Exploring university-community partnerships through a case study from South Lebanon: The need for a paradigm shift

Institutes of higher education are increasingly engaging with communities to promote health while creating sites for action research and service learning. Through the analysis of a three-year partnership between the town of Zawtar in South Lebanon and the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at the American University of Beirut, this paper attempts to reflect on shared benefits as well as lessons learned and challenges faced when building university-community partnerships. The aim of the Zawtar-FHS partnership is to work jointly with the town to identify and respond to health and environmental needs and provide FHS students and faculty with an opportunity for field work and practice. While the partnership was successful in building diverse collaborations, it faced a number of challenges. Some were inherent in university regulations governing faculty promotion and others included student resistance to “volunteer” when they felt pressured by course work and exams. Maintaining community members' enthusiasm was also difficult as communities often perceive such partnerships as a form of financial assistance for quick fixes and tangible outputs. The paper suggests that for university-community partnerships to be successful there is a need for a paradigm shift where institutes of higher education nurture engaged and reflective scholars who are rewarded for community engagement and where community-based research becomes part and parcel of the production of knowledge. Communities, on the other hand, need to feel the benefit of such partnerships through the utilization of the knowledge produced to enhance their health and livelihood and leverage more resources for community development.