Partnership Stems from Similar Visions

The Lindon Park Neighborhood Association serves a small pocket neighborhood in southeast Phoenix that covers about eight streets north to south and about four blocks wide. To the north is a busy street; to the west are an elementary school and a freeway; at the south are another freeway and a light industrial area; and at the eastern border lies the extended campus of the old Motorola plant, now largely unoccupied. Beyond its parking lots rise the bluffs of Papago Park. GateWay Community College is about 1.5 miles to the south and west. The area as a whole has various pockets of monolingual Spanish and English speakers, as well as refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia. In August, 2009, the service-learning partnership between Lindon Park Neighborhood and GateWay Community College celebrated its seventh anniversary. [author]