At the launch of … Engaged Communities
Report author, Amanda Reid, talking at the Launch of Engaged Communities on Monday
On Monday this week, BERL and the Helen Clark Foundation (HCF) launched their report, Engaged Communities: How Community-Led Development can Increase Civic Participation, in Wellington. Lucy was lucky enough to have a front row seat. Here’s her summary of some of the key points from the research and reflections on what she heard.
Indicators such as local body and general election voter turnout show a gradual but inexorable decline over the past 30 years, and are potentially symptomatic of a level of disengagement within our communities. But, engaged communities are vitally important for our social and cultural wellbeing. They safeguard a wealth of community knowledge, exhibit cultural vibrancy, and demonstrate high levels of civic participation. So, Engaged Communities asks, what can local authorities do to nurture and support this incredible resource?
To explore this question, the report authors examined how three types of communities navigate, increase, and apply their social capital to develop solutions to problems and challenges within their communities and create positive, lasting change. These were communities of place, communities of interest, and communities of identity, and included case studies from the coastal community of Paekākāriki near Wellington; the Schools Strike 4 Climate movement; and our migrant communities.
Based on this research, the report makes several recommendations for local government to help develop and support an active citizenry, and some suggestions as to how these recommendations can be realised. These included:
Provide space and resources for community-led development: build on what the community has already; allow communities to own the change and lead where possible; make sure community knowledge is genuinely valued; and create safe, inclusive, accessible physical spaces to meet and connect; and co-create solutions with your communities.
Develop a strategy for effective use of social media and technology: develop a cohesive, organisation-wide social media strategy and resource it properly; and listen to what your communities are saying on social media, as it can be a useful indicator as to what communities care about.
Have effective and meaningful diversity and inclusion strategies: recognise that differences are strengths; recognise the breadth and depth of diversity at the local level; and co-design your strategies with the communities of identity they seek to include.
Build trusted partnerships and long-lasting connections: be present, be consistent and listen; allow enablers within local government to be ‘people’ and give them the resources and training to develop genuine relationships with those in their communities; and recognise, develop, and preserve institutional memory of relationships and connections with communities.
It was stressed at the launch that these recommendations are just the start of what BERL/HCF hope will be a national conversation about how local authorities can meaningfully and effectively support community-led development in New Zealand, and time was made in the breakout session to explore other ideas and opportunities. I was excited to take part in a conversation which tackled how decolonisation of our governmental and civic structures could support diversity and inclusiveness, and all around me I heard a real appetite to ask the hard questions and consider innovative responses.
The launch of this collaborative think piece is certainly timely, with wellbeing truly in the sights of central and local government. Community wellbeing is back in the Local Government Act, reinstating local government’s responsibility to partner with their communities to promote and foster wellbeing. At central government level, the concept of wellbeing is gradually taking its place alongside traditional economic indicators in our understanding of what success looks like in New Zealand. And New Zealand is not alone in the world. Only last week, Iceland announced it was putting family and the environment ahead of economic growth in its policy development.
A focus on wellbeing brings local government fresh and exciting opportunities (and challenges) to create and support the conditions our communities need to thrive. The Engaged Communities report has been prepared with real heart and is, in my view, a very useful contribution to the discussion, providing an accessible resource for councils committed to halting the erosion of trust and cooperation and fostering genuine community engagement. I look forward to seeing more from the BERL/HCF partnership in 2020.
Dr Ganesh Nana, putting the ‘Research’ back into ‘Business and Economic Research Ltd’ in his role as Director of Research.