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Erin Dooley, M.A.

@erinvlashley

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📍: Durham, NC
💍: @dooley.kendall
✊🏾: Reverse Migrated @blksouth
🎓: Master of Community Leadership @edenseminary
✨: A Scholarly Practitioner

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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#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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BLK South co-founder Erin Dooley introduces our newest reflection, “Two Caged Birds”—a play on Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Watch to hear why Erin wrote the piece, then visit our website to read the full reflection and subscribe to the BLK South newsletter.

Link in bio.

#BLKSouth #TwoCagedBirds #CommunityCare #HousingJustice #DurhamNC

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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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Today was an exciting step forward for our future community garden! 🌱

We spent the afternoon with the team at @ourbackyardgrows completing a site assessment and soil testing for the garden at 805 Simmons Street. Together, we walked the property, talked through how to translate the vision our neighbors created into the space we actually have, discussed ways to make the garden accessible for residents of all abilities, and explored irrigation options that will help the garden thrive for years to come.

One of the things we appreciate most about this partnership is that good community development starts by listening—to the land, to the people who live here, and to the long-term needs of the neighborhood.

We're grateful for the expertise Our Backyard is bringing to this project and can't wait to share more as Community Garden continues to take shape. This is another exciting step toward creating a space where neighbors can gather, grow fresh food, and cultivate community together. 🌿💚

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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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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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end of the month dump. april 2026. 💚

alignment. aligning. these are the two words that come to mind when i think about april.

this past month was about returning to the right energy. about making room for the right opportunities (and believing in them, too). about…recalibrating.

this alignment didn’t just show up in my own joy and conscious living, though. it showed up in the daily joy of the people you see here, too. in the pictures friends and family took with and sent me, granting me this opportunity to see alignment…in motion. in laughter, play, church, traveling, running, shared space, history. i saw devotion, courage, and this collective beauty…where we’re all just becoming a bit more of ourselves in real time.

this month reminded me to hold space for a kind of alignment that is both dramatic and easygoing. sometimes it’s graceful. sometimes it’s anxious and messy. often? it’s just a gift that keeps on giving us chance after chance…to choose ourselves and lives that feel like home.

one of my favorite singers and activists, nina simone, felt like the perfect pairing for this dump. in her rendition of “Baltimore”, we hear something tangible about this kind of becoming. about a city with its own past and hope for blooming. about ache and intention. about souls that’s seen enough imperfection yet still reaches for movement, meaning, and mobility anyhow.

all that…is alignment in song, speech, in action, and in me.

not perfection, but direction. not escape, but return.

so, here’s to april. here’s to aligning.

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Yesterday at the Hayti Heritage Center, we gathered as a community to honor the legacy, faith, and endurance that have sustained Grant Street for generations.

We celebrated the witness of the Grant Street Ladies—Ms. Brenda, Ms. Diane, Ms. Pam, Ms. Vivian, and Ms. Joanne—alongside Bishop Clarence Laney, Jr., whose leadership and love have helped shape this neighborhood into what it is today. Because of their commitment to stay, to care, and to fight for what is possible, there is still a Grant Street to come home to.

The Grant Street documentary is now live on our new website: grantstreet.org. We invite you to watch, learn, and join us in continuing the story.

🎥 repost: PMA NCCU (@lawonderwoman1) — thank you for being present with us.

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