Partnerships
The Phoenix Project’s university-community partnerships engage Virginia colleges and universities in the Commonwealth's most distressed communities. The aim of the partnerships is to provide distressed communities with resources to address economic and community development challenges and partner institutions, their administrators, faculty and students, with opportunities for teaching, research and service. The central principle of the Phoenix Project’s partnerships is that the community should set the agenda, and that university resources should be deployed to assist with projects identified, defined and prioritized by the community.
Working closely with community and university partners, the Phoenix Project helps communities identify challenges, translate them into specific projects and match projects with appropriate university resources to maximize the benefit for participants. The Phoenix Project does not seek to supplant or compete with existing university outreach efforts, but rather to supplement and complement them. Currently, the Phoenix Project is facilitating three such partnerships in Petersburg, Northern Virginia's Route 1 Corridor, and the East End of Newport News.