Why Community Engagement?
December 3, 2007 – 10:14 pm 
Earlier this year I was a table facilitator for an America Speaks facilitation. The topic was childhood obesity. There were a number of cities where America Speaks hosted these town halls. The goal was to come up with ways to inspire children to engage in a healthier lifestyle; better food and more exercise.
I had a great group at my table–some parents, students, a teacher, a woman who worked for one of the companies that provide school lunches… When doing community engagement work, one of the key areas to focus on is stakeholder involvement. Who are the stakeholders (those that have a stake in the outcome)? The point is to have representation from all groups that will be impacted by the results.
My table had many of the stakeholders that needed to be present for the conversation–and thus became a beautiful and very simple example of why I believe so strongly in community engagement.
We started talking about school lunches. One parent complained about the salty and fatty foods served at her child’s school. The woman from the food company said that they do, in fact, offer salad–but it is hard to sell it to the schools. They wind up throwing so much of it away. When asked, one of the students at the table said that yes, they do have some salads–and they are really good–but her and her friends still wind up ordering the tacos and french fries.
Had the parents not been there, the whole issue of food in schools might not have come up. Had the woman from the food company not been there, the focus of our conversation might have gotten stuck on the schools not offering decent food. Had the students not been there, we might have assumed that it was as simple as making sure salad was served.
Because all of these stakeholders were present we went deeper. We talked about patterns of behavior, how easy it is to get into a rut–and the challenge of starting or sticking to things (exercise routines, healthy eating) that are good for us, even when the not so good stuff (french fries versus salad) might taste and feel better in the moment.
America Speaks had done a good job of getting the right people into the room and finding solid facilitation. When it was time to share recommendations, it became clear that many other tables had experiented the same depth of sharing that my table had. The group’s recommendations began with what individuals needed to do: what kind of promise young people needed to make with themselves, the potential parent’s had to be role models. Only after that did the recommendations move into the macrocosm: how schools and communities could support our children in making the right choices–the kinds of programs and facilities that would enable safe places to exercise throughout the year, for example.
To me, this is community engagement work at it’s best. Make sure everyone who needs to be at the table is there, bring in some professional facilitators to ask the right questions and create a space where everyone feels safe really going for it, and watch the magic happen. This is how we can strengthen, reclaim, and build our communities.