The Pathways to Collaboration Workgroup brings seven "cutting edge" partnerships together with each other and with a group of people skilled in qualitative documentation, education, team building, and collaboration. Over the course of a three-year period, beginning in January 2004, the participants in the Workgroup will explore these partnerships' collaborative processes in unprecedented detail.

Working together, they will:

• document what partnerships can accomplish when people directly experiencing problems are meaningfully engaged in community problem solving

• generate much more precise information than is currently available about the "how to" of successful community-driven collaboration

• identify the special leadership and management skills that are needed to promote meaningful community engagement and learn how to teach those critical skills to others

• develop valid and reliable measures for assessing whether a collaborative problem-solving process is "on the right track"

• develop products - such as case studies, evidence-based practice guides, funders' guides, web-based assessment tools, and training programs - that will highlight the value and optimal uses of community-driven collaboration and help interested partnerships and funders put such a problem-solving process into practice.

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