Inclusive and Equitable Engagement: Case Studies, Lessons Learned and Best Practices
By Allison Platt and BreAnne Gale
The 2020 Global Pandemic completely shifted the way that communities conduct public meetings and public outreach. In addition, a rising awareness of race relations and racial injustice throughout the nation has ignited conversations amongst planners about how to truly conduct more inclusive and equitable community engagement and build partnerships with members of our community that have historically been disenfranchised from participating in public processes.
This article explores a few case studies as well as best practices and outreach tools and tips to consider for fostering more inclusive and equitable engagement throughout the West.
CASE STUDIES
Below is a discussion of two case studies that demonstrate ways that local agencies are striving to conduct more inclusive and equitable engagement in the West.
Salt Lake City Listens
Salt Lake City, Utah
As a major western regional hub, Salt Lake City is a leader in employing new and innovative strategies to interact and engage with its constituents and residents. This has become even more important during the Pandemic with the need to maintain communication and trust while acting fast and mostly online.
In order to get information out to the public and listen to what the public was saying over all channels, Salt Lake City rolled out an outreach and engagement platform using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software which allowed for a real-time understanding of public sentiment on a wide variety of topics, from COVID response to a new park project. Through the use of the CRM system and the City’s GIS capabilities, the City was able to bring together public input coming from a variety of sources – phone calls, emails, social media, in-person contact, and more – into a consolidated system that allowed the City to truly understand the extent of the public’s concerns. The City was able to better understand the magnitude of an issue and prioritize their responses accordingly. For example, Was this a sentiment shared by many or just one persistent voice (aka, the squeaky wheel)? How many people shared the concern and to what extent were they being impacted?
This also allowed the City to see which community members were absent from the conversation and adjust their public engagement strategies accordingly, targeting those who may otherwise not have been empowered to speak up. These insights resulted in employing on-the-ground tactics such as geo-targeted, neighborhood-specific, or sometimes demographic-specific and in-person surveys to make sure that everyone was heard. This is truly an example of an equitable input and engagement best practice.
Lesson learned: There are ways to systematically track comments so that you are not just paying attention to the loudest and sometimes most privileged voices in your community.
Downtown Bend, Oregon
Bend Park and Recreation District increases Latinx participation by over 290%
Bend, Oregon is located near the Cascade Mountains of Central Oregon and is well known for its access and proximity to recreational opportunities including beautiful parks and recreational facilities that are operated and managed by the Bend Park and Recreation District (BPRD). In 2014, the District hired a Latino Outreach Specialist, Kathya Avila Choquez, to increase outreach and engagement with the Bend Latino community and ensure that District services are accessible to all, a goal of the organization. Prior to hiring Kathya, the District only had a small handful of Latino families that engaged in their programs. Between 2015 and 2020, the District saw a 290% increase in the number of Latino families served and now engages over 400 Latino families annually. The District has set a performance target to increase the cumulative number of Latino families served by at least 5% annually.
Kathya, their Latino Outreach Specialist, uses a variety of methods including door to door outreach, Facebook, email, direct texts, and newsletters (in English and Spanish) to reach out to local families and ensure that they are aware of district services such as youth sports programs, fitness classes, and recreation scholarships. One key ingredient to her success is that she has been able to build and sustain relationships over time in her role.
Figure 1. Bend Park and Recreation District's historic and projected number of total Latino families served by District outreach efforts.
Kathya is considered as a resource in the Latino community for all community services, not only for recreational opportunities. She believes this is a crucial way to start, maintain, and enhance partnerships across organizations including with the Library and School District. Another success has been the District’s direct implementation of suggestions made by the Latino community such as hiring bilingual instructors and offering family swim lessons for reduced prices at convenient times, typically weekday afternoons and Saturday afternoons. She equates a lot of her success to the commitment at the leadership and management levels of the organization to make services more accessible. While the District has come a long way in increasing Latino participation, Kathya acknowledges there is still a long way to go to ensure access to all, especially to increase access for Latino adults and seniors.
In addition to Latino outreach goals, the Bend Park and Recreation District also has goals to increase the amount of financial assistance to low-income populations by a minimum of 10% annually through continued scholarship program outreach efforts and ensure that the percentage of households that qualify for their scholarships increases every year. The Park District also has a part-time low-income outreach coordinator to enhance engagement with Bend’s low-income community as well.
Lessons learned:
Outreach coordinators that are focused on building relationships can increase participation and trust between your agency and specific demographics!
Leadership and management must be involved and supportive, otherwise changes and new opportunities are very unlikely to occur.
BEST PRACTICES, TOOLS, AND TIPS
1. Invest in relationships, build trust, and follow through.
Make the commitment to invest time and resources into building relationships, trust, and listening. The more that this happens at a leadership/management and even City Council or Board level, the better.
Consider hiring an outreach coordinator that is representative of the population you are trying to engage with (ie. Latino Outreach Coordinator, Accessibility (ADA) Coordinator, Low-Income Population Coordinator).
Outreach coordinators can help build trust especially if they are representative of the population that you want to build trust with.
Understand historical actions that took place in your community: acknowledge them, identify actions to overcome them, and follow through on commitments you make.
Add information about the history of racial injustice into your Comprehensive Plan in the next update.
Celebrate & honor cultural heritage and traditions that are important to your community members such as Día de Los Muertos or Juneteenth.
Consider adding an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement to the beginning of your meeting agenda.
TIP: Before considering a land acknowledgment, make sure you have built a relationship with local and impacted Native communities first. Ask yourself first, what will you do as a result of the acknowledgment you just shared?
Tool: Native Land Map
2. Go to the people!
Go out into the community to get feedback; consider intercept surveys or pop-up events in specific areas of the community
If hosting pop-up or intercept surveys at grocery stores, try to host your event on a date that is within a few days of food stamps being released locally to try to reach disadvantaged community members.
Consider barriers to participation, some common questions to ask yourself as you plan your public outreach event:
Is the time of the event accessible for your target audience?
If hosting an event, does the location require a license, ID, car, or computer to access the event? What are ways to reduce barriers to participation or identify other methods to gain input from folks who face these barriers?
If we have a police officer there to answer questions on public safety, will everyone feel welcome and safe?
During COVID, are there locations where community members that do not have access to a computer or the internet can access the event and how is that being communicated to them?
Offer incentives or stipends for participation (see #3)
If you want to hear from specific communities, particularly disadvantaged groups, pay them for their input/expertise.
3. Pay representative organizations and community members from vulnerable or historically disadvantaged populations for focused input.
TOOL: Are you trying to overcome the status quo of largely white, affluent, and retired committee members? Offer stipends or expense reimbursements for committee members or for community members in listening sessions. This can help cover costs for their participation (time they take off work to participate, childcare and transportation expenses, etc)
TIP: Consider hiring a consultant or partnering with a non-profit agency that can distribute stipends to reduce liability and tax implications
Keep in mind, volunteers are only eligible for protection under the Volunteer Protection Act if they receive less than $500 in annual compensation
If you do develop a stipend program, ensure that you are consistent in providing stipends, meaning you should probably develop a policy around it.
TOOL: Incentives
Offer food, coffee, and water at meetings; consider tailoring food options that are culturally appropriate when seeking input from specific communities or target populations.
Offer gift cards, downtown bucks or other incentives for participation in outreach events, especially intercept events.
Consider partnering with private and non-profit agencies to provide incentives.
Offer social, child friendly, and fun activities at outreach events
Support volunteer leadership with honorariums and public acknowledgment.
4. Accessible Communication: Make it easy to understand and accessible for all!
TOOL: Check to make sure your writing is 8th-grade reading level or less. Check out this Readability Checker tool.
TIP: Make sure your public meeting platforms are accessible by including closed captioning, call-in options, recorded meetings (for people to watch on their own time), and other accessibility features.
TIP: Look for ways to center marginalized voices by:
Recognizing privileges of people in the organizing group
Understanding the level of trust with the organizing group
Understanding the level of comfort engaging online (with the prevalence of anonymous/bigoted comments)
Finding solutions to increase computer/internet access
Include translation services in your budget
TIP: Hire qualified translators versus relying on staff that speak Spanish or another language, but are not certified translators and translations are not part of their job description.
TIP: Reach out to your School District to better understand what other languages besides English are spoken in your community.
TIP: Make sure your presentations and documents are ADA-accessible including adding alternative text for all your images.
TOOLS: Here are a few quick tutorials to help learn how to make sure your Word, PDF, and other documents are accessible.
TIP: Offer large print (16-20 font) for those that may need it, make sure to use sound systems during public meetings so that those hard of hearing will be able to hear you.
TIP: Identify local resources for telephone relay service, braille transcriptionists, American Sign Language interpreters, and Communication Access Real-Time Translation (or live event captioning), and invest in or rent assistive listening devices.
About the Authors
Allison Platt, a Colorado Native, works as a Senior Planner with the City of Bend, Oregon. Her work focuses on a variety of long-range land use and infrastructure planning related to Growth Management. Allison received her Master’s Degree in Urban Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University in 2016 and worked as a Transportation Planner for two years before joining the City of Bend. She represents Oregon as a member of the Western Planner Board.
BreAnne Gale, AICP, also works as a Senior Planner with the City of Bend, Oregon in the Growth Management Department. She has a B.S. and Masters in City Planning from the University of Utah. Prior to her work in Bend, she worked in nearby Sisters as well as Seattle and Salt Lake City.
References
Doerner, Naomi, and Yanisa Techagumthorn. Principles for Equitable Public Outreach & Engagement During COVID-19 and Beyond. Nelson Nygaard, 6 Oct. 2020, nelsonnygaard.com/principles-for-equitable-public-outreach-engagement-during-covid-19-and-beyond/.
Bend Park and Recreation District, Board of Directors Annual Workshop. February 2 & 5, 2021. https://www.bendparksandrec.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Board-Workshop.pdf
“City of Bend.” Accessibility/ ADA Program Information | City of Bend, www.bendoregon.gov/government/departments/city-attorney/accessibility-ada-information.
“Land Acknowledgment Conversation.” Facebook Watch, Portland State University Native American Student and Community Center, 26 Feb. 2021, www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=760742947884316&ref=watch_permalink.
Michel, Katie Hannon, et al. “Inclusive Community Engagement & Equitable Participation to Improve 4 Core Functions of...” Medium, ChangeLab Solutions, 15 Oct. 2018, medium.com/changelab-solutions/equitable-community-engagement-34d2542f68fd#:~:text=An%20equitable%2C%20inclusive%20community%20engagement,speakers%20of%20English%20as%20a.
Roberts, Heather. City of Bend Says Ad Campaign Was Insensitive, Removes Billboard. Central Oregon Daily, 11 Nov. 2019, centraloregondaily.com/city-of-bend-says-ad-campaign-was-insensitive-removes-billboard/.
“Tools & Guides.” Public Agenda, www.publicagenda.org/tools-and-guides/.
Salt Lake City. (2020) Practices for Engagement in the Time of COVID. https://www.slc.gov/can/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/04/Best-Practices-for-Engagement-During-COVID-19.pdf