NEN UNIVERSITY (NENU) CHARTER
WHAT IS NENU?
NEN University (NENu) is the academic hub of San Francisco’s Neighborhood
Empowerment Network (NEN), a consortium of neighborhood stakeholders
(including community residents, city agencies, nonprofits, merchants, faithbased and secular community- based organizations) committed to the goal that
every San Franciscan resident live in a resilient community – one rich in social
capital and optimally prepared to respond to, and grow from, both short and
long term challenges and opportunities.
Founded and coordinated by the NEN and the Institute for Civic and Community
Engagement (ICCE) at San Francisco State University, NENu facilitates
connections
among
academic
institutions,
city
agencies,
and
other
neighborhood stakeholders in order to better coordinate and tactically deploy
their collective assets to improve the lives of San Franciscans.
Those
connections encourage the development of collaboratively managed NENu
projects and initiatives that result in community-engaged scholarship and
related activities.
Benefits

Increases the visibility of the contributions that academic institutions make
to San Francisco and its neighborhoods.

Connects the work of service learning teams to stakeholder-led strategic
initiatives.

Links community-engaged research projects and products to stakeholders
who control assets that can be deployed to support stakeholder-identified
outcomes.
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
Increases the perceived value of academic research to community stakeholders.

Makes available a suite of applied research that can be shared throughout the city and beyond.

Facilitates the development of long term relationships between academia, the city and the
community that increases social capital, which in turn can be leveraged in the recovery from a major
earthquake.
Mission
NENu’s mission is to serve as a hub for community-engaged scholarship in the Bay Area by providing an
infrastructure that facilitates connections among local academic institutions and neighborhood
stakeholders so that they can mobilize their combined assets to develop social capital and advance
community resiliency. In order to facilitate those connections, NENu engages in three core activities:
(1) recruiting and retaining academic institution partners and neighborhood stakeholders, (2) providing
linkages to city agencies and other asset managers, and (3) providing the infrastructure to facilitate
communications among all NENu partners.
Vision
NENu seeks to help increase the resiliency of neighborhood stakeholder organizations as well as the
amount of social capital that they collectively share. In the end, the goal is for San Francisco residents to
live in safer, greener, cleaner, stronger, and more inclusive neighborhoods that are optimally prepared
to respond to, and recover from a major natural disaster.
NENu aspires to serve as a national model for sustained institutional connectivity amongst primary
neighborhood stakeholder entities: government agencies (e.g., City Agencies), academic institutions,
and nongovernmental organizations (including faith based and secular nonprofits and community
supported organizations such as neighborhood or merchant associations).
The primary form of “currency” that acts as the glue for the alliance is the unique range of assets that
each stakeholder commits to the initiative. These assets include streamlined access to communities that
offer unique opportunities to better understand community dynamics, a “toolbox” of high quality
technical support services, and the ability to engage and maintain sustained relationships with public
policy leaders.
NENu envisions that over time its platform will support the development of deeper, more integrated
relationships that could ultimately foster a new approach towards building stronger, more resilient
urban centers. Those relationships, the corresponding social capital, and the resulting resiliency will be
invaluable when the City must respond to and recover from a massive earthquake.
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Values
NENu’s mission and vision are rooted in the recognition that not all communities are sufficiently resilient
and have enough social capital to achieve and sustain a fair and reasonable quality of life for their
members regardless of the challenges they may face.
With that recognition, the organizational
members of NENu are committed to coordinate their unique set of assets to help neighborhood
stakeholders support communities as they strive to achieve their goals. NENu is therefore guided by the
following principles:

Reciprocity. Parties fully recognize that each entity may value and prioritize outcomes in a different
way. All parties are deeply respectful and considerate of the priorities of others.

Collaboration. Parties commit to a process in which projects are collaboratively defined, managed,
and owned, recognizing that all contributing neighborhood stakeholders add value to NENu
projects.

Geographic and community representation.
For the purposes of this partnership, all
neighborhoods of San Francisco are treated equitably. The tools and products of the partnership
are shared across self-defined communities.

Professional standards.
All parties will maintain the highest professional standards in all
communications that represent the partnership and its products.

Shared results. All parties agree to share the results of NENu projects and initiatives with all NENu
partners, as well as with participating communities.
How does NENu work?
By optimizing relationships among various neighborhood stakeholders, NENu provides an infrastructure
that facilitates active and meaningful connections among academic institution partners, NEN members,
and other neighborhood stakeholders so that they can work together to address collectively-defined
issues.
As the academic hub of NEN, NENu acts as an information clearinghouse and locus of
coordination, ultimately supported by a web-based infrastructure, facilitating connections among
academic institution partners, NEN members, and other neighborhood stakeholders. As illustrated in
Figure 1, neighborhood stakeholders contribute their knowledge of community-defined questions,
needs, and projects to NENu, where they are met by the research, teaching, community-service learning
and other community-engagement activities of the academic institution partners. At NENu, communitydefined issues and assets can be matched with academic resources. When those matches are made,
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they result in NENu projects and initiatives of various scope and duration.
Those projects are
collaboratively managed and owned by each NENu project team.
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Academic institutions partner with NENu in order to provide students with meaningful opportunities for
local community engagement while meeting academic, research and learning-oriented goals. It is
important to note that not all work conducted by academic institution partners in or with San Francisco
neighborhoods and communities will fall under the auspices of NENu. In order to be considered a NENu
initiative or project, the following criteria must be met.

The project must be implemented collaboratively, involving all three categories of neighborhood
stakeholders: an academic institution who is a NENu partner, a city or county agency, and a
stakeholder from outside of the academic and governmental spheres.

The project must build on the assets of an existing community or neighborhood and further the
goals of that community or neighborhood within the context of achieving sustainable resiliency.

The project must be publicly described as a NENu project or initiative, in order to help facilitate
coordination among various NENu projects, initiatives, partners and affiliates.

The findings from the project, whether applied research findings, promising practices, or lessons
learned, must be shared with other NENu members, and the community at large (either in an
archival format, a written report, or alternative media).
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Figure 2 provides a logic model that illustrates the following outputs, outcomes, and impacts.
Immediate outputs:
Intermediate outcomes:
Long-term impacts:
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
Initial relationships among NEN members and academic institution
partners

Projects/initiatives identified and implemented

Academic institutions and their students meet community service
learning and related goals

Strengthen relationships between NEN members and academic
institution partners

Neighborhood/Community/Organizational Learning

Student/Faculty/Researcher Learning

Action plan based on project/initiative findings developed &
implemented

SF is a safer, greener, cleaner, stronger, and more inclusive place to
live and work

Sustained relationships among NEN members and academic
institution partners, supported by NENu infrastructure

Participating students more active, better informed and more
skilled community members

Universities are better positioned to participate in restoration and
recovery activities in communities post disaster
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List of Academic Institution Partners
San Francisco State University
University of San Francisco
University of California San Francisco
Sample Projects & Initiatives
The Neighborhood Resilience Study
The Neighborhood Resilience Study is a series of distinct student-led, faculty-advised neighborhoodbased research projects. The goal of the study is to identify factors that contribute to neighborhood
resilience, the ability of neighborhoods to identify and address issues central to their communities by
utilizing neighborhood assets (organizational, physical, intellectual).
As contributing factors are
identified, promising practices and lessons learned will be shared with other neighborhoods and
community groups looking to build their capacities and move toward resilience.
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SF State Alliance for Strong Inclusive Neighborhoods (ASIN)
The Alliance for Strong Inclusive Neighborhoods (ASIN) brings together a wide variety of neighborhood
stakeholders (community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, city departments, schools, and
residents) to identify and prioritize common challenges, set goals, mobilize available resources, and
implement strategies for change. Working together, neighborhoods will create a network of agencies
and individuals who can bring about positive change for local communities. ASIN uses neutral conveners
(ICCE staff and SF State students) to provide logistical support for neighborhood stakeholders to
coordinate with one another and form a local coordinating structure to address neighborhood-defined
issues.
Student Engineered Initiatives in Social Media Involving Community (S.E.I.S.M.I.C.)
Student Engineered Initiatives in Social Media Involving Community (S.E.I.S.M.I.C.) is a revolutionary
partnership between ICCE and NEN that will help all stakeholders address both macro and micro needs.
ICCE is charged with managing the 8,000 students at SF State who go into communities and perform
thousands of service. The goal of the S.E.I.S.M.I.C is to leverage the student’s affinity for using social
networking software to build an online platform where the students can interact virtually and increase
their collaboration on NEN driven initiatives. The engine behind S.E.I.S.M.I.C. is the online collaborative
workspace that will have functions similar to that of popular social networking sites such as Facebook
and MySpace. Students will join the online community, build a profile and then be able to search the
existing project base for initiatives that they are passionate about and want to plug into. By creating this
web based work environment it will help create better transparency as to what the students are doing
as well as streamline their access to neighborhood projects that are NEN driven.
In addition to the projects and initiatives listed here, academic institution partners often have related
projects that do not fall under the umbrella of NENu but may work alongside those projects and
initiatives.
For more information, please contact the following institutions.
Community stakeholders and government institutions can contact: Neighborhood Empowerment
Network, 415- 554-5113 or nen@sfgov.org
Higher Education Institutions can contact: SF State, Institute for Civic and Community Engagement,
415-338-6419 or icce@sfsu.edu
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