How to engage people in local community?
// Your Greatest Resources
This will help to start citizen engagement process and create a new local community care-centered:
- Identify the minimum number of people who want to be involved (this shows number of contacts that I will turn on and the kind of promotion that I'll have to activate);
- The type of citizen who intends to involve (young, female, with specific characteristics...);
- The venues of the meetings (one, more than one, openspace, pubblic area... );
- The type of activity to be made in every place (presentation, needs analysis, solution identification, early design - ideas draft);
- The type of activity to be performed and the topics covered by group (more or less experiential, more involved, more frontal etc.);
- The type of output.
See Tips subchapter for more specifications.
// How many people I have to contact?
We recommend to map how many communities there are in your area and what are the characteristics of these communities: aims, age, gender and so on. The citizens involved in communities have the greatest skills in listening, and are used to collaborative practices. Then you have to choose four or five communities with different characteristics. The first step to involve citizens of different communities is inform and share goals, timing, methods and tools.
opencare local team (WeMake and Municipality of Milan) contacted four communities:
- Elderly people with a common passion: dancing
- Parents of disabled childrens
- Migrants
- A “Social street”