Community Inclusion Standard Best Practice Guide

Step 7: Adapting to Community Needs

Projects should regularly review progress, gather feedback from stakeholders to evaluate fairness or equity, and ensure it is accessible, democratic and inclusive and there is transparency of the outcomes. Processes should be adaptive to if and when challenges are identified to meet community needs.

Photo by Dennis Brekke / Unsplash

Work reflexively and adapting to meet community needs

Projects should regularly review progress and gather feedback from stakeholders to evaluate fairness or equity, and whether the process is accessible, democratic and inclusive and there is transparency of the outcomes.

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Processes should be adaptive to if and when challenges are identified to meet community needs.

Questions for Project Leads

How regularly, and through what format, will communities be invited to engage with the project to ensure ongoing communication?
How regularly will the project be reviewed?
What are realistic timescales for the project’s decision-making and feedback processes?
How will you address potential risks or challenges identified by the community?

Useful Resources

Deliberative Integrity: Risks and Responses in Mini-Public Governance (Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance)

Suggested Actions

Create flexible plans to meet the needs of each specific community.
Be flexible and bring in new/other voices as they emerge.
Schedule regular meetings with a core project management group to review progress against timelines, identify possible risks, and implement mitigation measures where appropriate.
Regularly communicate with the community, sharing successes, achievements, challenges, etc.
Create space for connection: shared learning events, volunteer training, etc.
Bring people together to share understandings of restrictions, values and remove possible conflict - explore shared values and common ground.