By KEITH UPCHURCH

kupchurch@heraldsun.com; 419-6612

DURHAM -- Potential is what members of the Junior League of Durham and Orange counties see when they work with less fortunate members of the community. And mining that gold is a big part of what the league does as its volunteers focus on improving the lives of others.

Case in point: The Durham Performance Learning Center at Northgate Mall, where students have come from difficult backgrounds to get an education.

Working with the Learning Center is one of the league's main projects this year, according to Genevieve Michelle Tindall, a member of the league, which promotes volunteerism in the community.

"We do things like bring in mentors for the students, and find them internships and give them job shadowing experience," she said.

They also focus on non-academic activities like pizza parties and game days.

"The students stay after school for that, and it's just a good kind of relaxed environment," she said. "It's safe and they get to have fun, and they really enjoy kind of just hanging out. We want them to develop to their full potential, but we also don't look at that as solely an academic thing. We invite them to do volunteer work with us, so they can give back to their own community. And we also give a college scholarship."

The Learning Center is a partnership between the Durham Public Schools and the nonprofit Communities in Schools in Durham. It's an alternative high school for students who have done poorly or failed out of traditional high school. Students come to the school, check out a laptop computer and do all their work online at their own pace.

Classes are small, and the whole school has about 120 students in grades nine through 12. Their ages range from about 16 to 20.

One student who appreciates what the league has done for her is Samantha Davis, an 18-year-old 12th-grader at the school. She said the league has held family and game nights, donated shirts to the students and is offering a college scholarship this year, for which she's applied.

Davis, who attended the Durham School of the Arts before coming to the Learning Center this school year, plans to attend Peace College in Raleigh this fall. She wants to major in education and be an elementary school teacher.

She also hopes to join the Junior League, which has about 200 active members in Durham and Orange counties, because she likes their philosophy of helping others through volunteer work.

"I think what they're doing is really great," she said. "There's always someone who needs help, and they focus on helping people. It just shows they aren't selfish, and there are enough selfish people in the world."

For Tindall, the most gratifying thing about working with these students "is seeing them come out of their shells. They have had difficult childhoods. They have parents who are incarcerated maybe, or they have to be the breadwinners for their family. Or they've had children themselves. And we see them develop into the best that they can be. That's great."

Recently, Junior League members accompanied students on a job shadowing excursion to Duke Medical Center, where students could see how a good education can lead to good jobs.

"A lot of kids come into this school never thinking that they would be able to go to college, and with the work that we do with them, they have kind of this total mind set that's completely changed around," Tindall said. "And they think: 'Hey, we can go to college. We can do that.' "

In essence, the Junior League tries to give them hope.

"We recognize these disparities within the community," she said. "And what we do as Junior Leaguers is to act as catalysts for change. This is our job. We do that through monthly volunteering opportunities, through partnerships with the Durham Performance Learning Center and through advocacy at the local, state and national levels. Our goal is to get people help."