Strengthening communities

There are different ways of engaging with people, different methodologies and different outcomes. Each one takes work from both sides to get it right but what can come out at the other end are stronger communities.

Dialogue

An effective dialogue is not just one side speaking or one side listening - it’s active listening and acting on what comes up. Communities that we work with have the skills to tell their stories so it takes an extra step for you to listen and act on what they have to say.

Just like other relationships, social media relationships work best as a two-way conversation. But there may need to be a culture shift within your organisation to support you in communicating with rather than communicating at. Equally, your target group may need a package of support to prepare them for the responsibility that’s required for managing effective dialogue.

We have the experience to help you achieve your achieve this and embed it into your organisation.

Consultation

Running a bad consultation is almost as bad as not consulting at all. You can do consultation to people but it’s even better to do it with them. Even better than that is sustaining on-going channels of discussion and feedback.

There are simple and effective ways of embedding consultation conversations into your approach that we can help with.

Co-production

Many hands make light work and many heads can improve service delivery!

There are a whole range of simple and effective ways to work closely with those people on the receiving end of your services to offer you invaluable insights into what’s working and what areas could be improved.

Using social media for community development, consultation and service development has a large number of advantages, as long as you are prepared to give up control to engage in more egalitarian dialogue with service users. After all, a problem shared is a problem solved, and we believe that people are best placed to solve their own problems.