intellectual and personal growth experience begun over the summer.
READ THE CAROLINA BLOGS
International Summer of Service
“As if my experiences working with Latino Outreach at an AIDS Care Organization in Winston-Salem weren’t rewarding enough, the opportunity to apply the knowledge I gained there in service and leadership to my work in public health in rural Urubamba, Peru was even more remarkable. The B.N. Duke Program gave me the resources and first-hand experience to understand how service can span geographical and cultural divides, from a city in NC to the Sacred Valley of Peru.” –Megan Tooley Hometown: Cary, NC.
What are you passionate about? What aspects of yourself do you want to develop?What do you want to understand about the world?
Though similar to the Carolina Summer of Service in providing an intensive learning experience‚ the International Summer differs by offering students an opportunity to propose a project of their own design that takes place outside of the country. One of the goals of the B.N. Duke Program is to expose students from North and South Carolina to situations, issues, and cultures different from their own experience, in order to prepare them to be more informed citizens and leaders within their communities and the world.
During the International Summer, students pursue a range of projects and programs in diverse locations around the world. The scholars have traveled to every continent and volunteered with non-governmental organizations to conduct oral history projects, and to study culture and language. The International Summer takes place during the summer following the sophomore or junior year.