This paper discusses community collaboration, explaining that the essence of after school care and education is partnering among institutions and individuals, with a new ethos built around program, family, and child needs. It suggests that most partnerships in after school programs create "intermediary environments," which are typically participatory and foster democratic ideals, are usually creative and innovative, are models of leadership and effective time use, and are vulnerable to power struggles as one collaborating group or another may vie for control. The paper describes some of the special features of after school programs that arise from and are governed by collaborations. It expands the theoretical frame and introduces a typology of partnerships and their implications for developing intermediary after school spaces. The paper introduces four types of intersection that apply to many types of collaboration: discovering overlapping interests (functional), joining forces (collaborative), developing an inclusive system (interconnected), and changing all partners (transformational). (Contains 12 references.) (SM)