Editorial: University's approach more important than $10M pledge

One day after Johns Hopkins pledged $10 million over five years to neighborhoods near the university's Homewood campus, The Baltimore Sun published an editorial praising the university and President Ronald J. Daniels for "pioneering a strongly collaborative approach with the communities around Homewood and to the south."

The model of city institutions and communities working together towards shared goals is one that Daniels has experience with from his days at the University of Pennsylvania, The Sun notes, and one that can and should be emulated in Baltimore.

The $10 million is certainly significant, but of more lasting—and replicable—importance is the structure for collaboration that preceded it. As important as Hopkins has been to the city, it has not always been trusted. The process by which the Homewood Community Partners Initiative was developed—hundreds of interviews, surveys, reviews of community plans and a series of meetings with stakeholders over a year—promises a solid foundation for a partnership based on mutual interest.