Community engagement is a common activity of many organization or stakeholders like to take part in. The projects completed by organizations directly or indirectly impact the surrounding community. Actively engaging members of a community in a well-organized community engagement process is a highly encouraged incentive that helps bring everyone to a common consensus and goal. Community engagement projects are explored for their four main benefits.
Winning the trust of the locals
Trust is an important aspect that helps maintain an excellent working relationship no matter the situation. For example, companies work to directly help the community they are a part of via projects and volunteering. Companies should meet community members and outline its intentions of establishing the project and how the community will benefit. This way, members of the community will give support towards the project without resentment and reservations.
Decision making
Before engaging in any decision that touches on multiple stakeholders in the community, it is important to launch consultative and informative meetings. Knowing how the community feels about volunteer projects and other impactful events will help everyone involved. The community will feel like they are involved in the decision making progress and the organization creating the project will be able to gauge the community’s interest. It also ensures that everyone’s ideas are heard.
An act of courtesy
Engaging members of the community before investing in projects that impact the surrounding community is considered an act of courtesy. The main objective in such a case is to give community members a head start of information relating to what is in store for them. This is as opposed to waiting for the members of the community to discover for themselves, something that may lead to strife and ultimate failure of the intended project.
Diversity of thought
Members of a given community are always packed with diverse ideas and different perspectives on a variety of projects. Consulting and engaging community members is, therefore, an important opportunity for an organization to gain and understand the different perspectives upheld within the society. The main objective, in this regard, is to collect information and different perspectives. Both positive and negative perspectives may significantly help the organization to achieve the intended objective. Negative perspectives may help the company think through and reconsider the project before actually starting it.