Netter Center for Community Partnerships

A pandemic year, in photos

‘Apart Together,’ a new photography exhibit at the Annenberg School, shows that despite not being physically in the same place the past 18 months, our shared experiences kept us connected.

Michele W. Berger , Julie Sloane

Penn group wins EPA Campus RainWorks Challenge

The student-led project will reimagine the campus of West Philadelphia’s Andrew Hamilton School, including vegetable gardens, a food forest, and other green stormwater-management tools.

Katherine Unger Baillie

A farm for the community

The Food and Wellness Collaborative, which emerged from the ‘Your Big Idea’ competition, has turned an expanse of turf into a productive growing space.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Shining a light on the dangers of lead

Lead poisoning robs children of opportunity, and the impact is worse in underserved communities. Faculty and students at Penn are bringing scientific and policy attention to the problem, while empowering young people to minimize their risk and be leaders for change.

Katherine Unger Baillie



Media Contact


In the News


Philadelphia Inquirer

Here’s what these youth advocates have to say about Philly’s truancy problem, and how they would fix it

The Netter Center for Community Partnerships has more than 30 years of investment in connecting resources that address truancy, such as establishing after-school programming.

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Billy Penn

A real art project at Quinta Brunson’s former school in West Philly mirrors the ‘Abbott Elementary’ Mural Arts episode

Thanks to the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, Shira Walinsky of the Weitzman School of Design designed and created a mural at West Philly’s Andrew Hamilton Elementary with help from volunteers and Penn students.

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Chronicle of Higher Education

Cities and the urban university

Penn is lauded for organizing a University-Assisted Community Schools Network and for offering roughly 80 academically-based community service courses through the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, with a quote from the Center’s founding director Ira Harkavy.

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The New York Times

Community schools offer more than just teaching

The Netter Center University-Assisted Community Schools Network, founded in 2015, is noted as a valuable partnership between community schools and about 70 universities.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

News Penn partners with West Philly High to give it a new ‘front porch’ and teach students about careers

Daniel Flinchbaugh of the Weitzman School of Design manages Design to Thrive, a Weitzman summer program in collaboration with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. The project teamed Weitzman grad students with West Philadelphia High School students to build a new outdoor rec area for their high school.

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Inside Higher Ed

The fight for diverse, inclusive, antiracist, and just democracies

Ira Harkavy and Rita Hodges of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and others co-wrote an op-ed about higher education and systemic oppression. “Just as many colleges and universities are reckoning with their own institutional histories of exclusion, higher education as a field must recognize where it has failed and come up short. Only then can it come honestly to tables with communities, governments, and citizens to build inclusive, antiracist democracies together,” they wrote.

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