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Welcome to the module 'What is Community Engagement'?
Before one can undertake meaningful community engagement, they must understand the concept of the purpose of community engagement. We are going to go through definitions of important terms that are often used in discussing community engagement. We are also going to talk about why community engagement is important and why it must be done correctly.
We will also look at how one identifies the people to engage in the community. And we will discuss how to assess the importance of some of those people.
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In this module we are going to learn what engagement is and why we do it we are also going to learn what a stakeholder is and why they are important.
In the next module we will go further into the discussion and look at identifying and assessing the stakeholders in your community.
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Let’s start with some definitions.
You may be wondering what engagement is. The good thing is it is very simple. You probably have already experienced effective engagement. You probably have way more experience in engagement than you think.
Simply put, engagement is meeting with a person or group somewhere to discuss a topic. There are some important words in that definition. First of all, it is a meeting, usually face-to-face. The meeting could be in a boardroom; it could be in a coffee shop; it could be in a park; it could be in a large community hall. Engagement happens when people get together to discuss a topic.
An important word is discuss. This means that everybody gets a chance to talk and when someone is talking, everybody else listens. If only one person does all the talking, that is not engagement. That is a lecture.
Discussion is done with respect for other people. That means when one person is talking, other people listen and wait until that person is finished talking before they start. If people are not listening to others and more than one person is speaking simultaneously, that is not engagement. That is an argument.
Engagement requires respectful listening to other people’s points of view.
So that is engagement. What is community engagement?
Community engagement involves engagement with different people who make up a community. That means that if you are engaging with a community, you must sit down and talk with a series of individuals or groups that make up the community. You cannot identify one community leader, sit down with that person, have a discussion, and call that community engagement. Community engagement requires you to identify the many people and interests that make up any community and reach out and have a two-way respectful discussion about your project and what it means to them.
So why do we do community engagement? At its very simplest, we do community engagement to be fair to all of the stakeholders in the community so that they can have input and an opportunity to understand a project that may affect them and the place they live, work, and play.
There are significant benefits to effective community engagement. For one, determining issues before they arise can mitigate problems before they start. This can save a lot of expense, conflict, and difficulty moving a project forward. A good respectful discussion and an earnest attempt to understand the concerns or positions of another party and try to address them can foster goodwill. Not only will the person you were talking to think better of you, but they may go out and tell their neighbours about the great conversation they had with you and how happy they were that you took their interests to heart,
One other important reason for doing community engagement is that it is a requirement of all new marine aquaculture operations. It states in the regulations that you must do community engagement, and it states that you must have at least one public meeting. Even if you do not believe community engagement is important or necessary, there is no escaping that you must engage with the local community if you have any hope of getting your new marine aquaculture project approved.
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Let’s talk about stakeholders.
Stakeholders are so important that the United Nations Environment Program has developed a definition. According to UNEP, a stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by an organization or its activities. This definition includes any individual or group that can help define value propositions for the organization.
A community stakeholder is simply a group or individual that meets the definition and also is part of your community.
There are many examples of stakeholders. On the next slide we will look at some examples. However, it is important to understand that stakeholders can be both negatively or positively impacted by your project. Sometimes people think stakeholders are only those who are opposed to a project because of concerns of how it’s going to affect them. An example of someone who feels like they will be negatively impacted is a commercial fisherman who believes your proposed site will deprive them of an area that they fish in, hurting their livelihood. An example of someone who feels like they are positively impacted is a business that sees an opportunity to increase their sales by providing goods and services to your operation.
There are also stakeholders that affect your project. For example, local politicians may be able to support your project if they feel that that benefits to the community are substantial, but they may oppose your project if they feel the majority of the community does not want the project.
Some stakeholders may provide advice that could improve your project. For example, a local marina operator may say to you, if you just move the site over 100 yards, you will not impact my transportation to the wharf. That may be very helpful in removing a barrier to getting your project approved.
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So let’s review the stakeholders definition because it is important to understand the role stakeholders may play in your project.
Stakeholders can either be affected by your project or they can affect your project. And the effect can be positive or negative.
Stakeholders are part of your community. That’s why we refer to community engagement when we are talking about engaging stakeholders.
Stakeholders can have varying degrees of influence in the community. We will look at that in the next section.
Finally, remember the stakeholders may have valuable knowledge that they can use to provide advice to you on how to improve your project.
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Now that we have defined community engagement and stakeholders, this is a good time to take a break.
In our next module, we will discuss how to identify stakeholders in your community and how to assess and prioritize them once you know who they are.
Please join me in the next module.
