EDCI Scholarship recipient


Stephanie Toomer, mother of five and recipient of the first East Durham Children’s Initiative Scholarship, says her children are the reasons she is continuing her education.

Photo caption: Stephanie Toomer, EDCI Scholarship recipient, picks up “Teaching Infants, Toddlers and Twos with Special Needs” as she peruses her new resources at Durham Technical Community College for material supplemental to her course work. (Staff photo by Zack Newbauer)

Stephanie Toomer, EDCI Scholarship recipient, picks up “Teaching Infants, Toddlers and Twos with Special Needs” as she peruses her new resources at Durham Technical Community College for material supplemental to her course work. (Staff photo by Zack Newbauer)

Her youngest, 4-year-old Faizah Toomer, has special needs. According to her mother, that is all the reason she needs as this year she completes the pre-requisites to apply to Durham Technical Community College’s nursing program next fall.

“Every time they try to give my 4-year-old a test or a diagnosis, I’m on the computer researching — what is this? What caused this?” she said, and now this habit has grown into a desire to enter the medical profession.

EDCI, modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone, is entering its forth year of service to a 120-block section of East Durham known as the EDCI Zone, said Samatha Cole, EDCI’s communication coordinator.

According to Cole, EDCI must continue to seek to expand the good they do in the community at large. The scholarship, awarded to a parent/guardian of one of the EDCI Zone’s 3,000 children, ages 0-17, is exclusive to Durham Technical Community College and is renewable each semester.

“We really want to make sure that our approach to providing better outcomes to parents and kids is multi-generational, meaning that when we provide services and support to children we provide services and support to whole families,” Cole explained.

Esther Mateo-Orr, Toomer’s parent advocate at EDCI, was the one who brought the application to Toomer’s attention.

“She just places such an emphasis on education as far as her children,” Mateo-Orr said. “I wanted to encourage her to continue because she was such an inspiration to me.”

Toomer now attempts to bridge the divide between her studies and the time she wants to spend with her family.

“Sometimes I have to wait until my 8-year-old goes to bed before I can actually do my homework, so therefore it doesn’t take away from the time we have to together,” she explained. “I’ve learned how to manage it all.”

EDCI attempts to identify barriers that might prevent children from succeeding in school and then partners with local organizations to remove those barriers, according to their website. EDCI has provided parent workshops, early childhood intervention and after school/summer programs.

Toomer says the parent workshops helped her to get settled four years ago when she moved to Durham, and she couldn’t be more appreciative of what EDCI has done for her family. She now hopes that other families in EDCI Zone will take advantage of all that it has to offer.

“Anybody else in the area that doesn’t know – I try to tell them,” she said. “They have the resources, or they know who else does.”