Community Engagement
Turn Community Knowledge Into Meaningful Action
Thoughtfully designed engagement that helps organizations listen, understand community priorities, strengthen participation, and translate what is heard into planning and action.
Engagement Should Do More Than Collect Comments
Recognizing communities bring important knowledge about the places, systems, and challenges they experience
Meaningful community engagement creates space for people to share experiences, knowledge, priorities, and concerns – and creates a clear pathway for that input to influence what happens next.
Resilient Virginia helps organizations design engagement processes that are accessible, purposeful, and connected to real decisions.
Community Engagement May Include
Engagement Strategy
Determine who should be engaged, why their participation matters, and how input will inform the work.
Stakeholder + Community Mapping
Identify residents, organizations, trusted messengers, decision-makers, and perspectives that should be represented.
Outreach
Develop approaches for reaching participants through appropriate channels, partners, and community networks.
Listening Sessions + Facilitated Conversations
Create structured opportunities for people to share experiences, ideas, and priorities.
Workshops + Community Meetings
Design interactive sessions that support learning, dialogue, prioritization, and shared problem-solving.
Surveys + Input Tools
Develop accessible methods for gathering information from a broader range of participants.
Community Storytelling
Create opportunities for lived experience and local knowledge to inform resilience discussions.
Findings + Synthesis
Translate community input into clear themes, priorities, opportunities, and recommendations that can inform decisions and next steps.
A Good Fit When...
Community Engagement may be useful when you are:
- developing a plan or program;
- preparing for a major community investment;
- trying to understand lived experiences related to a resilience challenge;
- seeking stronger participation from historically underrepresented groups;
- identifying community priorities; or
- needing to rebuild or strengthen relationships with community members.
From Input to Action
We design engagement with the end use in mind.
Before asking people to participate, we hlep clarify what decisions their input can influence, how information will be used, and what participants can reasonably expect to happen next.
Outputs may include engagement findings, community needs briefs, priority summaries, recommendations, stakeholder maps, outreach tools, or implementation considerations.