2 PILLARS 1 CONCEPT
The Durham Global Equity Project is a permanent initiative that marries place-based and place-making with targeted investment for racially-equitable impact – socially, environmentally, and economically.
DGEP IS A PLACE-BASED STRATEGY
The Durham Global Equity Project [“DGEP”] is a place-based strategy focused on creating the world’s first equity education innovation hub. The simple concept is that by bringing smart and passionate people together in a permanent and ongoing environment with the challenging and audacious task of ending systematic racism in health, education, and economic development, that innovation will happen in ways unprecedented from when they are separate. DGEP will facilitate the creation of the world’s first environment where impact investors committed to racial equity come together with one another to compete and cooperate along with creative companies, entrepreneurs, innovators, scholars, government officials, and community members.
DGEP IS BUILT ON TWO OPERATIONAL PILLARS AND ONE SIMPLE CONCEPT.
DGEP is built on two operational pillars and one simple concept.
The first pillar is the hub: a 2000-acre environmentally sustainable, mixed-use urban development composed of more than 2 million square feet of commercial, retail and residential space. This hub will be erected in a newly created equity innovation district within Durham’s historic black community and Black Wall Street – Hayti. – now the poorest zip codes in Durham. The first phase of this plan will be constructed on the 20-acre grounds of a former public housing complex. The second phase will develop a 3.5 mile historically black corridor. The final phases will develop the rest of Hayti.
The second pillar of DGEP, a hub-supporting investment fund: including the leveraging of funds totaling $1 Trillion focused on three primary areas of strategic investment for racial equity ecosystems upbuilding in 1,000 black cities by 2030
Concept: Equity By Design
REPARATIVE JUSTICE
- This Equity Innovation District – and Equity Education Research and Development Park – is being developed, planned, and constructed by Hayti’s community and Durham’s black community, with the goal of this appreciable asset being owned and operated by the surrounding community and held in asset-based portfolios by low-income families and children.
- This type of investment is considered “Level 3” – economic development without forced displacement – racial equity and equitable ownership by design.
- The DGEP Park and the Equity Innovation District will be certified equity education sites, and an incubator district and site for BIPOC businesses to help them scale nationally and globally.
- Anchoring racial equity in this way will ensure that “racial equity innovation” will never stop. A coordinated global racial equity effort can pay for itself sustainably over time, just as global racial inequity has.