Community Engagement
Why Community Engagement?
- Organizations and business owners often require community acceptance of their initiatives. Without public support, construction projects and community initiatives can come up against strong resistance. The result is a public backlash that can slow or even paralyze even the most well intentioned projects.
- Similarly, municipalities and companies sometimes undertake initiatives that require shifting public opinion or well-engrained behaviours. Without a tidy audience or a direct channel of influence, these undertakings face a nebulous audience and having to work without a direct line of influence.
- The difficulties with fostering community acceptance or change increase further when working with remote communities. Remote communities have unique conditions that thwart the conventional mass market solutions that can be successful in large urban centres.
Will Community Involvement Slow Down My Initiative?
- Sometimes it does through the design and launch phases of a project, although that is not always the case. What is likely is that avoiding communication with communities in the early stages of a project shifts the resistance you need to deal with to later in the project, once you have already incurred significant expenses and made sticky promises.
- Smart community involvement shortens the overall time required on a project. The extra time you invest up front saves you considerably more time and money during your rollout phase, which is where it most matters.
Your Options
- Beetle Green provides tools for an accelerated process of community acceptance through community involvement and education. This includes . . .
- Techniques for simplifying complex issues to make them easier to understand and accept.
- Facilitated forums that help multiple stakeholders surface and vet concerns and let go of preconceived beliefs that hamper change
Should We Work Together?
- If you need help spinning the truth, we’re probably not a match
- If you are already married to your “solution” and now need others to “get it”, we’re probably not a match.
- If you have an initiative or project that is geared towards financial sustainability, positively impacts a community, and is mindful of the planet – and need help pulling it off on time and on budget with community acceptance - we should definitely talk.
