The Milwaukee Community Outreach Partnership Center was created to facilitate the interface

between the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's (UWM's) substantial research and outreach capacity and those community organizations and neighborhood groups that attempt to address pressing urban problems in Milwaukee. The intent was to focus combined university and community-based resources in a designated target area to promote neighborhood revitalization through economic development, employment skills training, housing design and restructuring, and access to credit for home ownership and entrepreneurial activities. The project's targets include neighborhoods with diverse populations of whites, Latinos, Hmong, Laotians, and Native Americans.

The original proposal called for "an action curriculum and the creation of community based action-learning laboratories that are designed and as well as for the personal and professional development of the volunteers and employees of local neighborhood organizations." The plan was to convene a curriculum planning team composed of university and community-based organization representatives to co-design action-learning strategies as the backbone for the program. From this conceptual beginning, a vibrant plan for community focused organization and training was to emerge, created on the basis of community input.