Community Engagement, Skills and Employability

COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT,
SKILLS AND
EMPLOYABILITY

Executive Summary
The report has cover about Community engagement which is a activity of peoples and
groups who come together for shared their interest. It will help to develop new local leaders,
authorities, local residents and government. They solve issues and problems of an individual and
organisations. This study has been included the purpose of community engagement like building
connections, acting with humility, developing understanding, pursuing justice etc. This study has
been included types like community building, community organizing, community eduction and
approaches of community engagement which helps for solving issues and problems of peoples
and organisations. This has been also represented different approaches like advocacy, direct
community based engagement etc. This study has been describes the key skills and challenges
are faced by community workers and volunteers. This skills are required in community workers.
This study shows different skills like communications, Training and educations, information
sharing etc. and challenges like lack of monitoring and resources. This study also has been
concluded the benefits to personal and professional self-development and employability skills.
For the personal aspect community worker will be open minded and listen everyone problem and
solve them, as per professional point of view community worker can be problem solving nature.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Community engagement theory...................................................................................................1
Community Engagement Types and approaches.........................................................................2
Challenges and skills of workers and volunteers in community engaged service.......................4
Benefits to personal and professional self-development and employability...............................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Community Engagement (CE) is a process that facilitates interaction, exchange, communication
and involvement between a community and an organization for getting social benefits.
Engagement means connection, participation, interaction and involvement that are designed to
achieve outcome at social, individual or organization level. Community Engagement provides
ethical, reflective & socially responsive approach towards community-organization relationships.
The engagement practices aims to understand and be responsive towards community demands,
expectations & views(Bridgstock and et.al., 2019). CE shows contextual understanding of their
members viewpoint on a topic and facilitates powerful relationship between the members of
community. Community engagement results in social capital and stronger networks.
Community engagement theory
CE is a fundamental practice and holds strong value for public welfare. The significance of
involving and connecting the community is based on a feeling that public must participate as this
is it their right to engage and participate. Some pillars of CE are mentioned below-
Building Connections :- Community Engagement develops genuine relation or
connection with community organization that helps in developing empathic understanding,
so that one can realize the importance of self-worth and flourish as human being. Inviting
leaders from community groups can help in demonstrating that their involvement is valued
and their view point is considered. This will help in building trust and connection that will
enhance openness and will increase communication. CE engagement attempts to better or
improve the connections among individuals, businesses and community associations
which in return creates support for public welfare. This improves personal skills as the
citizens who engage themselves in these process show commitment towards the
completion of the project(Ferns and Lilly, 2015).
Acting with humility :- Humility brings an outward look for equality. Humility helps in
reducing the difference of power that prevails in working in a community. Community
Engagement develops the perception of being open to other's opinion. The leaders being an
expert of the community seek information from every member to ensure they are relevant and
useful in making decisions that is in best interest of the community. Humility let an individual
open their hearts and contribute to the society or to whom they work with that strengthens their
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relation. Some leaders tend to control everything but sometimes the individual must know when
to hold control and when to set it free and not force everything.
Developing Understanding :- Community Engagement creates an opportunity for
cooperation and develops understanding as individuals listen to each other in a community.
Everyone's point of view is considered that helps in accepting one another and build trust.
Understanding is based on support of community(Goodman and Tredway, 2016.). Developing
understanding is tend to happen when the community members accept each other view point and
become a part of development as a whole community. Community members develop a sense of
listening and understanding others perception and feelings that help in personal skill
development of an individual.
Affirming Dignity :- Community Engagement value constitutional and moral rights of
human being who are meant to be equal. Respecting the dignity of the community members
means that they working to make sure that fundamental human rights are protected. This also
ensures the development of individuals capacity, so that they realize a sense of purpose & self-
worth. Supporting individual's self-respect means working in holistic manner with collaboration
for the common interest. Commitment to dignity support the individuals who think of themselves
as inferior and bring a sense of self worth in them.
Pursuing Justice :- Community Engagement is developed for providing social justice by
affirming human dignity, developing understanding, building genuine relations and acting with
humility. The community engagement stands strong with the one's in need wherever they are and
promote welfare of the society(Winberg and et.al., 2018). This refers to working in good faith
i.e providing fair & just opportunities to all the participants of the society. As the common good
can only be achieved when we accept the one in needs also.
Community Engagement Types and approaches
Community engagement is impulsive relational activity that provides facilities like
participation, interactions and exchange between an industry and community of peoples for a
range of organizational and interpersonal outcomes. There are some types of community
engagement:
 Community Building: It is process of bring people or organization together at
international level. With the help of community building they are simply know each
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other. It is field of activity for the beginning and improvements of community among
individual and industries with in their common interest area(Jackson, 2016).
 Community Education: This is company based program for encouraging learning and
social work within peoples and groups with the helps of formal and informal methods.
The main purpose of this activity is developing individual and groups quality of work life
and learning capacity.
 Community Organizing: It is a process which bring individual and groups together for
solving the issue of community. Community organizing influencing parties and groups
like government, institutions and corporation, seek to enhancing direct representation
within decision- making bodies and also work on social improvement. When dialogue
fail, group of community address outside organization for making pressure on decision-
makers by using methods of boycotting, picketing, pen-down etc. Community organizing
generally solve issues and problems by creating controversy and conflicts about the
decision-makers.
 Deliberative Dialogue: It is method of sharing ideas and opinion on particular topic or
issue in which they are interested. With the help of this method an individual or group
can understand the complexity of issue and also inform opinion about it. In method of
deliberative dialogue public research, public hearing and meetings or debate are included.
Approaches of community engagement:
 Advocacy: Advocacy is all about motivating and assembling community. It is start with
micro group of peoples who are shares specific issues and problems or their solutions for
resolving the problem, enhancing community organizing and for desired
changes(Goodman and Tredway, 2016).
 Community-based Research: It is approach of community research that involves equal
members of community, representative of industry, researchers etc. In this method all
members are equally participate and share their ideas and opinion in decision-making
process.
 Direct community-based engagement: It's evaluating needs and wants of all associate.
It's also promote the idea about interactions between community, community members,
government organization and also influence process of decision-making.
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 Project-based community engagement: In this approach of community engagement, they
allow their participant to work on real world projects. For these they collaborating with
NGO's and leaders for achieve their missions and objects(Ferns and Lilly, 2015).
Challenges and skills of workers and volunteers in community engaged service
There are some skills of community engagement workers which are required for volunteering
i.e.:
 Information Sharing and Liaison Skills: For effectively delivers services in organisations
and departments it is require that all informations are updated. Community worker or
voluntary share that information to appropriate person. They also share informations in
between staff of different community, local state and agencies and residents. These
quality in system can lead to new community to handling new issues.
 Communication Skills: The community workers and volunteers are in contact with all
types of people and groups like government parties, local resident, different agencies
staff, professionals and counsellors. They have to interact with all of these people in a
relatively and effective manners. They also able to presenting their ideas, opinion to
large groups and conferences; in both verbal and written manner.
 Training and Education skills: The main of community volunteers is to providing the
direction to the peoples. For this requires community workers to be skilled at sharing
their skills and quality to others. Community workers are able to share their idea and
quality with other peoples for enhancing their knowledge and skills(Brown, 2016).
Challenges
 Lack of monitoring: Community workers are facing problem of lack of monitoring. In
this problem they realise that community organizing team provide them very little
monitoring of real- world issues. Only few workers thought that their mentors provide
them more opportunities and more interactions chances with political parties, local
authorities and residents. This difference suggest that opportunities are available but not
well delegated to volunteers.
 Lack of resources: The another major challenge for community workers is unavailability
of resources. Without resources and support volunteers are not able to solving various
issues and problems of peoples and organization. When proper resources are not provided
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to workers then it also impact the productivity and performance of volunteers(Peck,
2017).
Benefits to personal and professional self-development and employability
Community Engagement broadens the outlook of individual's, as they tend to understand
other individual's perception. Engaging in activities of community helps in broadening the
individual's thinking. It brings open mindedness in individual's that helps accepting other's
perspective. CE helps in building trust as the individual communicate in one another, this creates
openness and help in trusting other individual. When one listens to others they build a sense of
respect, emotions for others and they can even support others who are not confident about
themselves. Helps the individual in connecting with others and they think on a wider aspect such
as community as a whole. Individual can even make good friends with whom they can share
their views without the fear of judgement(Moore and Morton, 2017).
Community Engagement benefits in professional development as it helps the individual
in thinking from a broader point of view and this enhances their problem solving skills.
Community engagement offers networking opportunities and that helps in developing
professional relations. IT is possible that in community group one can even know about any job
openings and develop strong references. An individual can learn new team building skills and
can apply it their team members at work. Engaging in community can help the individual in
expanding their horizons and can even explore career options. Engaging in community work can
create a leader in a individual that will help them in leading a team at their workplace.
Engaging in communities can bring jobs to people as, an individual will interact with
other members of the group and may be they have some job opportunities. So this will help those
individuals in getting the job and there is a chance that they can get reference as well. In the
same manner it might happen that the individual has job openings and need some new employees
, so it might possible that any person in the community needs jobs. So in this case community
engagement enhances employability.
Engaging in communities can help an employee in developing their personal, professional skills
as well as employability.
CONCLUSION
The above study has been con concluded that main purpose of community engagement.
In this study has been represent purpose like building connection, affirming dignity etc. are
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included. The above study also describe the types and approaches of community engagement by
which community workers are use for solving issues and problems of government, leaders, local
residents etc. This study also explain the challenges, skills of community volunteers which are
important to have. Above study shows the benefits to personal and professional developing of
volunteers of community organizing.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bacon, E., 2018. Teaching applied politics: From employability to political
imaginary. Politics. 38(1). pp.94-108.
Bridgstock, R and et.al., 2019. Going beyond “Getting a Job”: Graduates’ Narratives and Lived
Experiences of Employability and Their Career Development. In Education for
Employability (Volume 2) (pp. 89-104). Brill Sense.
Brown, J.E., 2016. Enhancing graduate employability through community engagement projects:
A case study of leadership in the performing arts. ISME Commission on the Education of
the Professional Musician, p.31.
Ferns, S. and Lilly, L., 2015. Driving institutional engagement in WIL: Enhancing graduate
employability. Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability. 6(1).
p.126.
Goodman, S. and Tredway, G., 2016. Antecedents of perceived graduate employability: A study
of student volunteers in a community-based organisation. SA Journal of Industrial
Psychology. 42(1). pp.1-10.
Jackson, D., 2016. Re-conceptualising graduate employability: The importance of pre-
professional identity. Higher Education Research & Development. 35(5). pp.925-939.
Moore, T. and Morton, J., 2017. The myth of job readiness? Written communication,
employability, and the ‘skills gap’in higher education. Studies in Higher
Education. 42(3). pp.591-609.
Peck, A., 2017. Engagement and Employability: Integrating Career Learning through
Cocurricular Experiences in Postsecondary Education. NASPA-Student Affairs
Administrators in Higher Education.
Rowe, A.D. and Zegwaard, K.E., 2017. Developing graduate employability skills and attributes:
Curriculum enhancement through work-integrated learning.
Winberg, C and et.al., 2018. Developing employability in engineering education: a systematic
review of the literature. European Journal of Engineering Education. pp.1-16.
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