Community Engagement: Skills Development and Employability Report

This report explores the multifaceted concept of community engagement, emphasizing its significance in fostering individual and community development. It defines community and community engagement, highlighting the importance of involving stakeholders in decision-making processes. The report delves into various types of community engagement, such as communities of action, practice, circumstances, and place, and examines the benefits of community involvement, including increased awareness, advocacy, and resource mobilization. It also outlines conditions necessary for successful community engagement, such as collaboration, open communication, and a shared purpose. Furthermore, the report provides recommendations for promoting community engagement and emphasizes the role of social relationships and collective action in achieving positive outcomes. The report underscores the benefits of community involvement and decision-making, including how it can amplify voices and resources. It also defines the pillars of community engagement: building connections, acting with humility, developing understanding, affirming dignity, and pursuing justice. The report's key objective is to provide an understanding of community engagement and skills development for employability.

Running Head: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
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Summary
A lot of people assume that the community is always engaged in activities that involve
them. This is not true as some decisions affecting the community are made far away from the
members of the community. Leaders make decisions even without considering the communities'
wills or at sometimes, the members of the community don't want to get involved. When a good
leader is planning something that affects the community, they involve all the stakeholders in
decision making and planning. This paper will define community, community engagement, types
of community engagement, as well as the impacts of community involvement to the individuals.
Discussion
A community is a group of people with common characteristics such as shared interests,
traditions, experiences, or geography. It is more of a feeling than physical appearance
(Halvorsen, 2018 p. 25). A community is a place, a relationship, an institution, or a feeling.
Engagement in the community can't be measured. For an individual to get involved in the
engagement, they need first to understand what the initiative is about, feel a sense of ownership
of the project, and make an effort to support the project with the resources they have.
Community engagement is the process of involving groups of people that share geographical
locations, cultures, special interests to talk about the circumstances that affect the wellbeing of
these groups (Rosso, 2017 p. 372). It is essential at it helps people contribute to decisions that
affect their lifestyle and their health and also share resources that will help come up with better
ways of development.
Community engagement help bring changes in behavior as well as the environment in the
communities. People get involved and partner in making decisions that affect them as well as
bringing about development. The purpose of community engagement is the building of trust, the

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creation of better communication among the members of the community, improve health
outcomes, and mobilize resources (McCarthy, 2017 p. 60). It is believed that people can solve
problems affecting them as long as they do their best and collaborate in these activities.
Importance of Community Engagement
Engagement in the community decision making creates awareness. The individuals get to
know what is going on in their life and the life around them. It gives individuals a chance to
advocate for the ideas they have concerning their lifestyle (Kline, 2018 p. 78). It creates a
platform as well as a method of gathering opinions and advice based on the expertise and
experiences of the members of the community.
Community engagement helps guide the development of the agendas of the project by
identifying information and helps gather revenue and resources to make any community project
efficient and successful. By involving the members of the community in decisions that affect
they are well being, there is a chance that you will get partners and sponsors for the project from
the community. It increases the number of stakeholders that are involved in the project (Maher,
2019 p. 1054). All the involved stakeholders are told about the project and get invited to the
discussions, thereby increasing the knowledge and skills. This also helps in the diversity as
members of the community may not all be the same.
Community members maintain a long-term relationship even after the end of the project.
United members bring development (Kim, 2018 p. 412). Good relationship increases the
capacity to bring change. However, when there is conflict, it is not advisable to depend on
community engagement as the costs become bigger than the benefits likely to be enjoyed. We
find some of the most important stakeholders not participating due to conflicts, and an agreement

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is not reached. Without a final agreement, a project can't go on as those against it will feel
undermined if it is started.
Conditions for Community Engagement
Some conditions have to be present for the community engagement to yield success
without conflicts. The conditions are willing to work with others, open and credible process,
commitment to contribute as well as the common and defined purpose (Brunton, 2017 p. 944).
The purpose most of the time is growth and development. Growth and development help
improve the lives of community members. With all these conditions, a successful project will be
completed, and the fruits of the project enjoyed for a long time by members of the community.
Some conditions are also necessary to make the work easier. They are such as patience,
diplomacy, and flexibility.
Types of Community Engagements
There are different types of engagement of community members in the development and
growth of the community. One of the engagements is the community of action (Bandy, 2016 p.
58). A community of action is a community that has a goal to gather power together and bring
about change in the community. The members share the activities to achieve their goals. The
other type is the community of practice. This is a community of people that participate in similar
activities. This type of community mainly focuses on what is already proven. The other type is
the community of circumstances. This is a type of community that is composed of people with
common challenges that they didn't make but found themselves on the situation. Most of the
time, focus on dealing with the situations they are in and discussing possible solutions (Nicotera,
2019 p. 5). The other type of community can get engaged in the community of place. This
composes a group of people that share the geographical location. These types of community

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members focus on people, activities, and local events as they already live together, and they have
to share events (Halvorsen, 2018 p. 27).
Recommendations
Nobody can live alone for their whole life. Every person needs a small group of people to
depend on or to help each other, maybe at work or at home (Ojha, 2016 p. 281). Each person
must ensure that he or she belongs to a group of individuals that they share common
characteristics. The youths mostly need these groups for employability. You find a group of
youths that have skills but don't have jobs. By coming together, the group can come up with
ways to start their business organization instead of waiting for employment from strangers. This
will help people help each other. Social relationship with other members of the community is a
very important aspect that everyone should embrace. Nobody is entitled to live along in the
community and everyone needs at least a member of the community for close communication.
Togetherness makes things easy in any community and therefore I would recommend at least a
mutual relationship among the members of the community. It is recommended that no one
should act or do things along in a community. It is always important and advisable to involve
other members of the community in any form of communication and association in the
community. This is a clear indication that communities should have programs that would aim at
bringing people together. Some of these community engagement events may include celebrations
and festivals that would bring a large group of people together for the celebration. This is one
fact that would improve the state of community engagement and cooperation.
Conclusion
It is said that two hands are better than one. A community is made up of a group of
hands. As seen earlier, the benefits of getting involved in community activities and decisions

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making has more benefits than challenges. Even when fighting for justice, a community is likely
to be heard more than an individual. The voice is louder, and the resources are multiplied.
Many individuals accept that the socialization with members of the community constantly
occupied with activities that all they need to be part of. This isn't accurate as certain choices
influencing the socialization are made far away from the individuals from the network. Pioneers
settle on choices even without thinking about the networks' wills or at once in a while, the
individuals from the network would prefer not to get included. At the point when a decent
pioneer is arranging something that influences the network, they include all the partners in
dynamic and arranging. The discussion has characterized network, network commitment, and
sorts of network commitment, just as the effects of network inclusion to the people. The
community networks symbolize how the communities should be associated in many aspects.
This is a clear indication that no community can exist along without depending on their
communities. Likewise, no individual within the community can exists without the need of the
other people in the community. Association is the and cooperation is one of the best mutual
relationships that need to be identified and practiced in many communities for the best social
living of people within. The activities involving the community need to be Individuals also learn
from others in the community when discussing solutions to the problems affecting them. You
learn from other individuals that have skills in fields that you have no ideas about, and also you
share your knowledge from the field that you are good at.

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References
Bandy, J., 2016. What is service learning or community engagement. Center for Teaching,
Vanderbilt University. pp. 56-68
Brunton, G. 2017. Narratives of community engagement: a systematic review-derived conceptual
framework for public health interventions. BMC Public Health, 17(1), p.944.
Halvorsen, A.L., 2018. Engaging the community with a project-based approach. Social
Education, 82(1), pp.24-29.
Kim, M., 2018. The effects of perceived online justice on relational bonds and engagement
intention: Evidence from an online game community. Computers in Human Behavior, 84,
pp.410-419.
Kline, C., 2018. From “academic projectitis” to partnership: community perspectives for
authentic community engagement in health professional education. Engaged Scholar
Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 4(1), pp.79-96.
Maher, R., 2019. Squeezing psychological freedom in corporate–community engagement.
Journal of Business Ethics, 160(4), pp.1047-1066.
McCarthy, A., 2017. Engaging the Community: The Green Week Initiative. pp 56-103.
Nicotera, N., 2019. Dedication to community engagement: A higher education conundrum?.
Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 4(1), p.5.
Ojha, H.R., 2016. Delocalizing communities: Changing forms of community engagement in

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natural resources governance. World Development, 87, pp.274-290.
Rosso, E.G., 2017.Community engagement and sport? Building capacity to increase
opportunities for community-based sport and physical activity. Annals of leisure
research, 20(3), pp.349-367.