ABSTRACT
San Diego Organizing Project was a good community partner choice because it already had well-established roots in the community, ties with our university, and a history of successful results. Student teams could work with organizing ministries to facilitate for their own plans, and the class could help with the Youth Convention. Despite existing connections, however, any community-university collaboration can face obstacles that range from differences in operating schedules between academic calendars and the community organizations’ fiscal calendars to helping students become prepared for interacting with new community populations. Nurturing a strong grassroots-university connection requires building strong community relationships based on trust, constant communication, collaboration on key elements, and engagement in multiple activities. Together, these strategies yielded a meaningful and genuine partnership. Grassroots organizations can be so deeply implanted in a community that organizers may have difficulty seeing alternate ways of operating.
