Governments, people, and organizations work collaboratively to create sustainable visions for their community’s future. Community engagement is a way of bringing them together to solve problems that affect people’s lives. For governments and organizations, it’s important to build long-term relationships and create a dialogue with the very diversity of their communities.
Public engagement describes how the activities and benefits can be shared with the public. It means it is a process, involving listening and interaction, to generate mutual benefit. Benefits might include gaining new insights or ideas, learning, developing better research, developing new skills, or being inspired.
When people in a community are affected by a problem, everybody should take part in finding solutions to that problem. In this way, public engagement is formed where people work together to achieve a common goal. It can take place during the planning, research, or implementation stages of a project. Centered around trust, collaboration, and communication, community participation focuses on the needs, desires, and expectations of community members.
The Canadian Institute of Planners states: “the goal of public engagement is to involve people in the processes and decisions that affect their lives”.
There are many ways to boost community engagement. First of all, building authentic connections is the most important goal. Community members need a place where they can talk about their experiences. They also like to be heard, so it’s important to interact back with them as much as possible. When building community engagement, you need to think about what people would like before anything else, because it will be easier to know where to build your community and how.