So... What is Community Engagement?

Attempting to define "Community Engagement" may be as hard as the actual process of doing it. With literally dozens of interpretations, it can be a hard fought battle trying to find a sensible definition of the method as everyone utilizes community engagement in different ways. Let's start with the most obvious route in the 21st century, wikipedia:

"Community engagement refers to the process by which community benefit organizations and individuals build ongoing, permanent relationships for the purpose of applying a collective vision for the benefit of a community. While community organizing involves the process of building a grassroots movement involving communities, community engagement primarily deals with the practice of moving said communities towards change, usually from a stalled or otherwise similarly suspended position."

In a definition that includes the word "community" in some way, shape, or form seven times, it seems like a good idea to define the actual word itself. Communities as we generally like to them of them generally consists of a group of people that share some kind of common bond such as a political structure or ethnic tie. It is a flexible term that can cover a wide range of individuals in any given place or time, thus making "community engagement" an even more complicated idea to breakdown. At its most basic, however, communities deal with a group or set of people that share at least one common characteristic -- an idea that we can surely w.

The wiki definition provides the basic framework for what community engagement is. From it we understand that it involves some form of "community benefit organization" that builds "ongoing, permanent relationships" for the benefit of a community that is somehow "stalled" or in "suspended position". Though we receive a fair definition of what community engagement is all about from here, there seems to be a lot of ground to add before we really understand what it is all about. There is obviously a process -- a methodology -- involved, but what?

Let's look at another definition of community engagement, this one submitted by a Matt Perry:

"Community engagement is the participation of members of a community in assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating solutions to problems that affect them. As such, community engagement involves interpersonal trust, communication, and collaboration. Such engagement, or participation, should focus on, and result from, the needs, expectations, and desires of a community's members."

Here we get a more developed understanding of community engagement. It is not just a point-and-click job, but rather a complicated series of steps that leads to answers that ideally meet the needs of the community. It does not come easily either, but rather "involves interpersonal trust, communication, and collaboration" to help make engagement possible.

Considering this definition alongside wikipedia's, we can bridge the two and form our own nuanced definition of "community engagement":

"A multi-step process that involves a group of organized individuals who gather to participate and focus on bringing sustainable changes to a community in suspension, changes that supports the needs and desires of that community."

In this definition, we return to "community" and the importance of its place in the definition. It is vital to understand that community engagement seeks to help not just individuals, but rather entire communities. Community engagement, as we will soon see, can come in many shapes and forms when it comes to the processes, the people, and even the objectives, but regardless of all the methods, the underlying goal -- the benefit of a community -- is the same no matter how you spin it.

It is also important to emphasize that engagement not only seeks to make one or two changes, but a series of sustainable changes that encourages the progression of a community. How often do we see a major incident where charity is piled upon for days, sometimes weeks, and then neglected for the next major catastrophe months later? Charity only provides temporary relief, community engagement on the other hand looks for a way to create changes that are capable of being sustainable for long periods of time by not only the community, but the participants involved. This is both the charm and danger of community engagement that sets the requirements for the multi-stepped processes involved. As we will see in our analysis of the various methods that have been carried out by programs nationwide, while community engagement contains all the promise of a methodology that promotes fair and balanced change for the better of the community, it also presents a process that takes a long and arduous series of steps to become fruitful. This longer period of development, however, allows a deeper level of communication and collaboration that often gets left out of charity work. By establishing a long-term plan, community engagement allows bridges between communities that would otherwise never be made. It is in these bridges that the hope of beneficial change emerges and the success of community engagement arises.

Sources
Anonymous source.
Department of Sustainability and Environment.
Google Definitions.
Wiki Page on Community Engagement.
NIH.