Community Engagement: Strategies and Benefits for Stakeholders

This report discusses community engagement and its benefits for stakeholders. It highlights Age UK's initiative to help senior citizens through social media and digital mediums. The report also provides recommendations for successful community engagement.

COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Community engagement..............................................................................................................3
Areas of community engagement and standards for it................................................................3
Project and its details...................................................................................................................4
Stakeholders’ participation and benefits......................................................................................5
Digital mediums to support outreach in community...................................................................6
Internal and external factors........................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
The report is on community engagement. Community engagement is a step taken by an
organisation for engaging community with different methods and measures for identification of a
challenge and assisting in overcoming them. The principles of engagement and benefits of
participation of stakeholders have been described. The relation between the shareholders and the
strategies for their engagement with social media have been highlighted. An overview of the
social media programs for customer engagement have been discussed. Age UK foundation has
been taken as the organisation for study. It is a charity organisation based near Newham, UK and
has been working to provide support to the senior citizens of age group above 60. Services
include helping the elderly get access to schemes provided by government to them, health care
benefits, pension form filing and getting it to reach the citizens and helping them to connect
through social media in time of pandemic to keep them in connect and removing isolation.
Community engagement
Community engagement means for better engagement of the community for gaining long-term
and outcomes that are sustainable. It employs a range of strategies and tools for ensuring success.
It places premium on fostering and trust enhancement as an element in long-term governance.
Areas of community engagement and standards for it
Agenda: The changes in engagement has influence on the focus of projects of how they were
started and the potential for obtaining funding. New venues for collaborating were identified and
funding requires engagement of community makes it accessible (Age, 2020).
Delivery and design: Improvements for studying tools, design, representation, data analysis and
collection can be implemented. Interventions which are new and casual links may be identified
by community having knowledge of circumstances which are local. The project’s efficiency and
speed of project may be enhanced by swiftly engagement of participants and identification of
information sources.
Change and implementation: Improvements may be done in way research findings are utilised
for bringing change and change capacity and maintaining partnerships of long-term which can be
expanded.
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Ethics: Opportunities can be created with engagement for improving process of consent,
identification of pitfalls that are ethical and process creation for resolving problems ethical as
they arise.
Public in the project: The skills and knowledge of the public in the project may be enhanced and
the contributions may be recognised. The efforts bring goodwill and assistance in laying the
groundwork for collaborations subsequent.
Academic partners: They can gain understanding of the issue and role appreciation and the value
of involvement of community that may result in career benefits directly. Also, project insights
relevance and the benefits to be gained from it which may result in opportunities rise for
disseminating findings and the use widely (Age, U.K., 2020).
Individual participants in research: The way studies are carried out have to be improved and this
makes easier for participation and bringing benefits to the participants.
Community organisations: The organisation gain knowledge that is enhanced, high profile in
community, having more linkage with community members and organisational capacity which is
new. The benefits may create goodwill and assist in laying groundwork for collaborating
subsequently.
General public: They are likely to be receptive to research and generate greater benefits from it.
Project and its details
Age UK near Newham is a charity organisation which caters for the needs of old people living in
UK. The charity is for providing moral support to the elderly who at this age feel isolated and
need attention and medical care. We as a group of volunteers shall help in conducting the event
of social media education (Age, 2019).
Age UK realises that the elder people have been living in isolation in the pandemic period. There
has been no communication present amongst them with their age group and has made them more
vulnerable to diseases. There is need for communication to be present amongst them and the
organisation has taken initiative to make the elderly join social media and have conversation with
their group members of their age. This way they can help them overcome isolation and converse
with their friends and colleagues about their health and well-being. In addition, they can also use
apps for meditation and yoga exercises which can assist them in maintaining their health
concerns. Age UK has also taken initiative to get the elder people registered for vaccine for
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covid. The elderly can be given training by our group to use the social media and they can be
taught by volunteers from the charity organisation to operate the social medium like Facebook,
Twitter and WhatsApp. Groups of their age group shall be made where they can share their
thoughts and come out of isolation. This can help in raising their morale and make them happy
mentally. Thus, it can be seen that the community members here are the elderly age group above
the age of 60. Social mediums like the social websites will be used by us to make an impact for
addressing the issue of companionship in elderly and training of the social web tools is being
provided to the community (Di Napoli, I., Dolce, P. and Arcidiacono, C., 2019).
Stakeholders’ participation and benefits
The stakeholders can be identified to be the government as the external stakeholder as
government has to see after the senior citizens through old age schemes. Charity organisations
like Age UK help in sharing the work load and apart from the above, mentioned initiative of the
organisation, they also help to get the pension schemes and forms filled up, information of these
passed on to the needy elderly people and other medical benefits to reach them. Other
stakeholder can be identified as the employees of the organisation who can be classified as the
internal stakeholders. They are concerned with the objectives being achieved and success of the
organisation. Apart from this, management can be classified as an internal stakeholder. People
who are philanthropists are external stakeholders who contribute to the charity organisations.
Participation of these stakeholders is necessary for the charity to have source of funds and keep
its operations going smoothly. Government help in sponsoring programs for awareness, loans at
less interest rates being sanctioned can help the organisation. Management policies to help the
foundation grow strong with employees’ support can help organisation become successful.
Donors donating to the charity can help solve fund crisis.
Social media can be used for stakeholder engagement as through this, the organisation can reach
out to external stakeholders. Posting of blogs and social messages can assist in getting attention
of the public and government towards the cause of charity. The social medium can assist in
letting the stakeholders know of the schemes of the organisation. We have the skills of blog
posting and shall offer our services for the event. For instance, Age UK launching a new scheme
in which there is movement towards getting the senior citizens vaccinated. It can take assistance
of social media like twitter and Facebook to tell about it. As the post circulates, the stakeholders
in form of government and donors shall see it and extend help in monetary or volunteering form
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for the cause. Volunteers may come in providing service to the elderly citizens. This way, they
will be able to gather support for providing services to people in distant areas too. Government
shall also support the cause by providing help to make the scheme successful (Di Napoli, I.,
Dolce, P. and Arcidiacono, C., 2019).
There are corporates who do social service in form of their acts of corporate social responsibility
and by seeing the campaign on social media, they would also like to join in the event and take
sponsorship of this event. We can also post blog for corporates to donate for the event.
Digital mediums to support outreach in community
It has been observed through research that people in the age group of 55-60 were adept in using
smartphone. However, people in age group of 65 plus didn’t make use of internet. 56% of people
had not utilised internet as of recent in age group of 75 plus and 36% of the people above the age
of 65 had not made use of internet. To analyse, it can be said that 79% of the population of 65
plus had not made use of internet. The factors explaining the digital exclusion is:
A) Income being low.
B) Challenge of mobility
C) People don’t know the functioning.
Age UK thus has strategy for increase in digital inclusion by influencing the senior citizens to
understand the importance and how they can be utilised in their daily lives.
Age UK is using the strategy of social media for people in the age group of 55-65 who can help
in teaching the use of social media to people in the age group of 75 plus. There has been a trend
increasing of smartphone usage and Age UK is also bringing in youth volunteers with linking to
universities and youth foundations where the youth can spare time and volunteer for helping
elderly understand the social web tools. Here, we shall assist the organisation in doing so by
sending our group for tutoring. The idea is to remove isolation and help elderly be in connect
with people of their age group as well as doctors for their medical assistance in pandemic
(Hollebeek, L.D., Juric, B. and Tang, W., 2017.).
The challenge before the organisation is that there are single persons aged 65 plus in households
having low internet access. Here, they have to collaborate with government to increase internet
connection in rural and remote areas.
Use of web tools
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Age UK has been quite successful in getting senior citizens join WhatsApp and form groups.
Some percent of the elder population have been able to make their accounts on Facebook and
started using for posts.
Internal and external factors
Age UK’s launch of One digital project has helped in training people who are in their late 50s
and early 60s and inspire older ones above 75 to take online training. This number has been
reached to 8241 elder citizens involved (Hollebeek, L.D., Juric, B. and Tang, W., 2017.).
One Digital has done recruitment of 4700 digital champions and also assisted 61000 people to
get to learn the digital skills. This involves a forward-looking approach of the organisation
internally as well as externally. Internally organisation wants people who can take online training
and be benefited and training can thus be extended by them acting as internal volunteers for
getting the elderly online. This vision has been successful also. Externally through social media,
company is promoting the scheme and bringing in support for the cause through government and
volunteers. There has been a plan made by our group to support the event and campaign as
follows:
Types of
Services
offered
locally
About the service Delivery Delivery
in
pandemi
c
Challenge
s
How can it be
developed for help?
Advisory
and
Informatio
n
Giving advice and
information about
different topics.
Interaction
directly,
Through
Email
Email,
Through
phone
Motivation, IT
access, Digital
skills
To provide tutorials
Service
Visit
Volunteers come for
meeting elderly and
removing the isolation
Interaction
directly
Calling
through
phone e.g.
WhatsApp
calling
Motivation, IT
access, Digital
skills
Giving information of visit,
making calls on WhatsApp
for making the elder citizens
learning the skill
Computer
sessions of
training
Visits weekly of tutorial
giving of using tablets
and smartphones
Supporting
groups
weekly in
venue of
community
None Motivation, IT
access, Digital
skills
Online tools training and
later on taking them later to
self-operating stage self-
operating for attending
webinars.
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- face to
face
Wellbeing
service
Holistic needs approach Telephone,
direct
interaction
Phone Motivation, IT
access, Digital
skills
Learning to connect through
social sites of media sites
and network making.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that community engagement has been done in a successful manner by Age
UK. The issue of elderly population being neglected has been reflected and ways to overcome
the situation through modern technological means and coordination have been discussed. To
bring people who are elderly in the mainstream of life has been the motto for the organisation
and it has been of help immensely in the current phase of ongoing pandemic. There can be a
future event held up also which can take this campaign forward and generating sponsors through
social media can make it a big success. An event of social media impact in pandemic can be
done with our group participation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
a) Event being held requires planning and resources. Company can take some monetary
resource from own capital and start a donation campaign by encouraging people to come
ahead for the social cause.
b) The promotion can bee done through road shows by our group to spread awareness of the
campaign, place hoardings at places of public visit and also giving advertisements in
newspapers.
c) Online promotion and donation can also be done with collaborating with search engines
like Google, Microsoft to show their ad about event, which our tech team shall assist in.
d) Volunteers can be got from schools and universities with youth motivation to come ahead
for making the event a success. We shall be doing this with our connection with
universities.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Age, U.K., 2020. The impact of COVID-19 to date on older people’s mental and physical
health. Age UK.
Age, U.K., 2019. Later life in the United Kingdom. 2018. URL: www. ageuk. org.
uk/Documents/EN-GB/Factsheets/Later_Life_UK_factsheet. pdf.
Di Napoli, I., Dolce, P. and Arcidiacono, C., 2019. Community trust: A social indicator related to
community engagement. Social Indicators Research, 145(2), pp.551-579.
Hollebeek, L.D., Juric, B. and Tang, W., 2017. Virtual brand community engagement practices:
a refined typology and model. Journal of Services Marketing.
Reynolds, L. and Sariola, S., 2018. The ethics and politics of community engagement in global
health research.
Adhikari, B., Pell, C. and Cheah, P.Y., 2020. Community engagement and ethical global health
research. Global Bioethics, 31(1), pp.1-12.
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