Chapter 13

Engage the Community

Your Indigenous Guardian program can be more successful if it has the support and involvement of your community -- including leaders, elders, knowledge keepers, land users, and youth. Actively engaging and communicating with your community right from the start helps ensure the program is grounded-in the community’s vision and priorities and can respond quickly to ongoing issues and concerns.

Involving the community takes time and energy. Done well, it can help:

  • Give your program a clear and purposeful mandate.
  • Ensure the community is aware of and celebrates in your successes.
  • Reduce potential problems as you move forward.

While every guardian program will need a unique approach to community engagement, there are some common strategies that can be adapted to ensure community members are involved and informed.

Explore this section to learn:

  1. Why involve your community and communicate about your program.
  2. When to involve the community.
  3. Who you can reach out to and involve.
  4. Some ways to engage your community.
  5. The role guardians can play in community engagement and outreach.
  6. What other programs are doing to involve their community.

 

Tipsheet

Tips for Community Engagement and Outreach

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  1. Think about and plan for community engagement at the start up of your program and at various phases of the project.
  2. Consider strategies such as “building-in” program governance structures that reflect the community’s diversity, developing a formal community engagement and communications plan, or committing to a schedule of regular activities to reach out to and involve your community and other key audiences.
  3. To attract people to program visioning, planning or information sharing events, use incentives such as door prizes, food, childcare, or bringing in an interesting speaker.
  4. When working with Elders and other key knowledge holders, develop clear honorarium policies to respect and compensate them meaningfully for their invaluable role, input and time.
  5. Make it convenient and safe for community members and others to ask questions, provide feedback, or report on what they have seen on the lands and waters. Set up a system to track this feedback (whether in person, email, phone, Facebook, etc.) and always follow up.
  6. Work with your guardians to understand and tell the story of the guardian program and connected initiatives. Creating key messages for your program will help members effectively communicate the work of the program on a day-to-day basis.
  7. Develop program brochures or topic-specific information sheets to help guardians share important information with community members, visitors and resource users. These documents can help guardians start up a conversation and provide back up to the verbal information they provide.
  8. Build the capacity and confidence of your guardian program to use a range of communication tools (i.e. face-to-face dialogue, videos, Facebook, Twitter, PowerPoint, Publisher, blogs, etc.) Use popular communications channels to ensure you reach your audience.
  9. Consider that some information should not be communicated broadly and kept strictly confidential (i.e. information about suspicious activity or non-compliance.) Develop clear policies and make sure that everyone understands them.
Tipsheet

Tips for Community Engagement and Outreach

Worksheet

Overview Worksheet - Engage the Community

This worksheet provides a series of questions to explore ideas about how to reach out and engage your community as well as the broader public to strengthen your program. Download it now

Worksheet

Overview Worksheet - Engage the Community