The point was to do outreach to the Durham community to residents, asking them to bring photographs to collection spots.

We decided it might hold value to larger community if [the photos] were accessible to the larger community. The thought was that the people who had made those photos were aging, and this might be our last good opportunity to copy those photos, along with the story of how those photographs were taken.

What we found was that people had documented the civil rights movement basically through newspaper clippings and scrapbooks.

Our main goal is to try and ease new members into the community as best we can. If we show that Meridian is willing to accept new members at every level, then they can start lives off as they normally would. We want to give them the option to choose Meridian as their new home instead of them being forced to,

We think we can raise that from a community that's already been so generous -- we think we can raise that and more,

The community has been really supportive of the whole project, so we want to give back to the community that way.