Community Engagement Challenges

Prompt 1: The first principle of community engagement offered in Chapter 2 is Be clear about the purpose and goals of the engagement effort and the population and/or community you want to engage. In the professor desk interview, she strongly recommend a different approach: creating the purpose and goals together with the community, you are engaging. Discuss which approach preferred and why. (Approach in chapter 2 or the professors approach)

From one perspective, it would be a waste of scarce resources to venture into a new engagement effort without first identifying an overarching purpose and developing some general goals. Indeed, without an initial focus on what needs to be accomplished, engagement efforts will invariably fail to achieve optimal outcomes. Furthermore, some degree of flexibility in formulating goals is described in chapter 2s first principle of community engagement wherein the point is made, Ask community members to specify their health-related concerns, identify areas that need action, and become involved in planning, designing, implementing and evaluating appropriate programs (p. 47). Nevertheless, this type of after-the-fact approach to developing engagement goals is flawed for a number of reasons. For instance, developing a clear purpose and goals from the outset represents a top-down, prescriptive approach that may overlook or otherwise fail to identify the most pressing issues facing a community, or engender resentment at the engagement teams view that they know what is best for them without even really knowing anything about them.

Conversely, developing a community engagement initiative in collaboration with community members as advocated by Dr. Sneed provides the stakeholders who have the most at stake with the opportunity to share their unique insights about their circumstances and needs. In addition, this approach also helps to forge the partnerships and networks that are needed to move a project forward. This open-ended strategy can also help promote the levels of trust that are needed to encourage greater participation by all community members. Notwithstanding...

…in ways that are offensive and demeaning. For instance, some American businesspeople have been criticized for acting too Japanese and offending their Japanese counterparts in the process. In other words, local community members intuitively recognize that outsiders are different and will expect them to not know everything about them and to act like Americans or Brits or Australians, for example. They will resent and resist any attempts by outsiders, however, to be lectured about their shortcomings, the taste or quality of their local foods, or their local customs.

These constraints underscore the need for engagement team members to learn as much as possible about a local community before developing a purpose and goals. Moreover, the learning process is not static but is rather a dynamic enterprise that must continue throughout the pendency of any engagement project. Indeed, it would be disingenuous of any engagement team to come to believe that they knew everything they needed to know about a local community to achieve the best…