Community Engagement vs. Community Participation: Understanding the Key Differences
BY CARA-MARIE FINDLAY
PRINCIPAL
When developing social change initiatives, understanding the distinction between community engagement and community participation is essential. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they reflect different approaches to involving communities in decision-making, planning, and project implementation.
At Findlay House Global (FHG), we prioritize strategic communication that promotes meaningful connections, builds trust, and re-powers communities. This article explores the key differences between community engagement and community participation, emphasizing their distinct roles in social impact initiatives.
What is Community Engagement?
Community engagement is a proactive process where institutions—such as governments, non-profits, and corporations—actively seek to involve community members in decision-making and collaboration.
The institution takes the lead, creating structured opportunities for dialogue, feedback, and involvement.
At FHG, we view true community engagement as more than just consultation—it requires an intentional effort to understand community needs, perspectives, and aspirations. This approach ensures that initiatives align with the realities of the people being served.
Key Features of Community Engagement:
✔ Institution-led: The responsibility falls on the organization to establish and maintain engagement.
✔ Inclusive & Strategic: Effective engagement prioritizes diverse voices, especially those from disadvantaged or underrepresented groups.
✔ Ongoing Process: Engagement is not a one-time event; it requires continuous dialogue, relationship-building, adaptation, and closing the loop by following up.
Why Community Engagement Matters:
When done well, community engagement builds trust, strengthens partnerships, and ensures that projects reflect the community’s values and needs. Institutions that actively engage communities are better positioned to develop sustainable, high-impact solutions.
What is Community Participation?
In contrast, community participation refers to the voluntary involvement of community members in initiatives, activities, or decision-making. Unlike community engagement, participation is driven by the community’s choice, motivation, and willingness to be involved.
Here, the responsibility is with community members—they decide whether or not to participate based on their interests, needs, and perceived benefits.
Key Features of Community Participation:
✔ Community-driven: Participation happens when individuals feel invested in an issue or project.
✔ Self-determined: Community members decide how and when they will engage.
✔ Essential for Sustainability: Initiatives that encourage authentic participation lead to stronger, more resilient communities.
Why Community Participation Matters:
When people actively choose to participate, they contribute local knowledge, lived experiences, and a sense of ownership—key factors in driving long-term impact. Participation promotes a sense of agency (feeling of control over one's own actions), self-reliance, and a deeper connection to the outcomes of a project.
Key Differences Between Community Engagement and Community Participation
Why Understanding the Difference Matters
For organizations and institutions working toward social impact, distinguishing between community engagement and community participation is critical. At Findlay House Global, we use this distinction to design strategies that re-power communities while advancing effective institutional collaboration.
How Institutions Can Bridge the Gap:
Prioritize Meaningful Engagement: Move beyond one-way communication—create inclusive spaces for dialogue and collaboration.
Encourage Authentic Participation: Ensure community members feel valued, heard, and motivated to take part in shaping their future.
Cultivate Long-Term Relationships: Engagement and participation should complement each other to drive lasting, community-led change.
Conclusion
We believe that true, sustainable impact happens when communities are not just engaged, but actively participating in shaping their futures. While community engagement and community participation serve different roles, they are interconnected processes that, when combined, lead to stronger, more resilient communities.
By understanding and applying these concepts effectively, institutions can ensure that their development efforts are truly people-centered, inclusive, and sustainable.
Ready to build stronger community connections?
Findlay House Global specializes in strategic communication, social and behavior change, and community-driven development.
Contact us today to explore how we can help you bridge the gap between institutions and communities!
Is Localisation Just Another Form of Tokenism?
BY CARA-MARIE FINDLAY
PRINCIPAL
Localisation seems to be one of the latest buzzwords in the field of Development. And as is the case with many other terms—for example, “participatory”, and even “Development” itself—there is no standard definition.
In order to properly define the ideal of localisation, one should consider when and how localisation made it to the international Development agenda.
USAID Administrator, Samantha Power, was sworn into office as the 19th Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021. On 4th of November 2021, Administrator Power gave a speech at George Town University, in which she said:
“…if we truly want to make aid inclusive, local voices need to be at the center of everything we do.”
However, Administrator Power’s comment is not the first time, a prominent figure in the field has spoken on this need.
At the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that Development, and humanitarian action on a whole should be:
“as local as possible, [and] as international as necessary.”
Ideally, the localisation of Development would look like a shift in funding, power, and responsibilities of Development efforts towards more “grassroots” and other community-based organisations (CBOs). Thus, community members would be the decision-makers of the programs and services that support the needs they have identified; and they would be consulted at every stage of the project, from design through implementation.
Unfortunately, simply talking about the need for localisation is not enough to make it a reality.
Numerous practitioners in the Global South have spoken about the need for more equitable treatment within the Development and aid industries for years (the decolonisation of Development), before localisation ever made it to international agendas.
But when does the “good idea” of localisation become just another form of tokenism (a symbolic gesture meant more to deflect criticism than to actually accomplish a goal)?
Maha Shuayb makes a good case that the localisation agenda could simply be “a convenient response to increasing calls for the [Development and] aid sector to decolonise.”
Unless we decolonise Development and deal with its extractive practices and its colonial heritage, the ideal of localisation will never be realised.
Local Community Media and New Media Technologies
BY ZIPPORAH ORBISI, CAPM
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS
Since the turn of the millennium, technology has steadily been ushering in a new world order. One where distance is of no consequence and seconds are being commodified as soon as we wake up.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has found its way into our everyday lives, shaping our perspectives through monitoring what we view, look up, and read online. It creeps into our homes disguised as a form of mass media that feels very personal and even community-spirited.
The world wide web articles and information shaping our lives through AI could be written and informed by people thousands of miles away, with no real connection to the media being portrayed, or its effects on your household. And sometimes the human connection is several times removed, because it is AI data mining software created by people that is actually feeding data to another other AI software that is doing the writing on a particular subject that comes to the top of your social media feed or search results.
Although the effects of this mass media are physically harmless, its long-term effects could prove quite crippling. (Here’s one example). When a person is being fed an angle of “knowledge” without having all the information or being given all sides of the arguments or truths, it can sway, lead, and separate the masses. The power of such media in the hands (or in the case of AI, algorithms) of distant and often faceless hosts is quite a scary reality.
Conversely, community media—media that is owned and controlled by the community in response to local needs (Langlois & Dubois, 2005, p.7)—helps to create true awareness, togetherness, and communal citizenship on a micro level.
When you listen to your local radio, the voices that call out your 5 o’clock rush hour traffic information feel like those of your distant family. There is a certain level of comfort and trust that comes from the voices of the newscasters that you hear on a daily basis, or the authors that you read daily in your local Sentinel.
Community media is a platform that comes with a responsibility to families, local businesses, and friends. Many of our community media hosts can even be seen in-person weekly visiting the local Farmers Market or shopping for home supplies at a neighborhood home improvement store, without your local paparazzi (which in today's world, even a 10-year-old with a smartphone qualifies as).
Nostalgically speaking, I remember my daily excitement to see chief meteorologist Tom Terry come on and forecast my week with a smile.
Those days have gone for many children due to new media technologies. We have AI home assistants to tell us the weather before we are even fully out of bed now, and phones that usher our way through traffic.
The convenience of new media technologies pulls at the heartstrings and wallets of humanity. What we once thought of as distant, futuristic AI technologies is today actually deeply ingrained into the lives of people living in the Global North, all using the tactic of convenience.
This tactic is giving way to the new world of mass media, one that doesn't even rely on 24-hour coverage from cable media giants like BBC, CNN, or MSNBC.
Community media is suffering at the hands of this new technology, and becoming a dying fashion of sorts.
Although community-based media pales in comparison to new media technologies in terms of reach, because community media caters to a smaller audience, the platform that it offers many marginalized and developing communities has a major impact. Community-based media gives way to grassroots start-ups, shines a light on local social and political heroes, and helps to facilitate youth empowerment and education for sustainable growth.
In the field of Development sustainability is key. We cannot truly progress if the goals are not able to be met and amplified by the community itself. Particularly in marginalized and underserved communities, the use of community-based media is a crucial way to advocate for change and engage those who are affected the most.