NCUC is a cooperative venture designed to organize, coordinate and develop resources for helping the urban poor achieve self-sufficiency, and for fostering applied research, service learning, and community service related to urban issues. Formally established in July 1998, NCUC also supports development of an interdisciplinary curriculum cross-listed within and between the two institutions. The Center coordinates several Education, Self-Sufficiency, and Asset-Creation programs, a few of which are highlighted here.

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For The Children

Serving elementary and middle school students, “For the Children” promotes reading and math skills by providing age-appropriate literature and workbooks for young readers and classrooms and by supplying tutors from the community and from various Tulane's constituencies. At Lafayette and Crocker Elementary Schools, the tutors are a mixture of community volunteers and service-learning students. At the Sophie B. Wright Learning Academy, a non-performing middle school in danger of being taken over by the state, the program makes use of paid student workers, many of them from the law school, thanks to a series of grants from the City of New Orleans Office of Workforce Development. The improvements in literacy and numeracy produced by “For the Children” have been marked.

Contact: Monica Ponoroff, 862-5015 or 905-5347.

Louisiana Alliance for Education Reform (LAER)

A partnership founded by Tulane and the Shell Oil Company, this consortium of several organizations launched public school reform programs in Ascension, Jefferson, and St. James parishes. Before closing in mid-2005 the Alliance received major funding from the Baptist Community Ministries to enhance its Collaborative Reform Model planning process in selective Jefferson Parish schools. In conjunction with the university, corporations, small businesses, parents, and civic leaders, the Alliance was a proven grass-roots approach to effecting lasting change and continuous improvement guided by the schools and communities they serve. The Alliance provided intensive training and coaching to educators and galvanizes community involvement through local Alliance chapter organizations. All technical assistance and training was designed to help local citizens improve their children's' schools.

Connecting Schools and Communities to Technology (CSCT)

Part of a U.S. Department of Education grant to OnLine Louisiana, a consortium administered jointly by Tulane and LSU, CSCT is a tutoring and computer lab program focused on increasing the use of technology in underserved communities attending selected New Orleans elementary schools. At Lafayette and Waters Elementary Schools, 3 rd graders receive math tutoring from Tulane and Xavier University service-learning students from, while teachers attend professional development workshops on how to use the Internet as a classroom aid. Parents and students alike participate in after-school “Parent/Child Computer/Internet” workshops, receiving, upon successful completion of the training, free computers, either new or refurbished. At Harriet Tubman Elementary School CSCT established a computer lab using refurbished computers

Contact: Cassandra Murphy, 236-0461

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Tulane/Xavier Campus Affiliates Program (CAP )

Now in its eight year, CAP began as an effort to apply the universities' resources toward improving the lives of impoverished families in three New Orleans public housing sites and their surrounding communities. At its peak the program incorporated the efforts of over 1000 faculty, students and staff from the two universities to combine applied research and service delivery to develop more effective ways to help very low-income and welfare-dependent individuals and families achieve economic self-sufficiency. CAP's employment initiatives alone placed hundreds of clients in jobs by helping them remove barriers that the poor usually face when seeking employment. Today CAP is focusing its energies on placing the hard-to-serve in better jobs (above the minimum wage) and helping them build assets and buy homes.
Contact: Ronnie Moore, 862-8262

Welfare-to-Work (WtW)

Presently in a close-out phase of a five-year, national demonstration grant funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, and overseen by the City of New Orleans Office of Workforce Development, WtW assisted non-custodial parents (mostly fathers), substance-abusing single mothers, and young adults exiting foster care to surmount the manifold barriers to employment faced by this special population. By virtue of placing over 400 participants in unsubsidized employment, 91 percent of whom were still on the job six months later, the program received two letters from the Labor Department commending its exemplary performance.

Contact: Bryan Moore, 827-3360

Youth Career Center (Youth One-Stop)

NCUC currently serves as operator of the New Orleans JOB1 Youth Career Center. The Youth Center serves as home base for all youth services implemented through JOB1. The center offers Paid/Unpaid Work Experience (job placement relative to the applicant's area of interest); Summer Employment Opportunities ; Employment and Career Counseling , which includes Assessment Education and Vocational Counseling, Career Development and Service Navigation, Employment and Guidance Counseling; General Education Development (GED); Labor Market Information, and Access to Training.

The mission of the JOB1 Youth Career Center is to respond to the labor market needs of high-demand, high-growth industries by preparing unemployed and underemployed youth to move into the economic mainstream by way of jobs and careers capable of supporting a family. Services are offered to youth ages 14 to 21 who meet the income requirement and confront one or more of the established barriers to education and/or employment.

Contact: Bryan Moore, 827-3360

Justice Reinvestment

At the invitation of state legislative leaders and the Council for State Governments based in New York City, NCUC is spearheading a collaborative effort by state and city officials, service providers, and faith-based group to constrain the ballooning Corrections Department budget by devising community reinvestment alternatives to lengthy sentences for non-violent offenders convicted of technical parole violations. The Collaboration intends to build a better case management system for tracking and serving non-violent parolees, while introducing effective self-sufficiency programs into New Orleans neighborhoods where ex-offenders are disproportionately released.

Contact: Ronnie Moore, 862-8262

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Individual Development Account Collaborative of Louisiana (IDACL)

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are matched savings accounts that encourage low-income families to save money, gain financial skills, and build wealth through the purchase of assets. The IDACL initiative matches a family's savings up to 4:1 toward the purchase of a first home, financing post-secondary education, or funding a business. In addition, participants receive training in money management, budgeting, and credit building by organizations that partner with the collaborative to provide these services. Started as a CAP pilot project at the C.J. Peete public housing development, the program, through a $4,000,000, 2-year grant from the Louisiana Department of Social Services, has grown over the past year to encompass a statewide collaborative of private and public organizations that work with low-income families throughout Louisiana. The collaborative, for which Tulane (d/b/a/ NCUC) is the fiduciary, includes eight banking partners and over 55 social service provider partner agencies who provide services to IDA clients. Through a separate federal grant, the Collaborative was awarded $800,000 contingent on raising an equal amount in non-federal support. To date IDACL has raised $500,000 of this match.

So far IDACL has raised more than $5,100,000 for its programs; graduated 200 asset owners (mainly home buyers); trained dozens of social service provider partners across the state on IDA, credit, asset training, and financial education activities; ensured the provision of credit counseling, financial education, and/or asset training services for over 800 low-income families in the state of Louisiana; and expanded its services by introducing a home improvement IDA program that will fund 50 families.

Contact: Donna Darensbourg, 865-5207

Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program/Earned Income Tax Initiative (VITA/EITC)

Operating in partnership with the IRS and several community groups under the umbrella of the Central City Asset Building Coalition, NCUC's VITA program utilizes Tulane Business School service learners to assist low-income individuals at four Central City sites to file for Earned Income Tax Credit returns. In just two years the program has prepared 502 returns for a total of $1,022,283, $646,460 of which were EITC returns. By virtue of having a cost-free alternative to the predatory lending practices of many professional tax preparers, these low-income filers saved $75,300 (or an estimated $150 per return). In addition, twenty-five of them opened savings accounts for the first time.

Contact: Neill Goslin, 862-8262

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NCUC has sponsored several surveys of public housing residents in New Orleans , two of which are linked below. It has also funded a reputational study of local leadership in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans , investigations of selective substance abuse intervention strategies, psychological studies of the impact of violence on disadvantaged youth in high crime areas, and studies of attitudinal change among service learning students. Studies are forthcoming on the pre- and post-test reading and math scores in non-performing middle schools in Orleans Parish, and on predictors of success in our statewide IDA program.

1. Finding from the Fourth Annual C. J. Peete Community-Wide Survey (Winter 1999-Spring 2000) [by. Dr. Joel Devine, Department of Sociology, Tulane University]

2. Finding from the Third Annual C. J. Peete Community-Wide Survey (Winter 1998-99) [by. Dr. Joel Devine, Department of Sociology, Tulane University]

3. Dempsey, M., Overstreet, S., & Moely, B. (2000). Approach and avoidance coping and PTSD symptoms in inner-city youth. Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 19, 28 - 45.

4. Gallini, S., Moely, B. (2003). Service-Learning and Engagement, Academic Challenge, and Retention. Michgan Journal of Community Service Learning. Fall 2003, 5 - 14.


5. Kreutziger, S., Ager, R., Lewis, J., England, S., (2001). A Critical Look at a Contemporary Welfare-to-Work Program in the Light of the Historic Settlement Ideal. Journal of Community Practice, Vol 9(2) 2001 , 49 - 69.


6. Kreutziger, S., Ager, R., Harrell, E., Wright, J. (1999). The Campus Affiliates Program. American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42 No. 5, February 1999 827 - 839.


7. Overstreet, S., Dempsey, M., Graham, D., & Moely, B. (1999). Availability of Family Support as a Moderator of Exposure to Community Violence. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 28, 151 - 159.

8. Overstreet, S. & Braun, S. (1999). A Preliminary Examination of the Relationship Between Exposure to Community Violence and Academic Performance. School Psychology Quarterly, 14, No. 4, 1999, 380 -396.
   
9. Overstreet, S., Braun, S (2000). Exposure to Community Violence and Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms: Mediating Factors. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 70(2), April 2000, 263 - 271.

10. Overstreet, S., Devine, J., Bevans, K., & Efreom, Y. (in press). Predicting parental involvement in children's schooling within an urban, African American sample. Psychology in the Schools.