Community Engagement - Research Paper Example

Community Engagement Community engagement is the process of involving and working collaboratively with community members and related groups to address issues that directly impact group members. Our NGO can meet this activity through its credibility, transparent reporting and collaborative decision making with community members. This will help our organization to secure its social silence, which will help it to balance out conflicting points of individual needs and views. On the other hand, according to Thompson, the community is a system composed of individual members and sectors comprising of a range of distinct qualities and interrelationships (Thompson et al.1990). These sectors are made up of groups of people who represent specialized functions, activities or interests within a community system. Our NGO is a sector that is mainly designed to benefit project beneficiaries effectively within any project and program. This meets the needs of the entire community. The community’s members where the project is located should take part in the project because the project is mainly designed for their benefit and not for our benefit as non-governmental officers. There are many different types of community engagement in which we can involve and engage community members to become part of our projects. One of these ways includes community engagement with the goal of community development or community building. If we plan projects that are central to developing and building the community, it would be more efficient if community members could fully participate and give ideological contributions towards the project or the program. This encourages them to work towards development of the community. For example, if our NGO is focused on community development projects such as water distribution and piping to dryer areas, then improving areas with poor infrastructure would be the first step. The second type of community engagement is participation through consultation and decision making. This is mainly carried out by consulting community members where our projects are and fully involving them in decision-making process, as they are the main beneficiaries of the project. Hence, they know their community needs better than we do because they live in that locality. This factor will assist us in careful planning and preparation, which will lead to a clear definition of the project, program objectives, mission and participants’ needs. This also leads to inclusion and demographic diversity through the equitable incorporation of diverse voices, ideas and information for a quality outcome and democratic legitimacy (Participation 2001). Consultation and decision-making inclusion for our project beneficiaries will increase openness and transparency on our projects. Hence, this will increase their trust and participation on our projects and programs. We can also have the community engagement process as a way of improving our service delivery and achieving our organizational goals. This is largely for morale building towards achieving a certain goal. The fourth type of community engagement for our NGO is social change and voluntary community groups. This will involve engagement of community members directly, as they are agents of change and the people to impact the change. The community’s engagement will also influence how quickly the program will be implemented in the entire community and its impact on future generations. For instance, for the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM), we need to engage men, women, boys and girls to let them know the terrible impact that this act has on society in the long term. Community engagement is very important because it allows a diversity of voices to be heard from the community. Hence, they can come to a consensus of what they need as the beneficiaries of the projects or programs. Successful engagement also makes it possible for communities to identify their priorities. This in turn gives community members one spirit and a sense of ownership over any project that we undertake, as the community members feel like they are part of it and that their opinions are valued. This is because community members are fully engaged from the beginning of a project to the end. A sense of ownership also improves the level of unity among community members in terms of members working together on behalf of the community as a whole. The successful engagement of the community will also lead to an empowerment of community members and allow continued development of the community. Community engagement can also pose its challenges, which include ideological differences among community members. As a result, this may cause conflicts among the community members. Working with traditional communities may lead to difficulties on issues that contradict their traditions; e.g. a community has traditional beliefs of not educating a young girl, and then we implement a project of empowering education for girls. Community engagement and participation will be low and the project may not be fully supported as our objective contradicts the traditional beliefs of the community. Organizations competing against each other in a certain community may also affect community engagement and participation in our projects. This may lead to community members choosing to engage themselves in projects that they think that they are of extra benefit to them. Hence, this creates competition among organizations in engaging the community in their projects. It is also crucial for us be considerate on public participation. This is mainly for better decision making and also for encouraging collaboration with other stakeholders and other public participants. These organizations may include other NGOs, governmental organizations and institutions for decision making and support where necessary. The process of public participation involves a citizens’ advisory committee, public meetings, surveys, workshops and also public meetings in developing society by offering our services. Political power and religion may also have influence on our projects and eventual success as an NGO. Political support may lead to the success of our projects, as people who are in power mostly influence everyone else to either follow or support our ideas. Religious leaders also have influence on their groups to either support or not support a certain idea or mission. Hence, this may influence our progress on our projects. We should also use the wheel of participation in our programs in order to make people to understand the difference between participation and involvement. The South Lancashire council devised this ladder of participation into the ‘Wheel of Participation’. Under this scheme, a community member moves from the extreme of no community input, with the council making all the decisions, through consultation and participation to citizen empowerment, where the community makes its own decisions on issues that affect it. Below is a figure of the wheel of participation by Sherry Arnstein (1987). This wheel of participation tries to explain the involvement of community members and their participation in our projects. This shows how giving the right information and consultation can lead to an improved level of participation and then onto greater empowerment. We can also practice needs-driven development in which community members concentrate most on the issues that are important to them. Whatever developmental projects are chosen, there should be no external interferences. We, as the officials of the NGO, should consider the needs of the beneficiaries first in order to initiate projects that are needs-driven to communities through community members. This is because we can initiate a project that will not be beneficial to the community; rather than using capacity-focused development, which focuses on the perfection of any project and may or may not be of need to community members, hence leading to a waste of money. Likewise, needs- driven projects offer a higher chance of individual engagement than capacity-focused projects. Community engagement also gives us a reason to work with people and not work for people. This means that when we work with people, we must encourage them positively on community development projects through getting them fully involved in decision making and providing labor for the project; hence, increasing their level of ownership for the project. When we work for the people, we will be doing it for commercial purposes or duty completion but not for the people as they will not be part of the project. It is also good for us to practice and offer capacity building training to community members on various aspects on any project that we are carrying on in their communities. This will increase people’s knowledge and awareness on projects or the program; hence, increasing community members’ morale on the project can be done through engagement and participation. Consulting community members is also another method that we can use to engage community members in our projects because they will have a sense of belonging towards the project; this will increase their level of engagement in our projects. We should also follow the decision-making cycle, which fully engages every member to give his or her ideas on any project that is at work in the community. References Caddy, J. (2001). Citizens as partners: information, consultation and public participation in policy-making. Paris: OECD. Gottlieb, H. (2006). Community engagement: step-by-step action kit. Tucson, Ariz: Renaissance Press. Gottlieb, H. (2008). Board recruitment and orientation: a step-by-step, common sense guide. Tucson, Ariz: Renaissance Press. Stewart, J. (2009). Dilemmas of engagement the role of consultation in governance. Acton, A.C.T: ANU E Press. Participation, P. (2001). Engaging Citizens in Policy-making. Quality, (10), 1-6. OECD Online Bookshop. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/dataoecd/24/34/2384040.pdf Read More