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Community Engagement

What's in a name?

Community engagement – what's in a name? Many people (including myself until a couple of years ago) use words like community consultation, community engagement, community involvement, community strengthening interchangably for a whole range events used when an organisation seeks the views of people.

The Victorian Department of Sustainability and the Environment define community engagement as "a planned process with the specific purpose of working with identifed groups of people whether they are connected by geographic location, special interest or affiliation to address issues affecting their well being."

On the same website, Jim Cavaye is quoted as defining community engagement as "..the mutual communication and deliberation that occurs between governments and citizens."

The term 'Community engagement' has only come into common use in recent years. For a long time 'community consultation' was the accepted language and in some parts of the world 'public participation' is the more commonly used reference.

Important elements

From my perspective, a key element is that community engagement is about people being involved in decisions that affect their lives. In the government world, whether local, state or federal, community engagement is participatory democracy at work; that is, citizens participating in government decision-making (as opposed to representative democracy where people, through their vote at an election, delegate to their representatives the power to make decisions on their behalf).

Community or stakeholder engagement is just as important outside the government sector, whether it is ithe way a health service, surf club or major corporation makes decisions. The second important element for me is that this work is about decision making. The frameworks used in community or stakeholder engagement work are about decision making and can be used to assist anyone, anywhere in making better decisions.

Frameworks

This work is so much more than public meetings. All too often local councils or government departments wait until an issue becomes controversial and then decide to hold a public meeting. Sometimes holding a public meeting is necessary but there are many more options; options that are often far more effective in producing good conversations and well thought out views that can be more effective in producing a good decision.

And in thinking through a community engagement strategy, the activities or events should be the last elements to be decided.

In large part, I use the frameworks developed by the International Association for Public Participation ( IAP2) for my community engagement work.

Community engagement activities are more purposeful and easier to plan for if done at the beginning of the project, at the same time as the project plan. Early steps are to:

Clearly understand and state the decision being made
Decide what is negotiable and what is not negotiable in the decision
Identify all the stakeholder groups, community groups and people who will be affected by the decision.

More information is on the Getting Started page.

Returning to the issue of language, IAP2 provides a Spectrum for public participation, that sets the language of engagement into a spectrum based on an increasing level of public impact. Within the IAP2 Spectrum there are five levels: Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate and Empower. Each of these levels has a different goal, a different promise to the public and suggested techniques. The Spectrum is well accepted and sits within most manuals of community engagement.

More on the IAP2 Spectrum

As well as sorting out the language of engagement, the IAP2 Spectrum is very valuable in defining the underlying promise to the public that sits under engagement. One of the most frustrating things for community members is to be asked for their views and ideas on a proposal and to have these views ignored by the decision makers.

Telling the community what will happen with the information produced at a community engagement activity is fundamentally important and the Spectrum provides a set of promises that an authority may use from "We will keep you informed" to "We will implement what you decide." Keeping this promise is critical in building trust between a governing authority and its community.

Engagement techniques & events

Once the decision being made is understood and the goal for the engagement has been determined, it is then time to select the best technique for the engagement. Practitioners who have undertaken the techniques module of the IAP2 certified training course will have been provided with descriptions of almost 40 different techniques for engaging the community. There are also many other manuals for engagement that describe an array of techniques.

On the day facilitation

Most community engagement activities are lead by a facilitator. Many organisations have skilled facilitators inhouse while others seek the services of an external facilitator. This can sometimes be an important decision - whether to use someone from within the organisation, to contract an external facilitator or train local people to undertake the engagement activity. More information is provided on the facilitation page.

Kimbra White can help you plan for the most appropriate community engagement at the beginning of your project and develop a community engagement plan. And as the project progresses, Kimbra can provide facilitation services.