Cutting-Edge Partnership
When collaboration is a way of life.
Herb Kolbe
Long before partnership and collaboration became popular catchwords for nonprofit organizations, the Pittsburgh-based Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO) had quietly developed winning strategies for effective campus ministry and kingdom impact based on these concepts.
By placing its staff in long-term "cooperative relationships" (shared staffing arrangements) with churches, colleges, and community organizations for the last 37 years, the CCO has created countless innovative models for making an impact on individual students, on the very fabric of colleges and universities, on the culture of local congregations, and on the communities in which those schools and churches reside.
For 15 of my years with the CCO, my job as an area director was to pursue opportunities for partnerships, negotiate the job descriptions and financial arrangements, coordinate the placement of new staff, and share the supervision of those staff with pastors, student affairs administrators, and directors of community organizations. This is quite a complicated and challenging task. But the other area directors and I always have believed that the kingdom of God is best served by working together rather than in isolation.
Our organizational goals are not only to work effectively with our official partners, but also to collaborate with any other stakeholders who share our vision for "transforming college students to transform the world." Both on and off campus, we partner with people and organizations that want students to "get it" and begin to "apply it" in the few short years they are undergraduate or graduate students.
Just over a year ago, having turned over the management of CCO's field ministries to a new group of younger leaders, I found myself facing an open door to return to the frontlines of collaborative student ministry and community engagement.
Try to imagine this: I am currently a full-time staff member of the CCO. My office is in Keystone Church of Hazelwood, a small mission congregation in one of Pittsburgh's underserved, economically depressed neighborhoods, where education levels are low, unemployment is high, and housing is substandard.
My CCO cooperative partnership is with Center of Life, a grassroots community-empowerment organization based in the church, where I primarily provide administrative support for its many outreach programs. I do campus ministry with a hundred students at Duquesne University in downtown Pittsburgh, about three miles from Hazelwood. My big project is to collaborate with faculty and administrators at Duquesne to bring as much of the university's resources as possible to bear on the unmet needs of the Hazelwood community, particularly through service-learning assignments, internships, practicums, research assignments, and student volunteer service. In the process, we also expect to create numerous paths for young people from Hazelwood to pursue higher education at Duquesne.
Through demographic research that had already been done and a series of community meetings in Hazelwood that were facilitated by Duquesne faculty members, we have identified numerous neighborhood deficits we are attempting to address.
The university's schools of business, health sciences, law, education, and music are already beginning to talk about what each could do in Hazelwood. In addition, the athletic department has hosted a large group of teenagers from Hazelwood for a basketball game and is looking for more opportunities to help. Eighteen undergraduate students volunteered for two hours every week during the spring semester in Center of Life's after-school program for neighborhood children. University students will also serve as interns and volunteers in our summer programs in Hazelwood.
Numerous other partners enhance our efforts to make a difference in Hazelwood. Youth Places, another nonprofit, pays the staff for our after-school program. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank provides hot meals every weekday for our children. The Manchester Craftsman's Guild opens its doors to our aspiring young artists and musicians.
Gateway to the Arts funds the educational hip-hop performances that our young people do for their peers in public schools and parks. Our friends at Soundscape Studio record our young people's music, train them how to use the recording equipment, and provide internships for our Duquesne students who are majoring in music technology.
The Urban Impact Foundation just brought 150 suburban teens to Hazelwood for a day of clean-up work and recruiting for our summer program. I could go on listing our additional partners on campus, in Hazelwood, and around the city. But I think I've made the point: Partnerships and collaboration are the keys to making many good things happen for individuals and communities.
Herb Kolbe did youth outreach ministry with Young Life for the first 16 years after graduating from Penn State. He has an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary. For the past 18 years he has held a wide variety of leadership positions with the CCO.
