D.Cur. / The higher education, nursing education and health care context has been shifting its focus into community development. This shift is being influenced by the constitutional framework of the country, South Africa, which is putting more emphasis in all sectors on addressing community needs. The focus is not only on community development, but on participatory development. On the one hand, the Nursing Education Institution (NEI) is faced with the challenge of addressing the education and the health care needs of the community. On the other hand, the community context is also undergoing a paradigm shift, that of striving for self-sufficiency. Purpose and objectives: To address the education, health and community development needs, the NEI and the community require a goal-oriented partnership. To date it is not clear in the literature, how a partnership should take place. The needs and expectations of stakeholders in the partnership have not yet been explored. What has been written about community academic partnerships indicates that partnerships that existed were not true partnerships. Academic-community partnerships that exist usually portray academic institutions as owners of knowledge from which the community may benefit. It was therefore necessary to explore and describe the nature and structure of what stakeholders would consider as quality partnerships. The aim of this study was to develop a model for partnership between the NEI and the community and to develop standards against which the partnership could be evaluated. The following objectives were set according to the phases of the study: