The Phoenix Network
The Phoenix Project is committed to convening, launching and sustaining in Virginia a statewide network of institutions of higher education and distressed communities committed to mutual improvement—The Phoenix Network. More than 750,000 Virginians live in poverty in communities that well understand their challenges but lack the additional hands and minds required to implement solutions. Virginia’s world-class institutions of higher education are home to students, faculty and others who possess those capacity-building resources. Conversely, the challenges of distressed communities provide the crucible in which our universities can improve teaching, research and service, remind the public of the practical value of higher education and prepare the next generation of social entrepreneurs to create pattern breaking solutions to society’s most intractable challenges.
Virginia universities’ work in our distressed communities is simultaneously more than the outside world recognizes and less than the universities’ true capacity. By joining a highly visible network committed to collective action in a limited number of exceptionally underserved communities, universities leverage greater impact and recognition than they achieve individually. Similarly, while Virginia’s distressed communities confront many similar underlying challenges, they rarely collaborate in exploring shared solutions and often struggle to reinvent the wheel in relative isolation. Through the Phoenix Network these communities enjoy greater strength in numbers and vastly improved access to the capacity building resources of our system of higher education. We are proud that Virginia is the first state in the nation to call its universities and most distressed communities together in a formal network aimed at mutual improvement.
