FOUNDER OF DURHAM DRUG TREATMENT PROGRAM A FINALIST FOR GRANT

DURHAM --Former drug addict Kevin McDonald is a finalist for a $100,000
Ford Foundation prize he wants to use to expand TROSA, the long-term drug
treatment program he created, beyond Durham to cities across the country.

In July, McDonald was named one of 36 finalists out of 3,000 nominees for
the first Leadership for a Changing World award. Twenty winners, to be
announced in September, will receive $100,000 to advance their work and
$30,000 for supporting activities, such as personal education.

"I'm honored," McDonald said. "Just the fact that I was nominated was one
thing and that I made the cut for all the United States was amazing."

Cities such as Baltimore, Little Rock, Ark., and Kansas City have expressed
interest in starting TROSA chapters.

Robert E. Voelkel Jr., a retired developer and banker from Baltimore, says
he has support from the heads of charitable foundations there for a TROSA
program. Baltimore's mayor has agreed to give the program 12 boarded-up
properties, and talks are proceeding with officials at Johns Hopkins
University for medical interns to work with the addicts, Voelkel said.

Voelkel discovered TROSA in February, while he was at Duke University to
lose weight and clean up his heavy drinking. He and others flew down a few
months ago to study how McDonald did it.

"He has generated $3.5 million of income through his own entrepreneurship,
and you might have 150,000 people [in Durham]. We have 650,000," Voelkel
said, adding that about 10 percent of Baltimore's population is made up of
addicts. "I said, 'Kevin, I want you to think globally.' "

McDonald went from conquering his own drug addiction to running a program
in Greensboro to help other addicts. Then, in 1994, he started TROSA, or
Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers, in Durham. TROSA has
grown from 24 residents to about 300 today and is the Triangle's largest
long-term treatment program for drug and alcohol addicts. Its budget
started out at $18,000 and now reaches $3 million a year. Almost all the
money comes from the house painting, furniture moving, landscaping, auto
repair and other businesses operated by its residents, who learn marketable
skills in the process. More than 150 former addicts have graduated, many of
whom had failed other treatments. Jim Newlin, executive director of the
African American Dance Ensemble in Durham, has watched McDonald's work over
the years and was one of those who nominated him for the award. He thinks
McDonald has made a real difference in the lives of hundreds.

"Those folks would be in prison right now," he said of TROSA graduates.
"Instead of just warehousing people, people turn their lives around without
being supported by the taxpayer."

Until now, McDonald has resisted the pressure to expand, thinking he needs
to invest more in TROSA's infrastructure.

But recently, business experts from Duke's Fuqua School of Business began
working on expansion plans with a group from TROSA, planning to start with
other cities in North Carolina, McDonald said.

But there were so many things to consider: Would you teach others how to
run the program and send them off, or would you send your own people there
to get things started? And TROSA is complex, from the small businesses it
operates to the housing for residents and free cars for graduates.

"This is dreams," McDonald said. "But you've got to dream, man."