Our Mission

Our Mission

dPS strives to support a student body that is committed to ethical service, meaningful engagement, and social justice. dPS seeks to connect student-run service organizations with on- and off-campus resources, community organizations, and the general student body. Further, dPS seeks to be the institutional home of civic engagement, activism, advocacy, and community-based experiential education for Duke undergraduates. dPS-affiliated groups are expected to work in accordance with the values stated within our mission statement.

We define these as follows:

Ethical service entails a respect for diversity, an emphasis on reflection, evaluation, and humility, the practice of reciprocity, and a substantive understanding of structural forces that ask why social problems both exist and persist.

Meaningful engagement includes respect for community needs and service of those needs in a manner that is sustainable. Inclusion, representation, and transparency are crucial principles of meaningful engagement.

A commitment to social justice means fierce advocacy for equal opportunity, safety, and well-being, of all members of society, and especially those communities marginalized by race, gender, sexual orientation and presentation, geography, socio-economic status, ability, or religion.

We seek to accomplish this mission by organizing, overseeing, and supporting all Duke University student service organizations, forming partnerships with Duke Academic and University Departments, and by forming partnerships within the Durham and larger community.

What is a dPS-chartered organization?

Duke Partnership for Service supports both service and philanthropic organizations. Organizations can be both service-oriented and philanthropic in nature.

A service organization is a student group whose members meet on a regular basis for the primary intent of serving others by directly engaging with the community through hands-on initiatives.

A philanthropic organization is a student group whose members meet on a regular basis for the primary intent of fundraising for and making monetary donations to other established organizations involved in the promotion of human welfare.

While service or philanthropic organizations can have social events and opportunities for networking, personal growth, and professional growth among its members, they should primarily be fueled by their respective charitable missions.