American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 5, October 2001 ( c  2001) Building Value-Based Partnerships: Toward Solidarity With Oppressed Groups Geoffrey Nelson 1 Wilfrid Laurier University Isaac Prilleltensky Victoria University Heather MacGillivary The Colorado Trust, Colorado We propose a value-based conceptualization of partnership, defining partner- ship as relationships between community psychologists, oppressed groups, and other stakeholders, which strive to achieve key community psychology values (caring, compassion, community, health, self-determination, participa- tion, power-sharing, human diversity, and social justice). These values guide partnership work related to the development of services or supports, coalitions and social action, and community research and program evaluation. We pre- scribe guidelines for building such partnerships and conclude by considering some of the challenges in implementing value-based partnerships. KEY WORDS: partnerships; solidarity; oppression; values. With the current focus on “tax reflief” and resultant cutbacks to the public sector in North America (see Barlow & Campbell, 1995, for a discussion of the Canadian scene), there are increasing calls for partnerships in services and supports (Pace & Turkel, 1990), community coalitions and social action (Chavis, 1995; Labont ´ e, 1993), and community research and program evalu- ation (Matheson, 1994). This may account for at least some of the motivation 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada; e-mail: gnelson@wlu.ca. 649 0091-0562/01/1000-0649$19.50/0 C  2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation