Title: Why is Community Engagement Important? - Bang The Table
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Content: Understood through the values of access and inclusivity, where community members are informed and educated on issues at hand, locals are able to contribute meaningfully to engagement and have the capacity to shape those activities. Building on the ideas of empowerment and participation, people’s wellbeing involves participating meaningfully in all aspects of one’s life. Community engagement, then, ensures that community members have access to valued social settings and activities, feel that they are able to contribute meaningfully to those activities, and develop functional capabilities that enable them to participate fully. By including diverse voices, usually marginalized or overlooked voices are actively empowered within their community to participate in decision making that affects their everyday lives. Community engagement helps local governments to promote sustainable decisions
Community engagement helps governments improve the efficiency, legitimacy and transparency of their decision making. By embracing and encouraging participation, it enables policy makers to make more informed decisions by engaging with, and carefully mapping out the needs, opinions and visions of local communities on issues that matter to them. It promotes sustainable decisions by recognizing and communicating the needs and interests of all participants – including decision makers. This increases acceptance of decisions and community commitment to outcomes as local knowledge from diverse groups shapes and creates inclusive, effective solutions. The flow on effect is increased trust in organizations and governance to make better public decisions. This is especially vital given the declining trust in governments worldwide, which, coupled with the Smart City agenda, creates an opportunity for community engagement to deliver a transformative form of continuous engagement between citizens and governments.