Blanca has developed strong relationships with so many of our San Diego communities, including Chula Vista, City Heights, National City. She has worked with community partners and academics.
In the following clip, Blanca describes what she has cultivated in partnerships with an emphasis on building trust.
Blanca Melendrez: Exactly and it’s important you know, in order to do that, you know, to build trust you need to one of the questions that you had you know it’s successful partnerships and the fact is that it’s a two-way right when it comes to university it’s university and community where the organization is a proxy for Community members or it could also be a three-way, whereas the university the service organization and community. But what’s more important, too, is that you know we share, we have a shared decision-making process. We, from the very beginning, together agree on the goals on the operating principles the expectations, there is clarity on communication leadership, and, most importantly, and probably the most challenging one is power-sharing. Of this decision making, that is the challenge because it’s not just whether the organization as UCSD wants to share power it’s also the restrictions and the limitations from the funders that make this even more challenging and the other thing too is, we need to be able to demonstrate commitment to our Community, and we need to demonstrate that we are willing to learn together and to collaborate, and this is not going to be a six-month one-year two-year grant study right program.