Understanding your community is essential to the success of your Centre. A strong understanding of who your community is and what they want will help guide your strategy, programming, and fundraising. While there are many models for community development and engagement, they all aim to encourage organisations to consider who their community is and how they can best understand that community. Community engagement is, in short, about building mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the community it serves. 

This session will provide an overview of community engagement, and will cover:

• What community engagement is and why it's important
• The difference between community engagement and development 
• Deficit vs strength-based models (and why strength-based is the way to go)
• How to use community engagement in your planning, reporting, and fundraising