Community Learning Partnership

Community Learning Partnership

The Community Learning Partnership’s mission is to contribute to progressive community and social change by expanding the credentialed workforce of knowledgeable and skilled leaders and organizers coming from low-income communities and communities of color. The CLP Network prepares people directly impacted by poverty and racism to enter careers where they can address injustice and inequality and improve the quality of life in their communities.

To achieve our mission, CLP:

Builds partnerships between community organizations and academic institutions to develop community change studies programs, leading to a credential.

Collaborates with a wide range of social justice, community change, community organizing and development networks to develop career pathways for our students.

Links students, participants and alumni of CLP programs to community and social change careers in community-based organizations, other nonprofits, public agencies, politics, and business.

Our Vision, Values and Principles

We envision a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, equitable and sustainable society where justice triumphs over exploitation. To achieve a just, humane and healthy world, it is essential that people be actively involved in determining the conditions that shape and affect their lives – and the structures, policies, and practices that support those conditions.

We believe...

• Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. All people have the capacity to learn and to grow. Continuous learning and growth happens best within the context of compassionate, holistic, diverse and safe environments.

• Participatory democracy that strives to achieve social justice must be rooted in the needs, aspirations and active engagement of the communities and people directly affected by injustice and inequity.

• Investing in the leadership of historically marginalized communities of young people and young people of color is essential to sustaining an integrated (bottom-up, top-down) social justice movement.

• Issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and immigration status must be addressed as primary and integral parts of social justice and full democratic participation.

• Education is a fundamental human right. Government has an obligation to provide accessible educational pathways that encourage and invest in building local capacity and in developing local leadership that fosters social responsibility and civic engagement in all communities, especially in communities that have endured injustice and inequity.

• All community members -- particularly those members of historically marginalized communities -- who have become empowered through education or otherwise have a continuing personal responsibility to contribute to the social, economic and political empowerment of their respective communities.

• Our continuing mandate, individually and collectively, is to consciously claim ownership and operate from principles that are inclusionary, participatory and respectful of the diverse and life-serving practices among all individuals and communities.

• Our values guide the integrity of our work and practice. We are committed in our personal and interpersonal work to “talking the talk” and “walking the walk.”

• We partner with allies who demonstrate the capacity to work effectively and respectfully with people from diverse communities or who are committed to actively developing this capacity as a necessary part of establishing a partnership.

• As human beings, disagreements are inevitable. How we disagree and how we resolve our disagreements are as important as what we agree upon.