Esperanza Familiar: A University-Community Partnership as a Social Learning NetworkAbstractSocial network analysis can aid in the design and assessment of the complex relationships involved in university-community partnerships. This article recounts the creation of Esperanza Familiar, a new family education and support initiative in Chicago’s Pilsen community. It demonstrates how a social learning network involving many diverse participants evolved through the phases of assessment, planning, and implementation. Using variables common in network analysis—size, density, centrality, and others—the article illuminates communication and influence patterns that enabled participants and researchers to gather knowledge relevant to their shared substantive interests. The social learning network fed useful knowledge simultaneously into diverse domains: community theory and practice seminars in the university, parent education seminars in neighborhood churches, and steering committee meetings involving faculty, students, parents, clergy, and community organization staff.Esperanza Familiar: A University-Community Partnership as a Social Learning Network (*.pdf)
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