The work of community entrepreneurship and democracy often encompasses the work of matchmaking. Work in the community requires building deep and mutually beneficial relationships to leverage individual strengths for a common good. The Fulcrum Project plays the connector role in an existing web of community projects. Examples of ongoing projects that create partnerships between the Davis College and communities include those established through The West Virginia Community Development Hub and Davis College's Community Engagement Lab.
The work of the web building focuses on nodes that the community has already identified through previously facilitated capacity-building projects, but doesn’t have certain skills, resources, or time to complete. The role of the universities is to find students and faculty with the skills, resources, and time to co-create assets and opportunities that the communities have identified. Communities have the opportunity to tap into the expertise of faculty and energy of students by developing projects around local food, horticulture, landscape architecture, land reclamation, forestry, wetlands, tourism planning, entrepreneurship, water quality, interior design and a multitude of other subject areas.
The Fulcrum Project will work to form 10 teams per round and match them with community identified projects. The program coordinator will work closely with the WV Community Development Hub and other organizations to match the university teams to 20 meaningful and achievable projects throughout 2020 and 2021. The 1st round has been completed in 2020 and we're now accepting applications for the 2nd round.
Read more about The Fulcrum Project on WVUTODAY.