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Growing hopeNonprofit gives underprivileged teens new opportunities through travel, serviceby Taylor Madaffari

Through the Dustin’s Greenhouse Globetrotter program, students

have an opportunity to hike through the Andes mountains, get up close with wildlife in places like South Africa and get doused in an

Ecuadorian cloud forest.

SPRING 2012 35

Dustin Green had no interest in the Galapagos Islands, and likely hadn’t even heard of them. Like most teenage boys, all he wanted was a car. But as they did with

his sister before him, his parents, Greensboro residents Martin and Lou Green, instead insisted on sending him abroad for his high school graduation present in 2001.

“I have always felt that experiences are 10 times more valuable than things; things get old, are broken or sold, and disappear from our lives, but experiences stay with us forever,” Martin Green says.

“I don’t really remember the car I drove in high school,” he adds. “But I will never forget the first time I spotted a gorilla in the wild, or saw the pyramids in Egypt or jumped into a shark cage in Cape Town.”

He didn’t want his son missing out on those kinds of experiences. Dustin, however, protested his parents’ decision until the moment they put him on the plane. After he returned from his three-week backpacking trip, he no longer was protesting, but was thanking his parents for giving him the gift of renewed perspective. He was deeply impacted — a changed person. Nine months later, he was gone.

photos: Martin Green

“There is nothing quite like watching a kid accomplish

something for the first time that they never thought they could.”

On Friday, June 1, the Greater Greensboro Area Father’s Day

Council will celebrate Fatherhood at its annual Father of the Year

Awards Dinner. The event is designed to recognize the Father of the Year Award

recipients. Prior to the evening, honorees are recognized through donations that benefit the

American Diabetes Association and its diabetes research, education, and advocacy initiatives.

The Father of the Year Awards are presented by the Greater Greensboro Area Father’s Day Council, the local branch of a national

organization that helps to identify and honor

fathers who have demonstrated the ability to balance their personal lives to serve as a role model for their children while making a positive difference in their community.

This year’s honorees will join

past national

2012 Greater Greensboro Area Father of the Year Awards DinnerBenefiting the American Diabetes Association

• Friday,June1,2012• GrandoverResort,Greensboro• Receptionat6:30p.m.• DinnerandProgrambeginsat7:30p.m.• Blacktieoptional• FrankMickens,Anchor,WFMYNews2,willemcee

theevent• Ticketsare$150andareavailableatwww.diabetes.org

orbycalling(888)342-2383,ext.3266

Ofather of the year award 2012

recipients who have included some of the country’s best-known dads: President Gerald Ford, singer Harry Belafonte, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, American Bandstand’s Dick Clark, L.A. Dodgers Coach Tommy Lasorda, actor Andy Griffith, National Football League great Terry Bradshaw and many others.

The black tie-optional gala will begin with a cocktail reception at 6:30 p.m. at the Grandover Resort, 1000 Club Road, Greensboro. Tickets are available for $150; call the ADA at (888) 342-2383, ext. 3266.

The ADA continues to search for a cure for diabetes, the body’s inability to produce or respond to insulin, causing high blood sugar levels that often lead to blindness, kidney failure, amputation, heart attack, and stroke.

AbouttheNationalFather’sDayCouncil

Formed in 1931, the National Father’s Day Council is a group of volunteers from a variety of occupations and industries who annually honor individuals whose achievements and values enhance the meaning and stature of fatherhood. The National Father’s Day Council has raised more than $25 million in 22 years to search for a cure for diabetes.

AbouttheAmericanDiabetesAssociation

The ADA is the nation’s leading voluntary health organization concerned with diabetes and its complications. Founded in 1940, the Association provides services in communities nationwide. The ADA’s mission is to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. For more information, call the ADA at (888) 342-2383 or visit www.diabetes.org.

photo: Albion Associates

father_of_year_spr12.indd 1 1/31/12 12:07 PM

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On April 15, 2002, Dustin was a passenger in a jeep that ran a red light and was broadsided on the campus of N.C. State University in Raleigh, where he was a freshman. He was thrown from the vehicle and tragically died a few hours later.

A fitting memorialHis distraught parents,

searching for a way to allow their son’s memory to live on, created a fund to which friends and family could make donations in lieu of sending flowers. This donor-advised fund later established Dustin’s Greenhouse, a nonprofit that cultivates opportunities for under-served and under-recognized high school students in Guilford County through foreign travel and service.

Run primarily by Dustin’s parents and sisters, Ashlie and Mallory, the organization is dedicated to “planting seeds of hope” — thus its tagline, “Hope Grows Here”— in the lives of underprivileged adolescents, offering them similar experiences to Dustin’s.

Initially, Dustin’s Greenhouse provided four students with scholarships to N.C. State, instituted technology centers in low-income neighborhoods in Greensboro and High Point, and, fittingly, funded the creation of a greenhouse in a local high school, among other philanthropic projects.

Seeing the worldMore recently, the organization has

turned its attention to its Globetrotter program, which has taken more than 100 students to such places as Guatemala, Hungary, Uganda, Peru, Romania and South Africa. Every year, Guilford County teachers and principals nominate for the program “diamonds in the rough,” those students who can shine if given more attention and the right opportunities. Dustin’s Greenhouse then selects approximately 12 students for a two- to three-week trip abroad. Before leaving the country, participants receive leadership training and mentorship, study the country they will be visiting, and take part in community service projects.

Community service continues overseas, as students build houses, plant gardens and work in medical clinics. A chief aim of the organization is to impart the idea

that giving is better than receiving.“Showing kids that they have a gift to

give to the world makes a huge impact,” Green says.

That impact is evident in the students’ changed perspectives. Last year’s Globetrotter Sarah Catherine Lucas describes the first time she walked into her bedroom after returning from Peru to find her freshly made bed and fluffy bath towels carefully laid out by her mother.

“I immediately began to sob,” she says. “I had just spent close to a month in a community where a family of five lives in a structure a quarter of the size of my bedroom — a place where a bed is a block of wood with a sheet over it, a place where a shower, a kitchen sink, and a toilet are the Amazon River.”

The international visits are not all work, though. There’s also plenty of time for play.

“We try to do something on the trip that will take the Globetrotters totally out of their box and stretch them,” Green says, citing things like scuba diving in the

Galapagos Islands, hiking 45 miles through the Andes mountains and bungee jumping. “There is nothing quite like watching a kid accomplish something for the first time that they never thought they could.”

Extending its reachDustin’s Greenhouse continues watching

its kids long after the trips are over. It offers ongoing support and guidance, helping with college applications, job placement, and personal and family problems. It also provides information on obtaining basic access to food, shelter and transportation. As part of this initiative, the organization has implemented a new program, “The Village,” in which high school and college-aged girls are paired with mentors and meet monthly to work on leadership and life skills.

“Our mentors try to give the kids an adult outlet that will help and support them without judging them,” Green says. tL

Taylor Madaffari is an editorial intern with Triad Living and Wake Living magazines.

photo: Martin Green

Dustin Green, who died in 2002, is the inspiration behind the nonprofit, which takes under-served students abroad for service opportunities.

To learn moreFor more information on Dustin’s

Greenhouse, a nonprofit that cultivates opportunities for high school students in Guilford County through foreign travel and service, visit www.dustinsgreenhouse.org.

photo: High Point Community Foundation

His parents, Martin and Lou Green, launched the organization as a way to

keep their son’s memory alive.