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Community Engagement - Getting Started

Community engagement happens every day around Australia. Sometimes it is well planned and executed, often it isn’t. There are still many occasions when organisations don’t start thinking about the impact of a project on the community until near the end and often only when they have decided on an internal viewpoint on the issues involved. Engaging communities too late or only superficially undermines trust in an organisation. Community engagement provides much better outcomes when it is well planned and expertly managed.

Planning for community engagement - key steps and ideas

Community engagement is much easier to plan when it is done at the beginning of the project and at the same time as the project plan. Below are some steps and ideas to keep in mind when planning community engagement:

1. For every step in the project, spend time understanding the decision that is being made because for each decision, the community engagement goal may be different and different techniques should be used.
2. For every decision that is being made, decide what is not negotiable and what is negotiable about that decision. If the decision has effectively been made, the best strategy is to inform people that this is the case and to explain why that particular decision was made. One of IAP2's core values is that "public participation includes the promise that the public's contribution will influence the decision."
3. Identify all the stakeholder groups, community groups and people who will be affected by the decision. In deciding on appropriate engagement techniques - ensure that you go to them. Go to where these stakeholders hang out - whether it is the local shopping centre, skate park or bowling club. This is a mantra amongst practitioners, we say it to ourselves over and over, and then for unaccountable and endless reasons, we end up in the town hall.

How THORNE Partners can assist

Kimbra White can help you reach your objective by meeting iwth project teams, senior staff and decision makers to plan a community engagement program to match the decision that is being made. Kimbra is trained and experienced in using the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) community engagement frameworks.

"I work with project staff and decision makers to clearly define the decision that is being made and very importantly what is negotiable within that decision. If there is an aspect of the decision that is not negotiable such as an agreed state government policy affecting a project, there is no point in consulting community members, as to do so, only creates frustration and anger for community members who rightly see the consultation as only tokenism."