Towards More Effective Campus-Community Partnerships: The Experience of the Goodna Service Integration Project (SIP)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the key learnings about campus-community relationships from the innovative Goodna Service Integration Project (SIP) 2000-2003, a complex, whole of government project designed to test and demonstrate how community and government and non-government agencies can work together to improve sustainable community well-being in one of Australia's most disadvantaged suburban locations. Through providing a series of both formal and informal learning opportunities, a local university campus was able to substantially contribute to the achievement of the project outcomes whilst simultaneously promoting the importance of sustaining empowering relationships between universities and locally disadvantaged communities.