COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

What is Community Engagement?

 Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people
affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-
being of those people.
 It is a powerful vehicle for bringing about environmental and behavioral changes that may improve the
health of the community and its members.
 It often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and influence systems, change
relationships among partners, and serve as catalyst for changing policies, programs, and practices
 Based on this definition, the goals of community engagements are:
 To build trust,
 To enlist new resources and allies,
 To create better communication, and
 To improve overall health outcomes as successful projects, evolve into lasting collaborations.
 What makes community engagement a very rewarding experience is the amount of enthusiasm coming from
all participants.
 It affirms that community members would engage in activities that will bring impact to their community.
Why is Community Engagement Needed?
 To engage a community in the discussion increases the level of awareness among its members;
 it allows individuals to advocate for their ideas and offers a format to gather advice or guidance based on the
the community’s available expertise and experiences.
 It is needed to guide the development of the project agenda by:
 Expanding or redefining the focus of the initiative,
 Identifying unexposed information, and
 Creating a network of revenue sources and funding partners.
 When the majority of community members are engaged at the beginning and throughout the project,
people appear to:
 Be more receptive to the outcome,
 Have the capacity to implement change, and
 Maintaining long-term partnership improves.
Who Can Make It Happen?
1. Innovative community members who have the vision for what is possible will naturally invite the right
people to come and join the group.
2. A certain community member may see the connection between a proposed initiative and the community
and ask to be included.
3. In other situations, it may be the community leader who proposes engagement as part of the process for
developing the plan.
4. Elected officials are prime candidates for launching community engagement.
What is the Process?
 Members’ awareness that community cooperation is advantageous to the development and implementation
of a project is not enough.
 Knowledge requires action to create impact.
 It is recommended that certain conditions must be present before engagement can take place.
 The recommendation includes the following requirements:
 There should be a shared and defined purpose;
 Willingness to cooperate;
 Commitment to contribute positively;
 Participation coming from the right persons;
 There should be an open and credible process; and
 The involvement of a community leader with credibility and clout.
 Develop a relationship with the community, build trust, work with formal and informal leadership, find the
community gatekeeper, identify the project champion, met with the local organizations, and learn the assets
and challenges for that community; and lastly,
 Find the common interests.
 This process is complex, but it is manageable. Initially, the leadership needs to
 Convene a small group to clarify and validate the community vision;
  Discuss and define the initiative and its potential impact;
 Set the purpose and goals of community engagement;
 Define the community;
The Dynamics of Group Decision-Making
 Making a decision is never easy, regardless of whether the responsibility for the outcome is in the hands of
an individual or a group.
 The process of making a decision is full of numerous components that require much time to define the issue
and gather the facts.
 Since community decisions reflect the values of a group, facilitators work with the group to clarify its values
and build its vision in relation to its mission.
 Below is a list outlining the steps in the decision-making process:
 Create a favorable environment for dialogue;
 Define first the issue;
 Gather the available data/facts;
 Clarify the issues in relations with values, ethics, vision and mission;
 Search/be opened for alternative solutions;
 Select the best practice/solution;
 Design the implementation plan of action;
 Implement the plan;
 Evaluate/assess the impact; and S Revise the plan and assess again.
Six Thinking Hats
 The Six Thinking Hats was developed by Edward de Bono (1985).
 A Maltese physician, psychologist, philosopher, author, inventor and consultant.
 Six Thinking Hats is a critical and creative thinking training course from Edward de Bono that helps
individuals and organizations throughout the world to become more effective and innovative thinkers.
 Its philosophy is that community members/teams have the skills and techniques that they need to make the
best decision in a fast, smart and efficient manner.
 It promises that after community members/teams learn the skills behind the Six Thinking Hats system, they
will:
 Hold critical meetings without emotions or egos making bad decisions;
 Avoid the easy but mediocre decisions by knowing how to dig deeper;
 Increase productivity and even more important - be more effective;
 Make creative solutions the norm;
 Maximize and organize each person’s thoughts and ideas; and
 Get to the right solution quickly and with a shared vision.
White Hat
 White Hat calls for INFORMATION known or needed.
 It focuses on available data (facts and figures) while remaining neutral.
 Participants are encouraged to review existing information, search for gaps in knowledge, analyze past
trends, and extrapolate key learning from historical data.
 It raised the questions: What information do we have?
 It raised the questions:
 What information do we have?
 What information do we need?
 What information is missing?
 What questions do we need to ask?
 How are we going to get the information we need?
 Is it fact or belief?
Red Hat
 Red Hat signifies FEELINGS, hunches, and intuition.
 It encourages participants to think about how other people will react emotionally and try to understand the
responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
 Participants do not need to explain or justify individual expressions of feelings.
 It generates the questions:
 How do we react to this?
 What is your intuition/opinion about this?
  Gut feelings.. .hunches or insights Likes/dislikes?
 What emotions (fear, anger, hatred, suspicion, jealousy, or love) are involved here?
Black Hat
 Black Hat is JUDGMENT - the devil’s advocate or why something may not work.
 This is the basis of logical, critical thinking offering careful, cautious, and defensive insights.
 Tries to see what is wrong; why it might not work; what are the dangers, problems, and obstacles; what the
deficiencies are in the thinking process.
 It allows us to eliminate the negatives, alter plans, or prepare contingency plans to counter any problems.
 It provides the questions:
 What will happen if we take this action?
 What can go wrong if we proceed with this idea or implement this recommendation?
 What are the weaknesses that we need to overcome?
 How does this “fit” with our experience, policy, strategy, values, ethics, and resources?
 How will people respond?
 Will it work.. .be profitable.. .be acceptable?
Yellow Hat
 Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and OPTIMISM.
 It represents a deliberate search for the positive (optimistic viewpoint) through exploration and speculation,
defining the benefits of the decision and the value in it.
 Yellow Hat thinking is constructively blending “curiosity, pleasure, greed, and the desire to make things
happen.”
 The objective is to enhance the proposal by generating alternative ideas “based on experience, available
information, logical deduction, hints, trends, guesses, and hopes.”
 It asks the questions:
 What ideas, suggestions, or proposals are there for how to approach this issue to achieve this goal?
 What is the merit of the approach?
 What benefits can you see in this idea?
 What could be done to make this work better? Faster? More economical?
 Under what conditions could this work?
 What would it take to make this proposal acceptable?
 What is your vision for how this could work?
Green Hat
 Green Hat focuses on CREATIVITY: the possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas.
 This is where you generate new, innovative ideas and develop creative solutions to an issue.
 It is a freewheeling way of thinking in which there is little criticism of ideas, and movement is made using
provocation to move forward with an idea or from an idea seeking alternative solutions.
 This type of thinking must involve shaping the idea for the user.
 Green hat highlights the questions:
 Let us think “outside the box.”
 What are some fresh ideas or approaches?
 This is the time for any wild or crazy idea.
 Aren’t there some other alternatives perhaps too outside the box?
 This idea will not work in its present form, but can we shape it or adapt it so that it might be usable?
 We have always done it this way; let us “green hat” it.. .does it have to be done this way?
Blue Hat
 Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.
 This is the hat worn by people chairing or facilitating the session.
 The blue hat may be used at the beginning of the session to set the agenda or the sequence for using the
“hats” and at the end of the session when the group is seeking summary and next steps.
 Blue hat focuses on questioning and provides the structure for the use of other hats and other thinking or
problem-solving tools.
 Questions furnish by blue hat include:
 What is the problem?
 Is this the real and the only problem?
 What is the underlying problem?
 Why do we need to solve this problem?