engagement strategies
We partner with communities to design engagement approaches that are meaningful and influence decisions. We always start by asking Who? and Why? as foundational to our listening-based approach.
When you start talking to people about their values, their community, and their vision for the future, it can get emotional. These conversations can unearth deep community divides or fears. Good engagement and facilitation uncovers common values and common ground that can point to a way forward. Engagement works best when you foster conversations that encourage people to voice their concerns and ideas, engages all participants in collective knowledge sharing about what is, and what is possible, in their community.
That’s why we plan for every community engagement by asking Who? and Why? as a foundational part of the process. We believe that engagement is powerful when it is aligned with the people and purpose of the project. People know when they are participating in a check-box activity rather than a meaningful process that will directly influence a decision.
We recognize the importance of building capacity in the community and we are fully committed to a participatory framework for engagement. Our approach is centered on two key drivers:
Establishing a shared understanding of community issues
Engaging in shared problem solving
Shared understanding means listening, learning, and facilitating the free flow of knowledge exchange to learn about and respond to the other’s issues, opportunities, concerns, pain-points, and desires. Shared problem-solving is best supported through a collaborative exploration of options and joint discussion of tradeoffs. In our experience, we’ve found that the most authentic engagement often results from informed discussions about issues, opportunities, and tradeoffs, where the objective is arriving at community-based recommendations.
We have honed our engagement skills on the ground in more than 100 communities in more than 30 states — and mastering nearly a dozen different virtual tools for remote engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. And we are learning more every day about the best ways to connect with and engage community members during these challenging times. In 2020, we’ve facilitated a wide range of successful virtual and hybrid virtual-in person events across the country. During those events, we’ve used innovative tools to share information and gather feedback including live polling, vision mapping, virtual community tours, simultaneous translation, and more. Platforms we currently use include Zoom Meeting; Zoom Webinar; GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar; MURAL; Prezi; Poll Everywhere; Survey Monkey; Carto; video storytelling; drone video; Google interactive mapping platforms; Wikimapping; ESRI Story Maps; and more.
While we have learned a lot, we strive to continue learning because we know that no two engagement approaches should look just alike.