Engagement is the process by which people are engaged to work and learn together on behalf of their communities or projects to create and realize bold visions for the future. Engagement can involve informing stakeholders about your initiative, inviting their input, collaborating with them to generate solutions, and partnering with the community from the beginning to tackle community issues.
Engagement increases cohesion and allows for the group to have ownership over the outcomes that will ultimately impact them.

I stress the importance of approaching engagement with an outcomes-based lens, of always involving context experts, and to provide group ownership of solutions whenever possible.

Community Engagement can be passive or
proactive
• Community Engagement as a process
• Community Engagement empowers
communities
• Community Engagement is not limited by
time
• Community Engagement favours
multisectoral collaboration
• Some Key Criteria

SOME KEY CRITERIA

These criteria show, at this time, our approach to community engagement.
• A broad range of people are participating
and engaged
• People are trying to solvecomplex issues
• The engagement process creates vision,
achieves results, creates movement and/or
change
• Different sectors are involved in the process
There is a focus on collaboration and social
inclusion
• The community determines local priorities
• There is a balance between community
engagement processes and creating action

To know who to engage, ask key questions, such as:

Who can help influence others on this issue?
Who is likely to help you in the effort?
What other organizations or considerations must you take into account?

co-creation of solutions is aligned with the movement in the field of community engagement

It is key to move away from ‘doing for’ the group, and instead, ‘doing with’ the community.

inauthentic engagement, is when
practitioners are “simply interested in seeing the
exercise as a way to create the appearances of listening while working to convert as many attendees to their
conclusions”.Inauthentic engagement is about
remaining in control; it’s about tokenistic gestures.

How will you change the way you engage? What can you do to increase the authenticity of your
engagement? How will you elevate the voice of the context expert?