BPD held a two-day brainstorming session in November 04 around community participation in multi-stakeholder partnerships. The vast majority of partnerships with which BPD has worked involve some form of intermediary between communities and the partnership project. BPD seeks to explore practical aspects of how community voice is actually incorporated into partnership approaches. This session brought together a small group of partnership practitioners to unpack some of these issues and to explore options for further analysis.
The report from the workshop was developed into a draft paper entitled Tools for Exploring Community Engagement in Partnerships (pdf 792KB). The paper begins to unpack the concept of community engagement in partnerships and proposes some practical tools in order to explore: why participation by community groups is important for different sectors; who should be involved at the local level; how engagement works within partnerships; and the community perspective on engagement.
We encourage your comments and feedback on this draft paper.