Community engagement
Community engagement is about ensuring that communities have input into the issues that directly impact them. It can be complex, invoking strong feelings, controversial issues, conflict and diverse interest groups. This requires the use of highly skilled facilitation for successful outcomes. It is down the ‘deep end’ of facilitation work.
Our team are experienced at bringing diverse views together.
We are experienced in navigating conflict within and between groups.
We make space for difference and invite diversity.
Our role in community engagement
Professional facilitation fosters inclusivity, transparency and understanding in your community engagement processes. A facilitator can enable groups to work well together so that important information can be gathered and ideas can be collaboratively developed, often to complex issues.
Our facilitators are neutral and as such can be at the service of all stakeholders, ensuring diverse voices are heard and valued. We create spaces in which active participation can take place and difference is valued and welcomed.
We can support by providing facilitation services, and/or we can aid in the planning and co-design of sessions. Both options can help reach shared outcomes where participant contributions are heard.
These are some of the specific ways we can support your community engagement processes.
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Our facilitators can work with you to design engagement processes that are inclusive and foster a sense of safety for participants.
This support can extend to coaching sessions for your facilitation team. Coaching is a means for your facilitators to debrief, reflect and gain expert mentoring directly related to the engagement process at hand.
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During the active engagement phase of your process our facilitators can lead community meetings, workshops, forums, focus groups and discussions.
This can be particularly valuable when neutrality is required, there are charged emotions, or strong differences of opinion present.
Our team is also skilled at guiding collaborative decision-making processes and strategic planning.
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Our facilitators can lead evaluation sessions, thereby enabling your team to be part of the evaluation process along with external stakeholders or community members.
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External facilitation is of great value when multi-stakeholder projects or processes get stalled in conflict.
Our facilitatators are experienced in navigating conflict in groups. Our simple, yet structured process provides a framework within which participants can listen deeply, hear one another and collaboratively find steps forward.
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Would you like your team or community members to be involved in running or leading an engagement process?
We offer 1-2 day long facilitation training designed to meet your needs. Our workshops will give your team the skills and self-awareness required to run sessions with confidence.
When built into a community/organisational development program this creates substantial long-term benefits in terms of your team or community’s capacity for ongoing collaboration and leadership.
Outcomes for community engagement
Community engagement works when all perspectives are heard and considered, and successful community engagement processes need high quality facilitation.
Community engagement processes are the structure built to hold human connection and interaction. Facilitation is the means by which we support people to hear one another within those processes, contribute their perspectives, build relationships and land on shared values and visions.
Expert facilitation enables your process to build inclusivity, collaboration and understanding between relevant stakeholders and participants - leading to stronger outcomes.
We created Groupwork Centre because we believe in the transformational capacity of people working well together in groups.
Our facilitators have extensive experience and training working with groups in community, business and government. A key point of difference is our approach to self-awareness, compassion and Emotional Resilience. Our practical skills and values-based approach have equipped us well for the often complex nature of community engagement.
