Age UK's Community Engagement: Strategies and Influencing Factors

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Age UK's community engagement strategies, focusing on the importance of stakeholder relationships and the use of social media platforms to enhance community welfare. It discusses Age UK's programs aimed at supporting older people, highlighting the principles of careful planning, inclusion, and transparency. The report examines how social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are utilized to engage stakeholders, raise awareness, and facilitate collaboration. It also identifies internal and external factors that influence community development, such as stakeholder trust and external business environment factors. The analysis underscores the significance of community engagement in addressing societal issues and promoting the well-being of older adults, particularly during challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic, with the help of social media platforms.

Community
Engagement 1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Describe project or programme...................................................................................................3
Relationship between the stakeholders and strategies are suitable for engagement...................4
Engagement with the help of Social media platforms................................................................5
Different social media platforms that supports programme .......................................................5
Internal and external factors that influence community development........................................8
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................8
REFERNCES:................................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:..................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The report aims to provide understanding about the significance of community
engagement. It is about working together for the welfare of people belongs to same community
group with similar interest. Community engagement is necessary to make people aware about
own society issues and make them engage to take collaborative efforts. There are a lot of issues
prevailing in the society in terms of unemployment, crimes, unemployment, harassments,
illiteracy and many more. There are many organisation like NGOs or NPOs who take participate
in the welfare of community by providing opportunities for volunteers. It is necessary to
participate in these programmes through engaging in various events and programmes. This report
is going to discuss about the Age UK which is a charitable trust who founded in 2009. it supports
community by helping to aged group of society (Fink, 2018). It is one of the largest charitable
organisation of UK who support aged people. The report will provide many changes who are
faced by the organisation and how it could be resolved.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Describe project or programme
Community engagement programmes are one of the crucial programme for the society
who look for the development of community. These programmes provide many resources,
knowledge as well as assistance which would be helpful to eradicate negative consequences to
get better well being of people. Community engagement is the concept of working together to
share same values, beliefs and thoughts for working collaboratively (Forrester, 2019). There are
many reasons to establish community engagement programmes such as crime reduction, giving
education and awareness and understand the perception of others as well. These programmes
require much resources, rime, cost and efforts in order to drive best results from the participation
of different individuals. The programme or project run by Age UK is supported by many
shareholders interest, community volunteering in order to provide great support to older people.
The main purpose of this programme is to provide a better living to the people who are left out
from home and could not survive in the older age. For that reason, the Age UK has formed this
programme to provide effective resources, care and need to the age people. As in this age, people

feel lonely and helpless due to family criticism, discrimination, monetary issues and many other
internal affairs. Therefore, it is require to encourage engagement of older people which will
enhance the positivity in community. There are various best practices derived from this
programme and how it is beneficial through the stakeholders participation that are described
below:
 As per the principle of careful planning and preparing for community engagement, Age
UK has effective plans to support older people through defining their purpose i.e. to
eliminate internal affairs and provide care to these people. In this stakeholders
participation is important (Fohner, Volk, and Woodahl, 2019). They are the key people
who directly gets in contact wit age people to feel them valued by spending time. They
get guidance and support from Age UK in requirement of any resources or investing in
relevant practice.
 As per the principle about Inclusion and Demographic Diversity, the programme of Age
UK support diversified values. They listen to each person voice and perception to identify
their problems in well manner. The organisation derive best practice through
accompanying older people at many locations so that, they would not feel discomfort or
inconvenience. The involvement of community engagement is effective as there are
diversified personality who belongs to different culture and values.
 Transparency and trust are the main principles of community engagement which shows
that shareholder participation is beneficial to communicate and carry out effective
practice in the community (Di Napoli, Dolce, and Arcidiacono, 2019). This results in
keeping trust over community programmes and people would be encouraged to take
participate more in Age UK which is necessary to expand community services across
wide areas.
Relationship between the stakeholders and strategies are suitable for engagement
In the field of community engagement, shareholders relations are most essential for the
organisation. As the term community participation is all about maintaining relations with people
to get benefit of together efforts (Adhikari, Pell, and Cheah, 2020). Relationship are necessary in
community practices which involve mutual understanding, efforts and well being of
shareholders. The much they will get happy, the more they will put their best efforts in resolving
community issues. Therefore, strategies play vital role in keeping these relations well. There is

requirement of essential practices for Age UK in building positive relations with stakeholders. So
that, social media strategies are most helpful that keeps the people in contact with each other. It
helps in creating awareness, sharing thoughts and ideas and research about relevant knowledge.
The use of social media and internet is become extensive day by day which involve active
engagement of stakeholders and carry out effective community practices.
Engagement with the help of Social media platforms
Community engagement practices is being effective with the use of social media
platforms. Digitalisation is rapidly rising in the whole world which helps in keeping the people
connected with each other. Social media platforms are one of the effective channels to grow
digitally. It involve participation of large number of people across the world. It is an effective
tool to engagement people for community welfare (Wang, Liao, Zheng, and 2019). Age UK is
taking much advantage of the social media platforms which are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to
support welfare of older people. Social media has much power to regulate the content in all over
the world and people gets the updates within a seconds. Therefore, posts, videos, blogs are are
main element of social media content that attract people interest. The Age UK is undertaking
use of these channels in order to engage with stakeholders and acknowledge them about
organisation practice. This makes them connected and feel valued (Kim, Newman, and Jiang,
2020). As there are a lot of activities and functions performed by Age UK across different
location bin the country. So it require often communication and interaction with stakeholders
which become easy with the use of social media. The other charitable organisation, volunteers or
investors get attracted through organisation blogs and post and make their contribution for
community welfare.
In the time of Covid-19, Age UK has taken potential benefit of channels like Facebook
and website to provide necessary information to the community. In order to assess all the
promotions after pandemic, the organisation able to interact with older people and provide them
assistance through communication, playing games and make them indulge in activities to reduce
family pressure and negativity.
Different social media platforms that supports programme
Due to the excessive growth of digitalisation, there are various social media platforms
which are beneficial in many ways. Charitable organisation, NGOs and community programmes
are growing by promoting through social media channels which enables growth and wide reach

into community. It promotes interaction, relations, communication and collaboration. There are
various social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. All the digital
channels are effectively utilised by Age UK in order to engage stakeholders, make people
connect and carry out collaborative working effectively. This helps in bringing positive solutions
and avoid confusions. Social media involves participation of large audience which raise the
purpose and objectives in the overall world (Shackleton, 2018). Audience will get engage in
more number and wants to particulate in the charitable programmes. Age UK is presently using
all the social media tools which emphasize on their working and provide many opportunities to
make people aware about the well-being of older people. It helps them to eradicate issues from
community and promote encouragement to be together with love and prosperity towards each
other. For that instance, the organisation runs many campaigns and blogs on the website to
support growth of community engagement (Parker, 2020). They launch attractive campaign for
Christmas to eliminate the loneliness of people and ascertain help from public to make their life
brighter. Also, it helps the Age UK to raise funds for important activities and resolve community
issues. In the time of Covid-19, the organisation making effective use of social media to interact
with help seekers and older people who wants care and affection.
The stakeholders play vital role in carry out effective practices in order to provide support
and utmost care to older people (World Health Organization, 2017). There is requirement of
many skills that will be beneficial to achieve the organisational objectives in term of community
welfare. As it is one of the important concern in the society which require soft and potential

skills which are in favour of society members. Interpersonal skills are the most required as social
media images and post must require communication and interaction will people to influence
them. So that, the stakeholders of Age UK must have these skills to accomplish their main
motive of engaging large people and contribute in their donation funds and charity. These social
media platforms helps the company to raising funds even in the time of Covid-19 when people
are home less, unemployed and facing homesickness. The time of pandemic was very crucial for
older people who tries to manage their life who do not have family or children (Saltmarsh,
2017). Also, those who are apart from family were also feel burdened. Every organisation needs
to maintain professional behaviour while talking with shareholder or performing any activities.
There are many benefits of social media platforms which are described below:
Community participants: The social media platforms has helped the Age UK in
community participation across wide areas social media has much power to reach number of
people simultaneously which is beneficial for the Age UK to support older people (Bracic,
2018). It provide opportunity to their help seekers to get interact with their family or friends
which will make them feel valued. In elder age, people want communication to reduce their
loneliness which became possible through engaging a group of people together through social
interaction.
Collaboration: this is a vital need for every organisation to expand their reach.
Collaboration is rapidly rising due to the rise in social media and technology. It helps the
community stakeholders to get interact with other institution like NGO and work on the mutual
objectives to bring better welfare in the society (Farner, 2019). Age UK has took advantage of
this benefit by collaborating with many other organisation like New helm, UNICEF and many
more.
Socio-cultural integration: this is also a benefit for Age UK as social cultural
integration is must to aware the society about the conditions of elder people. They seek
assistance from general public through social media channels to make people engage to think
about the welfare of society.
Internal and external factors that influence community development
There are various internal and external factors which influence to the community development.
Internal factors are those which could be manage or change by the Age UK. It shows how

organisation functional internally. Whereas, external factors are uncertain and risky which might
impact on development of community programme.
Internal factors: these factors all the internal resources, members and function which
impact on the Age UK. The managers needs to adopt forward looking approach to forecast the
future consequences and carry out work activities according to the strategies. Stakeholders trust,
conflicts and discrimination are being issues in the community development.
External factors: these factors are those which has direct and indirect impact of the
business environment (Weerts, 2019). This includes members, society, technology, legal
obligations and many more. The managers must assist these issues through forward approaches
which undertake modernization and avoid uncertainties.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that community engagement is essential part for the
development of society. It is required to carry out practices which would eliminate any negativity
from society and every person live life happily. Therefore, the report has identified that social
media play vital role in engaging stakeholders, maintaining relationship and resolve internal and
external environment crises.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
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.
Adhikari, B., Pell, C. and Cheah, P.Y., 2020. Community engagement and ethical global health
research. Global Bioethics, 31(1), pp.1-12.
Kim, G., Newman, G. and Jiang, B., 2020. Urban regeneration: Community engagement process
for vacant land in declining cities. Cities, 102, p.102730.
Parker, P.S., 2020. Ella Baker's Catalytic Leadership: A Primer on Community Engagement and
Communication for Social Justice (Vol. 2). Univ of California Press.
World Health Organization, 2017. WHO community engagement framework for quality, people-
centred and resilient health services (No. WHO/HIS/SDS/2017.15). World Health
Organization.
Bracic, A., 2018. For better science: The benefits of community engagement in research. PS:
Political Science & Politics, 51(3), pp.550-553.
Weerts, D.J., 2019. Resource development and the community engagement professional:
Building and sustaining engaged institutions. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and
Engagement, 23(1), pp.9-34.
Farner, K., 2019. Institutionalizing Community Engagement in Higher Education: A Case Study
of Processes Toward Engagement. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and
Engagement, 23(2), pp.147-152.
Shackleton, J., 2018. Preparedness in diverse communities: Citizen translation for community
engagement. Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018, pp.400-406.
Saltmarsh, J., 2017. A collaborative turn: Trends and directions in community engagement.
In Learning through community engagement (pp. 3-15). Springer, Singapore.
Wang, J., Liao, J., Zheng, S. and Li, B., 2019. Examining drivers of brand community
engagement: the moderation of product, brand and consumer
characteristics. Sustainability, 11(17), p.4672.
Fohner, A.E., Volk, K.G. and Woodahl, E.L., 2019. Democratizing precision medicine through
community engagement. Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, 106(3), p.488.

Forrester, S.H., 2019. Community engagement in music education: Preservice music teachers’
perceptions of an urban service-learning initiative. Journal of Music Teacher
Education, 29(1), pp.26-40.
Fink, L.D., 2018. Reconceptualizing faculty development in service-learning/community
engagement: Exploring intersections, frameworks, and models of practice. Stylus
Publishing, LLC.