Community Engagement: Sustainable Strategies
There is more to community engagement than the exchange of ideas. There are people, skills and resources to manage. There are strategies to conceive, frameworks to design and events to plan. All must be implemented, evaluated, and most likely, modified several times. Outlining steps and procedures in detail will be useful in managing best practices over time, affording the advantage of hindsight for course corrections.
One of the first decisions city officials will need to make is how to best organize for engagement. Larger cities might establish a citizen committee to shape community involvement procedures across all program matters, including sustainability. In smaller cities, a steering committee or task force specifically assigned to sustainability might be more effective. In either case, the committee should represent the demographics and geography of the entire community.
The steering committee or task force will also oversee community engagement activities, which are intended to accomplish any of these three objectives:
COMMUNICATE: Provide access to the information that citizens need to both get involved and to benefit from sustainability.
- Start simply. Hold an open forum for discussion and information.
- Design materials and events suited to the demographics and geography.
- Put information in the local newspaper and on the web.
- Provide a representative to speak at events sponsored by the city, businesses, schools, faith-based and community organizations.
- Assign a citizen-to-citizen task force for sustainability education.
- Involve school students in a writing and public speaking campaign.
- Identify partner groups that can not only participate directly, but can help spread the message about engagement opportunities to a wider audience.
PARTICIPATE: Engage the community in a variety of specific activities where they are directly involved.
- Find the best organizational structure for input. If the sustainability steering committee oversees the big picture design, consider creating subcommittees (or “working groups”) to focus on more detailed issues.
- Design incentives to maximize participation. For example, the winner of a contest to reduce energy use could receive a substantial prize, such as an Energy Star appliance for a neighborhood community center.
- Establish grant programs to encourage creative ideas.
- Engage citizens to measure current and future sustainability efforts for research and funding purposes.
- Hold charrettes to test ordinances and design solutions on the ground.
CELEBRATE: Reward the community and incentivize them for future efforts.
- Hold fun events that are also educational. Give away healthy and sustainable products.
- Publicly congratulate those who succeed at making a real contribution to the city’s efforts. They will serve as a model for others to follow.
A measure of a building's or product's energy performance compared with that of similar buildings or products, as determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency / U.S. Department of Energy's ENERGY STARŪ Portfolio Manager. The ability or potential of a physical body to do work. The most common forms of energy are heat, light, mechanical (moving parts), and electrical.
