Community Partners

Engage Community Partners

Communities are strengthened and sustained by organizations, institutions, and associations that bring people together to build community and solve problems. This is Asset Based Community Development - an approach and strategy that identifies community assets and builds collaborative opportunities to strengthen communities. PDC partners with organizations across the communities of Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, and Lake View. Our growing cohort of community partners generates opportunities and experiences for students to build their civic skills and identities by hosting students for internships, collaborating with our civic education teachers, and partnering with PDC staff to create authentic learning opportunities including civic action projects. 

We believe in the importance of students learning to find their voice, autonomy, and capacity to engage with their communities. The foundations for this discovery begins in the classroom and then extends into the community in diverse expressions of civic participation. Youth and young adulthood are the prime times for students to explore their sense of social and civic identity. These identity markers for the basis of civic action in the years to come.  For decades, trailblazing young people have found purpose and meaning through organizations like SNCC, Black Panther Party, and the Young Lords Organization. These are important  examples of young people taking charge and paving the way for generations to come. 

Oftentimes, however, students may struggle to find which organizations are doing this very needed work in their respective neighborhoods. PDC generates opportunities with our community partners for students to explore and begin to find their civic purpose. 

Teachers want their students to learn in their communities but may not have the time to organize these experiences. PDC works  to bring the organizations to the schools and the schools to the organizations. Civic engagement and democracy only works when we have knowledge of the issues and strategies of our communities. We want to build a network of community partners, students, and teachers to build a strong foundation for civic learning and doing.