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Seeking Community Engagement

Seeking Community Engagement. Nicole Merrifield, Grande Yellowhead Regional Division No.35. Case Study. Engaging a Community: Seeking Effective Means of Providing Information of Broad Public Interest to External Stakeholders A Case Study of the Hinton Drug Action Committee.

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Seeking Community Engagement

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  1. Seeking Community Engagement Nicole Merrifield, Grande Yellowhead Regional Division No.35

  2. Case Study Engaging a Community: Seeking Effective Means of Providing Information of Broad Public Interest to External Stakeholders A Case Study of the Hinton Drug Action Committee quite a mouthful!

  3. Theoretical Context Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers • Diffusion theory was developed by studying a number of different information campaigns involving a wide variety of messages, audiences and social contexts, and extracting common elements • The theory suggests that the challenge of public education and awareness campaigns is to reduce the time between the discovery or development of an idea and the adoption of that new information by a community • Rogers dubs this process the diffusion of innovations: “diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system”

  4. Creating Knowledge • Information “consists of data organized into meaningful relationships and structures. It is data that has been given meaning through relational connection” (Wright) • Knowledge is information that has been made meaningful to individuals through a process of reflection and relation to their world view and experiences • Engagement refers to the process and result of the creation of knowledge, where that knowledge would lead someone to act

  5. Extrapolating Examples from School Divisions • Soliciting input • Completing a survey • Lobbying the government • Encouraging registration or self identification

  6. Extrapolating Requires Stakeholders to: • Be aware of a particular program or issue • Understand the potential or actual impact • Recognize their role, or potential for involvement • Choose to act

  7. HDAC’s Challenges • Desired to realize change quickly • Limited financial resources • Limited means of providing information sound familiar?

  8. HDAC’s Challenges • The creation of knowledge is a personal, individual exercise and experience, and therefore can be encouraged, but not compelled • Efficiency requires the message to be shared with many individuals at the same time so that a group of individuals accept the information, create knowledge, and become engaged

  9. Lessons from HDAC • Communications should recognize that a community is a group of individuals bound by a shared experience, and therefore should target individuals within that group • No single template can be developed to guarantee community engagement

  10. Key Principles Know the target stakeholders • Identify • Respect • Focus Message

  11. Key Principles Create and maintain a positive experience • Involvement • Encourage personal commitment • Develop trust and personal relationships

  12. Key Principles Develop Clear Goals and Objectives • Short and long term • Broad and tangible • Subjective and objective Provide individuals with the sense that their involvement is worthwhile

  13. Key Principles Operate with Professionalism • Organization and planning • Leadership • Visual Identifiers Professionalism: • Increases efficiency • Increases support • Encourages participants to focus on the issue

  14. Key Principles Strive for Consistency and Frequency • Range of opportunities to become informed and engaged • Range of means of becoming involved

  15. Effective Communication The concepts employed by effective individual communicators must be applied to community awareness campaigns: • Design message to suit the receiver • Encourage and prepare for feedback • Provide opportunities to personalize the information to create knowledge • Provide opportunities to use knowledge to complete engagement process

  16. Communications must be carefully planned to be effective Meth Hurts Website: http://www.methhurts.com/index.html Rogers, Everett. (1983) Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. New York: Free Press. Wright, Kirby. (2005) “Exploring the Complexities of Knowledge”. Custom Courseware: Master of Arts in Communications and Technology, Extension 507 Teaching Notes. University of Alberta Students’ Union.

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