RODRIGUEZ, FRITZ ROYNORE B.

AB POLSCI 1

Answer the following questions:

 What is Social Mobilization? Give 5 examples.

Social Mobilization is an approach and tool that enables people to organize for collective action,
by pooling resources and building solidarity required to resolve common problems and work
towards community advancement. It is a process that empowers women and men to organize
their own democratically self-governing groups or community organizations enabling them to
initiate and control their own personal and communal organizations which enable them to
initiate and control their own personal and communal developments, as opposed to mere
participation in an initiative designed by the government or external organization. An example
for these are: education, health, employment, transportation, economic growth and etc.
 What is Community Engagement? Give 5 examples.
Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with or through groups of
people affiliated by geographic proximity special interest, or similar situations to address issues
affecting the well—being of those people. It is a powerful vehicle for bringing about
environmental and behavioral changes that will improve the health of the community and its
members. It often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and
influence systems, change relationships among partners, and serve as catalysts for changing
policies, programs and practices. An example of these are; proactive about recruitment, bringing
diverse perspectives together, sharing experiences, giving people chances to make up their own
minds or deliberative, and different level of actions: volunteers, teams, organizations and policy
decisions.
 Give at least 10 challenges of community engagement
1. Resourcing – It really all starts with the question of adequate resourcing. Often the biggest
challenge in community engagement is lack of time and staff to effectively put in place a
complete strategy. This starts at the planning stage and is necessary through delivery and
into the final reporting and evaluation stage. Using an online engagement platform like
Engagement Hub can drastically reduce the administrative burden for staff and help you
generate instant reports and feedback mechanisms. View our demo site to see how our
innovative information, participation and communication tools can transform how you
deliver your community engagement strategy.
2. Flexibility – Your community engagement strategy and resourcing need to allow enough
flexibility to respond proactively and reactively to community needs and the direction of the
feedback.
3. Accessibility – A vital component of any community engagement is accessibility for all. This
could mean holding events at various locations and times, hosting training for people to
train them on your online engagement software or translating materials into other
languages. Digitally, you need to adhere to online accessibility guidelines. All Engagement
Hub platforms can instantly translate into over 100 languages and are WCAG 2.0 compliant.

4. Representativeness – Making sure that all voices are heard and that your data is
representative of your whole community can seem difficult. However, segmentation of your
audience via demographic, location and other factors can help you keep track of any parts of
 your community that you haven’t reached or not had enough interaction with. Through
online engagement software, like Engagement Hub, you can set up automatic segmentation
upon registration so you can instantly see in your reporting whether you are reaching all
parts of your community.

5. Equity – You need to make sure all voices are heard equally and one group is not
disadvantaged or marginalised. This is the next level on from representativeness and
requires you to dig deeper into your data. Tools like surveys and polls that allow your users
to only submit or vote once are examples of ensuring equity in your quantitative data.

6. Summarising sentiment – bringing together a variety of community views into a collective

response to your engagement is tricky. More in-depth engagement methods allow
emergent ideas to be developed and thrashed out so allowing more time for the sentiment
to develop across the consultation period is important. It’s also vital to humanise the
sentiment analysis. Although there are some great digital tools to assist with the analysis of
qualitative feedback, the overall sentiment can only be viewed by people and agreed upon
as a group so individual views don’t sway interpretation of the data

7. Consultation fatigue – one danger with continual community engagement is your

community grow tired of being asked for their views and disengage. It’s important to
balance your need for participation with what’s an acceptable level of engagement for your
whole community and providing a variety of ways to engage to keep interest.

8. Disillusionment – Community members can become disillusioned with the process if they
see their input is not being taken forward. If the community believe that it was just a ‘tick-
box exercise’ to say you consulted and their feedback wasn’t considered or actioned, they
are likely to feel anger and to not reengage with your organisation again or favourably.
Managing expectations of how much input the community has in the final decision making is
therefore paramount.

9. Governance – Proper governance provides transparency for the community and

accountability for everyone involved. A structured approach to community engagement
with strategic plans, resourcing plans and a clear delineation of decision making and
responsibility allows you to get the best out of your engagement practices.

10. Community building – It takes time and a best practice approach to build an engaged
community, but it can be very rewarding. Take the time to build the skills of your community
so they are equipped to participate with you now and in the future.
 What are the core principles of community engagement?
1. Careful Planning and Preparation. Through adequate and inclusive planning, ensure that the
design, organization, and convening of the process serve both a clearly defined purpose and
the needs of the participants.
2. Inclusion and Demographic Diversity. Equitable incorporate diverse people, voices, ideas
and information to lay the groundwork for quality outcomes and democratic legitimacy.
 3. Collaboration and Shared Purpose. Support and encourage participants, government and
community institutions, and others to work together to advance the common good.
4. Openness and Learning. Help all involved listen to each other, explore new ideas
unconstrained by predetermined outcomes, learn and apply information in ways that
generate new options, and rigorously evaluate community engagement activities for
effectiveness.
5. Transparency and Trust. Be clear and open about the process, and provide a public record of
the organizers, sponsors, outcomes, and range of views and ideas expressed.
6. Impact and Action. Ensure each participatory effort has real potential to make a difference,
and that participants are aware of that potential.
7. Sustained Engagement and Participatory Culture. Promote a culture of participation with
programs and institutions that support ongoing quality community engagement.
 What are the methods and approaches in community engagement?
The community engagement methods are community meetings, focus groups, surveys and
online engagement which approaches that are used will depend on the groups of
stakeholders being consulted and the intended outcomes of the initiative.