ENGAGING YOUR COMMUNITY

 How do you engage your community?

From my experience of working with and for the vulnerable community members I must say one of the best thing you can give to someone is a listening ear, giving people time to talk about what they are experiencing can help you visualize how to help them. Getting information first-hand from the people on the ground helps you develop practical solutions to their problems. Gone are the days one would wake up and think of doing something to help people in a community without seeking their input. Community engagement is basically bringing the stakeholders of a community on board to address issues affecting their well-being, achieve sustainable outcomes, ensure equitable decision-making processes, and develop relationships. It puts people’s voice at the heart of operations and programmes and start shifting the power imbalances that existed. When engaging the community you gain the trust of the people you serve and your work becomes relevant and impactful.

In a community-based approach, people of concern not only have the right to participate in making decisions and implementation of programs that affect their lives, but they also have a right to information and transparency from the investors or sponsors. Understanding that by placing people of concern at the center of operational decision-making and building strategies in partnership with them, they will be better protected, their capacities identified, developed and sustained solutions will be strengthened and the resources available will be used more effectively. To build confidence, we have to listen and act on what people tell us. This makes sure that people are able to participate in the decisions that affect them and realize that engaging communities is not an extra burden, nor a box-ticking exercise, but an investment in a relationship that will make projects easier, better, more sustainable.

Am actually enthralled by the adoption of Cash Based Transfers by humanitarian organizations which has really ensured that families are able to purchase what is of utmost importance. Every day is a learning experience to understand what problems are being faced by vulnerable people in the community and how to develop solutions that are practical and sustainable.

Despite the frequent mention of the importance of community engagement and accountability, there may be the feeling in the community that they cannot provide constructive input or influence the decision-making process, challenging for them to contribute due to cultural barriers and having unrealistic expectation of initiatives. However, where community members are informed and educated on issues at hand, locals are able to contribute meaningfully to engagement and have the capacity to shape those activities.