Community Engagement

You and/or your organization arrived here because you want to make a difference in the lived experience of people, and you care about doing it equitably. Welcome! Before we dig into the best practices, let’s answer the question why? Why do we need guidance on community partnership? Well, in short, savior complex. Traditional community engagement, albeit mission trips, service learning, the non-profit industrial complex, or a well-meaning initiative, is often rooted in an outsider thinking they know what is best for the community and enacting policies, processes, and procedures that have no relevance or reverence for the community. We are here because we do not want to duplicate problematic engagement. Instead, we want to hang up the savior complex, begin valuing communities as the owners of their intellectual property, treat community members as experts of their own experiences, and establish good faith and trust by truth-telling and reconciliation. We must re-imagine the social in social justice, or the things we do in everyday interactions that humanize each other and prevent discursive, legislative, economic, and physical violence. We also want to engage in efforts that benefit the community more than harm them, benefit the community more than the institution, and are prolonged and prioritize relationship building.

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The Community Engagement Tool Kit © is a series of questionnaires, activities, directives, and definitions to assist researchers, organizers, activists, scientists, educators, and practitioners in creating partnerships with community members to conduct research and other activities that bring about change in an equitable way that honors community members experience, history, knowledge, and capacity. 

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