Lil Durk is about to change the lives of multiple students at the Howard University with the development of his Durk Banks Endowment Fund.
In collaboration with Amazon Music, Durkio is providing two students from Chicago with $50,000 scholarships to attend the prestigious HBCU. According to The Shade Room, the recipients will be announced during Durk’s performance at Howard University’s 2023 Springfest on Friday (April 14).
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The two students were selected from 20 participating in Lil Durk’s Neighborhood Heroes HBCU College & Career Readiness Cohort Program. He’s not stopping there, though. The Chicago native will also donate $250,000 to Howard’s GRACE Grant – a program created to help students needing tuition assistance.
Sharing the news on his Instagram, Durk wrote: “I’m the voice this the part they don’t show, I appreciate all the kids who are struggling to finish school and needed this blessing.”
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Durk launched his Neighborhood Heroes non-profit organization in 2020, and has steadily been giving back to his community in the years that followed.
Last year, it partnered with non-profit Chicago Votes to supply the Illinois Department of Correction inmates and correctional facility workers with 29,000 bottles of hand sanitizer. The initiative was launched to combat the prison system’s lack of access to clean water amid the COVID-19 virus.
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“It’s obvious, those locked up or working at a correctional facility are going to be at a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19,” Durk said in a statement at the time. “At the end of the day, this disease ain’t to be played with, and everyone should have the basic hygiene necessities to help prevent catching this virus. It only made sense for my foundation (Neighborhood Heroes) to collaborate with Chicago Votes and IDOC.”
Earlier this year, the foundation organized a “Dinner with Durk” event in Chicago, giving 30 high school students the opportunity to dine with five mayoral candidates to give the city’s youth a chance to speak on bettering their communities.
In a post Lil Durk shared to Instagram shortly after, he’s seen chatting with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was one of the many guests who attended the event.
One of the students who was at the event spoke with WGN News about the importance of such an event and the mayoral election that took place at the end of February.
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“Tonight is an opportunity for us to express what goes on in our neighborhood and what we want to see change,” the student said. “[The election] is an important thing that determines our future and the future of our communities as well.”
Another high schooler added: “I want to see what they’re going to do to keep our kids out of jail and off the streets. We got bigger things to do.”
