Involving seldom listened to groups
The following are some ideas to help you involve seldom listened to / hard to reach groups in active engagement processes.
The key to all these techniques is to put the people you want to reach, not your own organisation's needs, at the centre of the process.
It’s also a good idea to be creative about how you enable people to contribute. And remember the people taking part aren't academic subjects but partners in a process.
Here are some ideas
Its good to talk
One of the best ways to engage seldom listened to / hard to reach groups is also the most obvious - simply have a two way conversation. You can really find out what people think by asking them a question and listening to their reply.
Talking is the most accessible way of engaging because it is the most flexible, friendly and immediate. Simply going to an event where there will be lots of people you want to reach is a good place to start. You will often have to ask permission before hand but more often than not community organisations through to informal groups really welcome people taking the time to get to know them. Using a conversation strategy can demonstrate to a community or group that you take their views seriously. There are of course lots of different ways to talk. You can meet them face-to-face, talk over the phone or use new technology like MSN messenger
Get the basics right
People are often excluded from traditional engagement processes because they are designed badly. Ensuring that you do everything you can to make these techniques as accessible and transparent as possible can pay real dividends.
For example, surveys are a good way of consulting with large numbers of people but they are often confusing or poorly designed. This can exclude people with communication impairments, people with low literacy and people who speak English as a second language. The key to creating an accessible survey, both on and off line, is to make them easy to read, easy to understand and easy to complete. If you want to make sure you have got it right take the time to test it with a group of people you want it to reach and then listen to what they have to say. The same goes for all forms of engagement from large consultation meetings through to focus groups. lf you want to make sure that you are reaching the people you want to, involve them in developing and testing the process.
Try something different
Formal engagement processes can appear completely detached from people’s everyday experiences. This is partly because of the way engagement processes are set up. People’s ‘voices’ are filtered and distorted to meet the needs of the organisations involved. There are many things you can do to start developing informal consultation approaches. Why not ask people to send you a photograph of on an issue that affects them rather than attending a focus group.
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updated: 31/03/2008
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