Project U-Turn

Project U-Turn began in 2004-2005 as a city-wide collaborative to address the dropout crisis in Philadelphia. As of 2011, Project U-Turn has representatives from over 50 organizations, including the school district, city agencies, foundations, youth-serving organizations, universities, parents, and young people. By identifying and examining the problem, promoting the crisis as a system-wide issue rather than an education issue, involving and sustaining a diverse array of partners, and working to both prevent students from dropping out as well as re-engage those who have already dropped out, the collaboration has achieved a number of key accomplishments and has been able to grow through its best practices and lessons learned.

Project U-Turn’s collaborative structure includes the following:

• A flexible arrangement with no Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or rules of engagement
• A consistent and sustained collaboration membership
• Regularly scheduled monthly meetings and pre-meetings, as necessary
• A workplan developed and updated every two years
• Key priorities that are identified every six months to ensure flexibility
• Strategic funding decisions

The collaboration’s best practices include:

• Being able to support the Philadelphia Youth Network to work as an intermediary
• Building relationships and trust
• Providing funds to partners to ensure sustainability
• Linking funds to the workplan and identifying partners to pursue or receive funds
• Conducting a needs assessment
• Sharing data

The collaboration learned these lessons:

• Involve the right people who have decision making capabilities, resources, and a collaborative mindset
• Recognize where the collaboration is on a developmental trajectory
• Manage leadership transitions within and outside the partnership by educating new leaders, having consistent partners, and embedding its work within the work of different systems
• Be flexible and willing to adapt as needed

Additional key resources and information about the collaboration: Project U-Turn Resources