I couldn’t agree more on patient urgency. I utilized the corollary frame of urgent patience in funding healthy community work in Maine when I served as a program officer for the Maine Health Access Foundation - here’s my blog post on the topic (http://www.mehaf.org/news-room/blog/cultivating-urgent-patience/). You touched on it briefly, but until funders, both private and public, incentivize and honor the relational and process (community engagement) elements of change the level of engagement you call for will lag.
One major problem I’ve seen over many years is a lack of defining terms used by officials & planners who are not practitioners in the CED field, but instead are “urban” planners focusing on the built environment, wkg hand-in-glove with the commercial real estate industry.
Our public sector uses private sector terms, and vice versa. Now, even the Chambers of Commerce are into “economic development” and into “job creation”. Amazing, as I thought their members were private entrepreneurs striving to make a net profit. Maybe it’s time for gov’t to become contractors, builders, and land developers.
Those of us “in the field” already are acquainted with many of the ideas being recycled in elite magazines and blogs; we need these practical ideas filtering down to the grassroots, but we also need to tell the political & planning establishment that they are not meeting our community’s greatest needs. They do not have that sense of urgency, nor do they engage with practitioners who better understand these barriers & constraints. They are not interested in alternative views, have no transparency in their deliberations, and much less accountability for their policy decisions. Community engagement is a formality, with little real participation; it’s no wonder we have such cynicism and low voter turnouts.
I could provide many examples of incompetence, but do not have the space here to elaborate. All the best . . .
I especially appreciate the need to balance short-term results with long-term outcomes—addressing social determinants of health will require long-term, sustained effort—but the cost of maintaining that effort requires “guidepost” programs along the way.
I remind potential funders and community partners that these efforts are smaller arrows inside of the much larger arrow—they are not the end-game, but they are critical to our overall success. Excellent article.
I agree that the way to a community’s heart is through it’s people! In South Los Angeles, we have seen the incredible effects of community engagement by partnering local youth with community organizations - here’s the full story in my blog post - http://nhfca-blog.blogspot.ca/2016/03/building-better-communities-one-street.html. What could be more powerful than having a group of young people gathering data, envisioning change and being empowered to bring those changes to life?
This is such a welcome and a compelling account of the real need for community driven development. It also needs to be taken to a global level.
We have established an international development company COACTION in working currently in African development (http://www.coactionintl.com . Especially in an international humanitarian context, to get agencies to genuinely shift power and trust communities who are stereotypically and continually viewed as ‘unable’ to move forward on their own is a challenge. Two of our Directors are involved in working in one the largest camps of Somalian refugees in Ethiopia. Using ABCD and working with local people to map their own assets using technology, we have supported refugees communities to generate, own and lead their ideas to improve their life and livelihoods in camp. Refugees also as part of getting thing established are contributing their own resources and assets.
It is really only this honest ownership of development by people truly ignites the sense of self-determination and potential in the most demanding and restrictive of life conditions.
The recent Oversea Development Institute report ’ Time to let go: remaking humanitarian action for the modern era’, on shifting how humanitarian aid is ‘done’ also calls for approaching development differently. However, we advocate, as you do, a step further than the ODI report that communities themselves need to be centrally owning and driving development aligned with the concept of everybody leads and collective impact.
As a small, passionate, Ireland-based company true and feisty proponents of community engagement, it was great to read your article are open to connecting with others to take the approach on a global level.
Marvelous collection of recent citations on these ideas. The core themes have been known since the early 1990’s in work in developing countries. Outside-in approaches (or top-down, here) don’t work. Collaboration within the communities does work.
The issue with any data driven approach is measurement - defining what to measure, how to collect, frequency and most important - protection and appropriate application - of the measures. Education is a key example as “testing” (aka measurement) is such a controversial issue.
Bottom line, it is good to see the continued application of what has been known for decades. The recommendations regarding data driven programs are risky and may devolve to another form of outside-in, top-down failure where the outside or top is “the data”.
Some years ago while visiting Chile, I was asked to present a workshop on community development. I was honored to do so, especially challenged by my lack of Spanish. Fortunately several were good English speakers and with a little broken Spanish and lots of humor, we made it through. This presentation, albeit slightly altered, provided a great foundation for conversation and implementation of local engagement. Project Planning for the New Millennium http://ow.ly/4mRdyu
Valuable information shared in the article and by those leaving comments. Are any of you using GIS mapping and/or Social Network Analysis to show who is coming together as a result of the organizing efforts, and if the “right group of stakeholders” are coming together? I hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every six months from May 1994-May 2015 as part of an on-going effort to build a community of people/organizations supporting the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas of Chicago. I’ve used GIS maps since 1994 to show where existing programs were located. Around 2011 I started to use similar maps to show participation in conferences and to show who was attending. This article shows what/why. http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2015/05/report-looks-at-tutormentor-conferences.html Based on this, are any of you mapping your networks using similar tools and for similar goals? Please share links if you do.
Fantastic information about community engagement.Nowadays community engagement is necessary for both government and private sectors for the citizens and public. This article gives the 100 ideas to community engagement http://www.bangthetable.com/100-ideas-to-engage-your-community-online/
As an example community projects such as schools and medical clinics have far more long lasting potential than simple programs that “give someone a fish rater than teaching them to fish” by giving them a boat so to speak. This programs need to project benefits beyond the short term. This is espoecially evident in SE Asia there are pertinent exemples of successful programs here: http://www.globaltravelpress.com
Wonderful article about community engagement—I enjoyed reading it. In the years to come, we will see more and more local governments adopt the idea of collaborate and data-driven governance. As an addition on the section about the complexity of community participation, this article describes the ladder of participation for the digital era: https://www.citizenlab.co/blog/civic-engagement/ladder-citizen-participation/. Could be an interesting follow-up read!
Thanks for explaining that organizing involves identifying interest, cultivating leaders, and helping them lead change. I think that if you wanted to organize a rally or get people involved but didn’t know how, it would be smart to work with professionals that knew what they were doing and how to best engage people. I think that would help make sure that you could have more involvement from leaders and from the community as a whole.
Thank you so much for all of the information you provided about community engagement and its importance. I like how you said that an important aspect of community engagement is to build momentum and a narrative of success in that community. I think that it would be very beneficial for organizations and businesses to invest in a service that is dedicated to boosting community engagement.
COMMENTS
BY Len Bartel
ON February 22, 2016 06:11 AM
I couldn’t agree more on patient urgency. I utilized the corollary frame of urgent patience in funding healthy community work in Maine when I served as a program officer for the Maine Health Access Foundation - here’s my blog post on the topic (http://www.mehaf.org/news-room/blog/cultivating-urgent-patience/). You touched on it briefly, but until funders, both private and public, incentivize and honor the relational and process (community engagement) elements of change the level of engagement you call for will lag.
BY Fernando Centeno, CED
ON February 22, 2016 09:58 AM
One major problem I’ve seen over many years is a lack of defining terms used by officials & planners who are not practitioners in the CED field, but instead are “urban” planners focusing on the built environment, wkg hand-in-glove with the commercial real estate industry.
Our public sector uses private sector terms, and vice versa. Now, even the Chambers of Commerce are into “economic development” and into “job creation”. Amazing, as I thought their members were private entrepreneurs striving to make a net profit. Maybe it’s time for gov’t to become contractors, builders, and land developers.
Those of us “in the field” already are acquainted with many of the ideas being recycled in elite magazines and blogs; we need these practical ideas filtering down to the grassroots, but we also need to tell the political & planning establishment that they are not meeting our community’s greatest needs. They do not have that sense of urgency, nor do they engage with practitioners who better understand these barriers & constraints. They are not interested in alternative views, have no transparency in their deliberations, and much less accountability for their policy decisions. Community engagement is a formality, with little real participation; it’s no wonder we have such cynicism and low voter turnouts.
I could provide many examples of incompetence, but do not have the space here to elaborate. All the best . . .
BY Jane Obbagy
ON February 23, 2016 06:53 AM
Excellent summary and agree with the concept of listening to what people are really saying or needing.
BY Richard Edwards
ON February 23, 2016 01:32 PM
I especially appreciate the need to balance short-term results with long-term outcomes—addressing social determinants of health will require long-term, sustained effort—but the cost of maintaining that effort requires “guidepost” programs along the way.
I remind potential funders and community partners that these efforts are smaller arrows inside of the much larger arrow—they are not the end-game, but they are critical to our overall success. Excellent article.
BY Kerry O'Connor
ON March 6, 2016 06:34 PM
Incorporating design approaches can help close the gap between big data and community engagement to get more of a “with, not for” approach. Design incorporates “thick data” to complement “big data.” Design approaches provide engagement opportunities through ethnographic research and prototyping to get rapid feedback. There are also crowdsourcing methods that provide meaningful opportunities for engagement while working through the complexity of the problem. When you broaden the definition of “evidence” to include both quantitative and qualitative, you’re more likely to be able to work through the local context, and build with, not for the communities we serve.
Big data + thick data: https://medium.com/ethnography-matters/why-big-data-needs-thick-data-b4b3e75e3d7#.gq4qhol0f
Big data + thick data: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/your-big-data-is-worthless-if-you-dont-bring-it-into-the-real-world/
Big data + thick data: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304256404579449254114659882
Crowdsourcing as transformative engagement example: https://openstreetmap.us/2015/03/government-and-openstreetmap/
Example of “with, not for” methods: Social Innovation Lab In With Forward http://inwithforward.com/methods
Crowd-consulting insights example: https://civicinnovation.bloomfire.com/posts/1089943
Finally, this weekend at the 2016 SXSW in Austin, Texas, we’ll be hosting a panel session called “For the People, By the People: the Human Algorithm” to discuss using technology, big data, and keeping our human focus.
BY Kelly Bruno
ON March 11, 2016 11:34 AM
I agree that the way to a community’s heart is through it’s people! In South Los Angeles, we have seen the incredible effects of community engagement by partnering local youth with community organizations - here’s the full story in my blog post - http://nhfca-blog.blogspot.ca/2016/03/building-better-communities-one-street.html. What could be more powerful than having a group of young people gathering data, envisioning change and being empowered to bring those changes to life?
BY Maire McGrath
ON April 15, 2016 07:24 AM
This is such a welcome and a compelling account of the real need for community driven development. It also needs to be taken to a global level.
We have established an international development company COACTION in working currently in African development (http://www.coactionintl.com . Especially in an international humanitarian context, to get agencies to genuinely shift power and trust communities who are stereotypically and continually viewed as ‘unable’ to move forward on their own is a challenge. Two of our Directors are involved in working in one the largest camps of Somalian refugees in Ethiopia. Using ABCD and working with local people to map their own assets using technology, we have supported refugees communities to generate, own and lead their ideas to improve their life and livelihoods in camp. Refugees also as part of getting thing established are contributing their own resources and assets.
It is really only this honest ownership of development by people truly ignites the sense of self-determination and potential in the most demanding and restrictive of life conditions.
The recent Oversea Development Institute report ’ Time to let go: remaking humanitarian action for the modern era’, on shifting how humanitarian aid is ‘done’ also calls for approaching development differently. However, we advocate, as you do, a step further than the ODI report that communities themselves need to be centrally owning and driving development aligned with the concept of everybody leads and collective impact.
As a small, passionate, Ireland-based company true and feisty proponents of community engagement, it was great to read your article are open to connecting with others to take the approach on a global level.
BY Dave Rader
ON April 15, 2016 07:26 AM
Marvelous collection of recent citations on these ideas. The core themes have been known since the early 1990’s in work in developing countries. Outside-in approaches (or top-down, here) don’t work. Collaboration within the communities does work.
The issue with any data driven approach is measurement - defining what to measure, how to collect, frequency and most important - protection and appropriate application - of the measures. Education is a key example as “testing” (aka measurement) is such a controversial issue.
Bottom line, it is good to see the continued application of what has been known for decades. The recommendations regarding data driven programs are risky and may devolve to another form of outside-in, top-down failure where the outside or top is “the data”.
BY Zen Benefiel
ON April 19, 2016 07:12 AM
Some years ago while visiting Chile, I was asked to present a workshop on community development. I was honored to do so, especially challenged by my lack of Spanish. Fortunately several were good English speakers and with a little broken Spanish and lots of humor, we made it through. This presentation, albeit slightly altered, provided a great foundation for conversation and implementation of local engagement. Project Planning for the New Millennium http://ow.ly/4mRdyu
BY Daniel F. Bassill
ON April 19, 2016 10:34 AM
Valuable information shared in the article and by those leaving comments. Are any of you using GIS mapping and/or Social Network Analysis to show who is coming together as a result of the organizing efforts, and if the “right group of stakeholders” are coming together? I hosted a Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference every six months from May 1994-May 2015 as part of an on-going effort to build a community of people/organizations supporting the growth of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in high poverty areas of Chicago. I’ve used GIS maps since 1994 to show where existing programs were located. Around 2011 I started to use similar maps to show participation in conferences and to show who was attending. This article shows what/why. http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/2015/05/report-looks-at-tutormentor-conferences.html Based on this, are any of you mapping your networks using similar tools and for similar goals? Please share links if you do.
BY Karthik P
ON October 4, 2016 02:09 AM
Fantastic information about community engagement.Nowadays community engagement is necessary for both government and private sectors for the citizens and public. This article gives the 100 ideas to community engagement http://www.bangthetable.com/100-ideas-to-engage-your-community-online/
BY Edwin
ON November 14, 2016 04:42 PM
Absolutely, listening to what people are saying is imperative. There needs to be a grass roots connection and understanding in order to be effective!
BY Edwin
ON November 14, 2016 04:46 PM
As an example community projects such as schools and medical clinics have far more long lasting potential than simple programs that “give someone a fish rater than teaching them to fish” by giving them a boat so to speak. This programs need to project benefits beyond the short term. This is espoecially evident in SE Asia there are pertinent exemples of successful programs here: http://www.globaltravelpress.com
BY William
ON August 25, 2018 02:46 PM
Wonderful article about community engagement—I enjoyed reading it. In the years to come, we will see more and more local governments adopt the idea of collaborate and data-driven governance. As an addition on the section about the complexity of community participation, this article describes the ladder of participation for the digital era: https://www.citizenlab.co/blog/civic-engagement/ladder-citizen-participation/. Could be an interesting follow-up read!
BY Michaela Hemsley
ON January 22, 2021 03:36 PM
Thanks for explaining that organizing involves identifying interest, cultivating leaders, and helping them lead change. I think that if you wanted to organize a rally or get people involved but didn’t know how, it would be smart to work with professionals that knew what they were doing and how to best engage people. I think that would help make sure that you could have more involvement from leaders and from the community as a whole.
BY Charlotte Fleet
ON February 23, 2021 12:36 PM
Thank you so much for all of the information you provided about community engagement and its importance. I like how you said that an important aspect of community engagement is to build momentum and a narrative of success in that community. I think that it would be very beneficial for organizations and businesses to invest in a service that is dedicated to boosting community engagement.