Community engagement may involve some or all of social research, community consultation, community and organisational engagement, stakeholder management and communication programs.
We work to help clients listen and talk to communities by providing expert services in community consultation and public participation, facilitation of groups, meetings and events and strategic communications.
An exciting aspect of community engagement is the opportunity to reach out and engage with groups of people who traditionally do not engage in public. Likewise, the opportunity to engage with groups of people who are highly motivated and passionate about an issue or area - hearing their perspectives and working with them to build understanding to help create change - can also be very rewarding.
Effective community engagement and communication needs to be grounded on:
Today, online engagement and increasingly social media such as Facebook and twitter, are providing new media for engaging with the community, especially young people.
Using other technologies, such as interactive voting technology, has also brought a new rigour and dimension to community engagement, providing robust and transparent outcomes.
So, you should feel comfortable asking for your community engagement to deliver stakeholder buy-in, effective ongoing communications and tangible, targeted outcomes.