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Growing hope
Nonprofit gives underprivileged teens
new opportunities through travel, service
by 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.

2. SPRING 2012 35
D
ustin 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.”

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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 memorial
His 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 world
More 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 reach
Dustin’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 more
For 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.