CHAPELBORO News | Dec 22, 2023 | News Around Town, Nonprofit

The Dorothy N. Johnson Community Center was dedicated by the Town of Hillsborough in 2021, turning a former police substation into a building devoted to the Fairview neighborhood community members. The historically Black community, which lies northwest of downtown, is working to find ways to turn the facility into a real asset.
Among those people are local high school students taking part in an internship program meant to encourage civic engagement.
The Fairview Youth in Action program had a truly grassroots beginning years ago, as a group of teenagers living in the neighborhood decided to organize a litter pick-up along the roadsides.
Edith DeJesus Sanchez was in that group, and says the teenagers quickly realized that low visibility of old road signs and no road lines painted on Rainey Avenue made it a dangerous task.
“That was really fun to do,” she says of banding together for the cleanup, “but then we realized there were a lot of obstacles, and it wasn’t really safe to do being youth – we were like 15 or 16, I believe. That’s what led us to actually start [our advocacy].”
After meeting some more and coming up with a game plan, the teenagers went to the Hillsborough Board of Commissioners meeting and pushed for updated road signs and a painted lane divider – both of which were ultimately granted. From there, the group continued to look for ways to make a difference in the Fairview community, which attracted other local stakeholders. The Fairview Community Watch – a longtime local organization – teamed up with the Orange County Habitat for Humanity and the Food Fitness Opportunity Research Collaborative (FFORC) at UNC in 2019 to formally help the young adults, and the program grew from there.
DeJesus Sanchez graduated from the early iterations of the program and now helps lead the internship as one of its coordinators.
“Thanks to all the things that the interns have been doing and things that we’ve been doing at the community center,” she says, “they’re really eager to say, ‘How can we do change? How can we do it [at our homes]?’ It’s really fun over here.”
The Fairview Youth in Action Program has now blossomed into a ten-week paid internship open to high school-aged students living or connected to the Fairview community. Every cohort gets to dictate which of the ongoing challenges they would like to learn more about and try to address.
Kevin Giff is one of the program coordinators and helped the group through Habitat for Humanity before moving roles over to UNC FFORC to further help the program.
“Each summer, they really take an issue that they’re passionate about [and] we support them through ways to access and analyze the issue,” he says. “They meet with policy makers, city planners, researchers to learn more about the issue. And at the end of the [program], the interns get to share what they’ve learned and advocate for the changes they want to see at a culminating event called Walk Fairview Day.”
Judit Alvarado is the other program coordinator through UNC FFORC – but is also a Fairview resident, having lived there since 2014. She says the internship regularly results in not just the youth becoming more engaged in the neighborhood’s wellbeing, but their parents begin to participate more too.
“Here, we’re very passionate about the community knowing where the issues, the problems, the obstacles are,” says Alvarado. “From there, it’s natural to see them taking ownership, them taking the leadership.”
While the Dorothy Johnson Community Center has been under the control of the Fairview Community Watch for several years, the internship program has now turned its focus to making the facility a hub for community activity. DeJesus Sanchez says the building is an upgrade over when she and her friends would organize meetings in cars during sweltering and freezing days. While she says she’s particularly proud of her team’s work to improve the road conditions during that time, she also points to the internship’s latest additions to the community center as highlights of her advocacy: three new pawpaw trees planted on Arbor Day to provide more shade.
“That was really exciting,” says DeJesus Sanchez, “because that’s the kick-off of all of the exterior improvement we’re going to do. The interns did a whole landscape proposal that they were really passionate about.”
DeJesus Sanchez and the program have visions for the inside too. Past interns helped choose new paint colors for the inside and the coordinators mapped out what they wish to see in nearly every room – classrooms for studying or tutoring, an art room, and an exercise area.
Giff says as the community center’s stakeholders continue finding new ways of engaging residents, the Fairview Youth in Action program hopes to keep finding ways to build the area up.
“Much like the pawpaw trees,” he says, “the interns advocate for a lot of long-term plans that they then get to come back one day and see those goals and plans realized. I think we see a lot of improvements and advocacy around Fairview Park, more access to healthy eating in the community, and continuing to make this space more vibrant.”
Alvarado says she hopes the intern cohorts, as well as Fairview residents, continue to utilize and mobilize the neighborhood in ways that would make past leaders – like Dorothy Johnson, the center’s namesake – proud. In her mind, that starts with continuing to broaden the community center’s reach.
“That’s just something we, as community members, would love to see for younger generations and people to enjoy,” says Alvarado. “I envision this as a center where there’s more programming, there’s more opportunities for elders, for young adults, for children to come together and enjoy being part of this great neighborhood.”
The organizers of the Fairview Youth in Action program already have plans for more center improvements built around Creek Week in March – which is around when applications for the internships will open for the summer of 2024.
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