Community Engagement
Overview
Civic and community engagement includes strategies to organize individuals for collective action, as well as strategies to make sure that all voices in a community are heard as part of inclusive decision-making. These strategies can help build various kinds of social capital. That is, they can increase the extent to which residents in a given place can turn to each other and to community institutions for support, and the extent to which they are able to influence or control decisions that affect their lives. People often use civic or community engagement strategies to work towards racial equity goals. When using them, it is helpful to spend time thinking upfront about how much work will be done within existing systems, vs. trying to transform or interrupt those systems. It is also useful to consider the extent to which the work is based on the expressed wishes of the people whose lives are most likely to be affected positively and negatively by the work. Another key decision is whether engagement is being designed as an end in itself (to ensure all voices are heard and influence racial equity processes), as means to an end (to contribute to action and change directly), or for both purposes.
Key sites
Practices
- Nonprofit Service Organizations Civic Engagement: Addressing Challenges and Moving Forward
- Pursuing Racial Equity Through Civic Engagement and Mass Media
- The Challenge Of Assessing Civic Engagement Efforts: Toward A Useful Framework And Measurement Approaches
- Community Engagement Guide
- Community Engagement Worksheet
- The Community Engagement Continuum: Outreach, Mobilization, Organizing and Accountability to Address Violence against Women in Asian and Pacific Islander Communities
- Facilitation guide for community engagement How to Foster Effective Conversations about Our Work and Our Communities
- Growing Together for a Sustainable Future: Strategies and Best Practices for Engaging with Disadvantaged Communities on Issues of Sustainable Development and Regional Planning
- A Guide on Community Engagement: Making Social Justice Work Inclusive
- Evidence of Change: Exploring Civic Engagement Evaluation
- The Community Engagement Guide for Sustainable Communities
- Nonprofits Integrating Community Engagement Guide
- King County Equity and Social Justice Strategic Plan Community Engagement Report
- Tools to Engage: Resources for Nonprofits
- Community Engagement & Racial Equity Toolkit Progress Report
- Racial Equity in Service to Collective Impact and Movement Building The Blueprint North Carolina Story
- All the People, All the Places: A Landscape of Opportunity for Rural and Small-Town Civic Engagement
- Shining the Light on California Calls and Inner-city Struggle: Values-Based Networks Accelerate Transformative Political Change
- People's Movement Assembly Organizing Handbook
Resources
- Creating Spaces for Change: Working Toward a "Story of Now" in Civic Engagement
- Journey to Engagement: A First Person's Reflection on How to Engage Residents
- Making Change Happen: Citizen Engagement and Global Economic Power
- Community Engagement
- Evidence of Change: Exploring Civic Engagement Evaluation
- Resource Guide on Public Engagement
- A Review of Public Participation Methods and Consultation
- The Principles for Equitable and Inclusive Civic Engagement: A Guide to Transformative Change
- Community Engagement Planning Guide
- Realizing a More Inclusive Electorate: Identity, Knowledge, Mobilization
- Vote, Organize, Transform, Engage: New Frontiers in Integrated Voter Engagement
- Organizing Engagement
