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dooley.kendall

@dooley.kendall

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📍: Durham, NC
🖤: Married @erinvlashley
✊🏾: Reverse Migrated @blksouth
🎓: MA Missional Theology + ThM
💬: Scholarly Practitioner, Writer

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

🎉 BIG NEWS! 1K Academy officially opens TOMORROW, OCT. 20! 🎉

With over 40 children already signed up and a growing waiting list, we couldn't be more excited to open our doors tomorrow! We look forward to getting to know our young scholars, building relationships with parents, and welcoming volunteers who are eager to invest in the next generation.

The transformation of this space has truly been a labor of love! A HUGE shoutout to Frank and William's friends and family, members of Russell Memorial CME Church, neighbors, and everyone who poured their time, resources, energy, and love into creating a welcoming space for Durham's young scholars to learn, grow, and thrive.

It takes a village, and that village includes YOU! ❤️

The Grant Street Community and the Social Justice & Outreach Team of Monument of Faith Church are so proud and excited to rally behind Frank Smith’s vision for 1K Academy at Russell Memorial CME Church!

This is what happens when churches, neighbors, families, and volunteers come together around a shared vision for our children and neighborhood.

It takes a village to raise a child, and we're so grateful for the village that's coming together to make this possible! ❤️🙌🏾

Here's to a beautiful beginning! 🌱

#1KAcademy #GrantStreetCommunity #BLKSouth #DurhamNC #ItTakesAVillage

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Happy 5th year anniversary bb 🥹🖤✨🥰🎊💍

I love you with my WHOLE heart and my whole heart feels SO loved by you 🫶🏾

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#brickcommons #yourrealtorforallgenerations #firsttimehomebuyer #investor #1031
Charming 2 bedroom 2 bathroom condo close to museums, local restaurants, and so much more!

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Help us give a warm BLK South welcome to our new field education intern, Michandra Washington! 👋🏾🎉

Michandra is joining us this school year as a student from Duke Divinity School. Field education gives students the opportunity to connect what they are learning in the classroom with hands-on ministry, community engagement, theological reflection, and vocational formation.

Throughout the year, Michandra will serve alongside BLK South's Hyper-Local work as we build out an after-school program for children and families in our neighborhood in partnership with Grant Street Community, Russell Memorial CME Church, and Monument of Faith Church.

We are honored to have Michandra with us and look forward to a meaningful and formative year of learning, service, and building together.

Drop a warm hello for Michandra in the comments! 👋🏾

#BLKSouth #DukeDivinity #FieldEducation #Hayti #GrantStreetCommunity

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“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

In When History Rhymes, BLK South co-founder Kendall Dooley reflects on the courage required to recognize the patterns echoing from our past, name harmful rhythms in the present, and imagine new rhythms that can lead us toward healing.

This semester, our weekly reflections will explore aphorisms, quotations, and proverbs that have shaped and stayed with us. You’ll hear from BLK South board members and members of our broader community as they reflect on the words that inform their lives, faith, and work.

Subscribe to the BLK South newsletter so you don’t miss a reflection—and join us as we listen for the wisdom carried through words, history, and community.

🔗 Subscribe at blksouth.org or use the link in bio.

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What a day! 🎉💛

The Grant Street Community Block Party was SO much fun! From the food and music to the kids playing, giveaways, community resources, and neighbors old and new spending time together—it was a beautiful reminder of what makes community so special.

A huge thank you to Monument of Faith Church for being such an incredible partner and helping us create a space where our neighborhood could gather, celebrate, and connect. 🫶🏾

And thank you to our wonderful community partners and sponsors who helped make today possible:

✨ North Carolina Black Alliance
✨ Fayetteville Street Group, Inc.
✨ Durham Housing Authority
✨ North Carolina Second Chance CDC
✨ Community N' Brotherhood
✨ Durham Community Land Trustees
✨ Monument of Faith Church

Most of all, thank you to every neighbor, volunteer, family, organization, and friend who came out and made the day what it was.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to keep building relationships, honoring the history and legacy of Hayti, and creating the kind of neighborhood where people know one another and look out for one another.

Celebrate. Connect. Build Community. 💛

#GrantStreetCommunity #Hayti #DurhamNC #Community #BlockParty HaytiDurham

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📰 Grant Street Community is in the news again!

We’re grateful to be featured in The News & Observer by reporter Luke Bowles (@bowlesbugs) — marking the second news feature highlighting Grant Street Community and our growing advocacy to bring a Black-owned grocery store to historic Hayti.

Our neighborhood is considered a food desert. For many of our neighbors, accessing fresh, healthy food means leaving the neighborhood altogether — a reality shaped by generations of displacement, disinvestment, and inequity.

As Duke University’s Edible Atlas Lab uses wastewater research to better understand food access and nutrition in our community, we’ve been asking an important question: How can research move beyond studying communities and actually become a tool for their advocacy and flourishing?

As Erin shared in the article, “We don’t really need research to prove what we already know.” We live the realities the data seeks to describe. But research can become powerful when it helps bring institutional credibility, attention, and resources alongside what residents have already been saying.

And right now, our neighborhood is saying clearly: Hayti needs a grocery store.

We’re grateful to Luke Bowles and The News & Observer for helping tell this story, and to Dr. Lawrence David and the Edible Atlas team for being willing to wrestle with what it means for research to serve the communities it touches.

Two news features later, we’re grateful that more people are hearing what our neighbors have been advocating for — but the goal isn’t simply more attention or better data. The goal is investment, access, and a neighborhood where our people can flourish for generations to come. 🌱

“How are we disrupting systems that are created for harm to create ways where we can flourish as a neighborhood for the long haul?” — Erin Dooley

#GrantStreetCommunity #BLKSouth #Hayti #DurhamNC #FoodJustice BlackDurham CommunityDevelopment

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We ended up in The New York Times... but that's not the story. 📰👀

Back in April, Kendall and I attended our neighborhood's District 4 PAC meeting, where we heard Dr. Lawrence David and members of Duke's Edible Atlas Lab share about their research.

After the meeting, we reached out to introduce ourselves and asked if they would be interested in partnering with our neighborhood and several of our community partners.

We shared that for the last 30 years, the Grant Street Ladies and Bishop Laney of Monument of Faith Church organized for the development of the 21-acre Villages of Hayti affordable housing project.

Now, our neighbors have been advocating for a full-service grocery store in the historic Hayti District, but that there was still a $6 million funding gap preventing the grocery store from opening with the new development.

The question was simple: Can your research help us advocate for what our neighborhood truly needs?

Rather than research existing for over exploitation, we asked what it might look like for it to be used to tell the story of why access to healthy, affordable food matters and why Hayti deserves the same investment as every other neighborhood.

I never imagined that just four months later, that conversation would lead to The New York Times featuring both the Edible Atlas Lab's research and its collaboration at the neighborhood level with the Grant Street Community in the historic Hayti District.

I'm deeply grateful to Dr. Lawrence David and the entire Edible Atlas Lab team, our Grant Street neighbors, Monument of Faith Church, and everyone who has contributed to this work.

The story may be making national headlines, but our hope is that this attention helps move us one step closer to what our neighbors have been asking for all along: a grocery store, healthy food access, and continued investment in the historic Hayti District for the people who never left.

The work continues. 🖤
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#GrantStreetCommunity #Hayti #DurhamNC #FoodJustice #CommunityDevelopment

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There’s something powerful about gathering neighbors around the table.

Over good food and honest conversation, we’re exploring what mutual aid, mutual advocacy, mutual defense, and mutual activism can look like in our neighborhood. More than anything, we’re getting to know one another, building trust, and discovering what’s possible when people choose to care for the place they call home.

This is slow, local work—but we believe it’s the kind of work that helps neighborhoods flourish. ❤️🏡

Join our mailing list or visit the events page at GrantStreet.org to stay up to date on ways to get involved!

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Thankful for friends and partners like @imchristinenolf @redemptionoc across the country who understand and value placed-based work—and how our stories speak to one another across places and communities.

It was especially fun to get a surprise visit from Sami DiPasquale from El Paso, Texas, who leads a powerful pilgrimage experience at the U.S.-Mexico border @abarafrontiers. All of these folks share deep roots in community development and are living out the philosophy of investing in people and place.

We had a wonderful time in Costa Mesa, sharing updates from @blksouth @grantstdurham and screening the Grant Street Documentary. We reflected on how our community's history connects with theirs, how the stories of neighborhoods are deeply connected, and what we might do about it together.

On some level...we're boosters iykyk 😉

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Is anybody else still thinking about @blksouth bearing witness to commitment, one of our core values? @dooley.kendall said:
“Commitment grows out of love and love grows out of relationship.”

We’re committed to listen to how the land speaks to each other as we build relationships in #costamesa #orangecounty and #durham #haytineighborhood

For wisdom and joy from the elders committed to their communities for decades, check out @grantstdurham documentary. Link in the weekly + on YouTube

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This Exploration Sunday, we are excited to welcome back Erin and Kendall Dooley from BLKSouth, a ministry in North Carolina deeply committed to the health of their community. We will have a chance to hear stories of what it looks like to be committed over time, letting our 'yes' be 'yes' in the places we are planted.

Kendall and Erin Dooley are passionate leaders, scholarly practitioners, and community builders with a diverse background in ministry, theological education, community development, and personal discipline. With more than 40 years of combined church leadership experience and over 11 years in pastoral ministry, they have transitioned into full-time work with BLK South, a community development organization they co-founded to serve historic African American neighborhoods throughout the South. Learn more about the Dooleys and their work at https://www.blksouth.org/

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