Community engagement: from debate to dialogue

By Tamarack Institute

Engagement practitioners are experiencing significant changes in how we engage communities. Among other patterns, there is a growing sense of polarization, intolerance, and hate which can cause significant harm, fear, and can reduce the desire for groups to work together.

At the same time, we know that community engagement is a pathway to building equity. We need to engage authentically. We need to centre the voices of people who are closest to the issues we're working to solve. We need to work together. Diverse perspectives are important for solution-making, and finding ways to break the divide are necessary at local scales to find ways of moving forward. We have to create opportunities for dialogue—for understanding.

The world needs you. We wish to invite you to consider your role and empower you in creating spaces for healthy dialogue. Join us to:

• Learn techniques to help you navigate polarisation in real time when facilitating engagement; create shared realities (or shared language) between those holding different perspectives and increase the chances of healthy dialogue.
• Consider how to build relationships and reduce barriers to engagement
• Frame polarized situations to create the conditions to move from debate to dialogue
• Increase your knowledge of consensus-based and dialogue practices

what will you learn?

Understand the trends in community engagement - Explore the trends in community engagement—see what’s emerging across the field and make sense of how engagement practitioners can respond.

Create the enabling environment for dialogue - Take stock of what barriers your community members are facing and what you can do to support their involvement. It’s much easier to build energy and momentum when there’s a sense of hope; when something feels possible. When you’re not needing to fight or defend. Learn ways to re-frame a situation to invite people in and engage in dialogue rather than debate.

Foster spaces for relationship-building, listening, and empathy - Through the process of relating, people can move from advocacy mode into dialogue mode. Learn facilitation techniques to support active listening, awareness-building, and reflection to build empathy.

Develop your understanding of dialogue-based practices - Explore how different methods of engagement can be used to enable dialogue and discernment towards a shared goal. Learn ways to make consensus-based group decisions and check levels of agreement among a group.