Portland State Center for Academic Excellence

Community-University Partnerships

Community Partners

Student Leaders for Service member interns serve at community organizations in the Portland Metro Area 5-10 hours a week. In addition to assisting the organization in a specific area, students also act as volunteer coordinators. Below is a list of community partners that S.L.S. members are actively working with in the 2007-08 academic year.

Nonprofit Organizations

Cascade Aids Project

Cascade AIDS Project helps people put their lives back together; to secure housing, find essential medical care and deal with the countless issues that make the difference between giving up or getting up and going on.

Lane Learning Garden Lab

The Learning Gardens Laboratory, across the street from Lane Middle School, is a vibrant project that is strengthening ties between a diverse group of students and their families and communities. While they are growing vegetables for Lane’s cafeteria salad bar in the spring, students are learning skills in math, writing, sustainable agriculture, garden construction and cooperation.

Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps
works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds.

Neighborhood House

Neighborhood House brings neighbors together to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and educate young and old. We strengthen community by providing resources to support self-reliance, economic independence and dignity in people of all ages and backgrounds.

Sister of the Road Cafe

Sisters Of The Road is about changing hearts and minds-- by building cross-class community, addressing root causes, and creating systemic change that goes to the root of hunger and homelessness and ends it forever.

SOLV

SOLV annually provides resources to more than 250 Oregon communities, focusing on cleanup, beautification and enhancement projects. SOLV creates an average of 85,000 volunteer opportunities across the state

Zenger Farm

Our mission is to promote sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship and local economic development through a working urban farm.
The Park is 6 acres of farmland, bordered by a 10-acre wetland near the historic Lents neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. It is a classroom, an ecosystem, a community anchor, and a farm operation.