Community engagement helps government develop strong relationships with citizens. But the feedback is only valuable when it represents the views of the whole community.
If we don’t engage with marginalised groups in our society, we risk delivering outcomes that fail the most vulnerable in our communities.
In this article we'll look at how to design outreach strategies to engage marginalised and under-represented community groups, and explore how digital and traditional engagement tools can help.
Understanding under-represented communities
For community engagement practitioners, understanding the needs of a community is essential. By gathering and analysing community feedback we can design better policy and project outcomes.
But its important not to forget under-represented community groups. They might face language barriers, disabilities, socio-economic factors and cultural differences that limit their contributions to community engagement projects.
So what's the best way to design accessible engagement strategies for under-represented and marginalised groups?
A great way to start is by building relationships with community group leaders, and local organisations. They can give us unique insights into community dynamics and barriers to participation.
These might include:
- Language
- Accessibility
- Socio-economic factors
- Cultural or familial expectations
- Gender and sexuality
- Age
When we understand some of the barriers to participation in community engagement, we can start to develop strategies to address them.
Harnessing the power of digital engagement platforms
Accessibility is an important design factor in community engagement campaigns. In practice, this simply means to use as many tools as possible, in order to reach a wide range of people.
A digital engagement platform, such as District Engage, can help. It offers easy to use tools to target different audiences. Plus, instant reporting lets you check that your messages are reaching the right people.
Let’s take a quick look at how digital engagement tools can help your spread your message further:
Surveys and quick polls
Surveys and quick polls are an easy and popular way to gather information about a community’s priorities and concerns. Tailor your survey questions with simple language to help you engage a broad range of audiences in your community.
Surveys and quick polls are also great to use when you are targeting specific groups on social media.
Mapping tools
Interactive maps help people visualise how a project will affect their community. On District Engage, you can pinpoint specific locations with markers, or build shape layers to highlight shared features, offer the ability to comment on a map, and illustrate before/after scenarios.
These visual aids are very effective engagement tools for people with language barriers or low literacy levels, and can encourage feedback on specific aspects of a project.