What is community engagement?

Empowering communities

A good community-engagement process actively encourages community members to participate in improving their environment. This participation fosters trust and a sense of belonging and promotes civic responsibility, resulting in stronger and more resilient communities.

Inclusive decision-making

Community engagement guarantees that all community members’ viewpoints, interests, and concerns, especially those of marginalised groups, are considered in decision-making processes. This inclusive approach promotes fairness, lowers inequities, and aids in developing more-equitable policies and services.

Improving project outcomes

Involving the community in developing, implementing, and evaluating programs results in more successful and long-term effects. Projects become more relevant and adaptable to local requirements by tapping into community members’ knowledge, expertise, and lived experiences.

Enhancing communication and collaboration

A substantial engagement process promotes open communication and collaborative problem-solving. Community engagement fosters relationships, improves networks, and stimulates cooperation among varied stakeholders to enhance social cohesiveness and collective action.

Increasing trust and transparency

Participating in decision-making processes promotes transparency and accountability. Individuals’ trust in institutions and groups increases when they believe their opinions are heard. This trust helps develop solid relationships and long-term cooperation between communities and diverse sectors.

Promoting innovation and creativity

Involving members of the community brings a variety of viewpoints, information, and skills to the table. This encourages invention and creativity, allowing for the creation of more comprehensive and effective solutions to complex problems.

Improving public health

Community involvement is critical to improving public-health outcomes. Interventions become more responsive to community needs when community members are involved in health-promotion programs, decision-making, and policy creation.

Stimulating sustainable development

By incorporating social, economic, and environmental issues into decision-making, community participation contributes to sustainable development. Projects become more in tune with the local context by integrating community members, fostering long-term sustainability, and reducing negative impacts.

GHD continues its mission to help address the world’s biggest challenges in water, power, and communities. We are committed to helping our clients achieve their goals while helping their respective communities.

Our integrated teams are equipped to handle the needs of communities throughout the world by linking our global network of capacity across GHD. Our Future Communities specialists work across typologies, geographies, and markets to help our clients set the groundwork for future success, from booming cities to rural towns, expanding suburbs to distant villages.

Our engagement with different communities around the globe has allowed us to improve our services. GHD in the Community (GITC), our corporate social responsibility program, aims to have a positive social and environmental influence on the communities in which we operate.

Making a difference in the US and Canada

GHD supports an increasing number of causes, including Habitat for Humanity, American Heart Association, Take Your Kids to Work/Earth Day event, Sick Kids Hospital, MS Society, Siena/Francis House, CANstruction, Movember, Pierre Lavoie Challenge, Heart & Stroke Foundation, Vision Research, Never Alone Foundation, Volunteers for Youth Justice, Women’s Crisis Services, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, and more.

GHD supports an increasing number of causes, including Habitat for Humanity, American Heart Association, Take Your Kids to Work/Earth Day event, Sick Kids Hospital, MS Society, Siena/Francis House, CANstruction, Movember, Pierre Lavoie Challenge, Heart & Stroke Foundation, Vision Research, Never Alone Foundation, Volunteers for Youth Justice, Women’s Crisis Services, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, and more.

Assisting Indigenous people

GHD is making a difference in Indigenous communities. Our ten-year cooperation with CareerTrackers in Australia has resulted in 45 professional internships for Indigenous university students. We also took part in NAIDOC Week activities and collected hampers for Koori Court Program participants. The Clontarf Foundation in Western Australia assists year 12 Aboriginal students.

Supporting disaster relief

We actively help in disaster-relief programs. We took part in assisting the victims of the Valley Fire in Northern California in the United States. We collaborated with Sydney Water to donate over 300 bales of hay to drought-stricken farms in Australia. As a part of our collaboration with Red Australia, our personnel were deployed to Nepal following an earthquake, and Vanuatu to aid with drought relief. We assisted the WHO in responding to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Visit our website to learn more about how we can make things better for the future of communities around the world.

Articles referenced

^{Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education n.d., ‘What is community engagement’, retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://aese.psu.edu/research/centers/cecd/engagement-toolbox/engagement/what-is-community-engagement}

^{GHD n.d., ‘Engagement, Communication and Comunities’, retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://communications.ghd.com/sustainability/engagement-communication-and-communities.html}

^{GHD n.d., ‘Future communities’, retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://communications.ghd.com/sustainability/future-communities.html}

^{Plan H n.d., Community engagement’, retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://planh.ca/take-action/healthy-society/public-involvement/page/community-engagement}