Ex-President Gives Lift to Project Atlanta

After 20 years of working for community organizations that had to scramble for money, space and equipment, Joe Lewis can’t get over the amenities at the Atlanta Project.

Lewis, one of 18 full-time project coordinators, works out of comfortable quarters in a 2,100-square-foot former bank office equipped with two state-of-the-art computers, a printer, a copier and a VCR. He carries a beeper and will soon have a cellular phone.

“Every day, I’m more and more astounded at the resources placed into our hands,” he said.

Two words best explain the fledgling anti-poverty organization’s success: Jimmy Carter.

The former President, who founded the Atlanta Project in October, 1991, has used his considerable clout to raise $32 million in cash, equipment and services.

Carter has also put together a coalition of business executives, social workers, educators and community leaders to help run the organization dedicated to improving conditions in Atlanta’s impoverished neighborhoods.

The most visible project so far was last month’s drive to provide free immunizations to about 50,000 children. Carter and nearly 10,000 other volunteers went door to door to sign up people.

“Every city doesn’t have a Jimmy Carter,” said Elise Eplan, a project official who studied similar programs around the country. “That, more than anything else, has enabled us to do what we do so far.”

The hardest part now, some organization members and residents say, may be getting everyone to work together on more projects.

Some activists have complained that blacks have been shut out of prominent roles in the group, although 75% of the 500,000 poor inner-city residents it seeks to lift out of poverty are black.

“There’s not a single black face around the money,” said the Rev. Tim McDonald, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church. “If the Atlanta Project continues on its present course, I don’t care how much money it raises and what celebrities it brings in, it’s going to fail.”

The project’s director, Dan Sweat, acknowledges he and Carter have controlled the project through its early days.

“Yes, President Carter is white and I’m white. We can’t do anything about that,” he said.

But three of the group’s top seven officials are black, and Sweat said people in the community will assume control as other programs move forward.