Through our Community Engagement approach, we ensure that people who are living in a place and are experiencing the challenges that organisations are trying to solve in that place are more involved in both local research and the projects and interventions that come out of that research. 

Community Engagement are the ways in which we involve communities on matters which affect them, and to provide a more coordinated and consistent approach to consulting and working in partnership with communities.

The problems we’re tackling through our Community engagement approach

In tackling social issues, the lack of ownership and involvement from communities has resulted in the development of irrelevant and ineffective programmes. This has led to a lack of engagement in the programmes and interventions that are supposedly designed to help them. 

For too long, underserved communities have been the victims of research extraction from third parties who are parachuted in to ‘do research’. These communities do not benefit from this research extraction which results in deep levels of mistrust to traditional forms of research and the people and organisations conducting it.

Not listening to the voices of people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities or people from lower socio-economic communities, nor delving deeper to understand people’s behaviours, motivations and beliefs, means that we are not truly appreciating their lived experience and missing out on valuable insight, full of cultural nuance. This negatively affects the quality of social programming and services and only deepens inequalities in society. 

Partnering with organisations of all types, whether social enterprises, public sector, not-for-profit, funders and more, through our Community Engagement approach we work with local Community Partners and use inclusive and equitable approaches to solve local problems through research, evaluation and co-design.

The 4 areas of community engagement are:

Giving of information

This level of engagement underpins all other areas of community engagement.

It is essential that people are provided with information in a format that suits their needs on the issues about which they are being engaged so that they are able to make considered and informed choices.

Involvement

Where people are actively involved in decision-making and deciding together on the future of their locale and other decisions that affect their lives, this can give people the power to choose, without fully sharing the responsibility for action.

Consultation

Seek the views and opinions of the people in order to inform the decision-making processes. Anyone embarking on this type of exercise must be prepared to take on the ideas of the community engaged.

Support

Empowering communities to make decisions and take control of projects and service delivery.

Key Principles of Community Engagement:

If you’re interested in learning more about our approach or to talk more to our Community Engagement manager, please complete and submit this form below. We look forward to hearing from you.