Engaging the Community
The key to your continued success is your ability to engage the surrounding community in and with your sport programme. When you are able to build effective relationships with your community, you’ll be able to gain their support of your programme and create enabling environments for the girls both within your programme and their larger communities.
Women Win, with input from programme partners, defines community as all the stakeholders and community members who influence the lives of the adolescent girls participating in sport programmes. The geographical area that makes up this community differs for every programme; in some cases it may be a village, in some it may be more than one village. This definition not only includes parents, teachers, community leaders, both international and local organisations, peers, and coaches, but also, most importantly, the girls themselves.
In the video below, we’ll discuss what community engagement is and why it is important. We’ll also touch on some helpful approaches that you can use to encourage engagement in your community.
Tools to use for Girl-Led Engagement
It is important that the girls’ voices are not drowned out in the process of engaging the rest of the community. Many organisations find that the girls themselves are often the best advocates for sport in their communities, and can spread information and knowledge to their peers, classmates, and families.
While there are many strategies for girl-led engagement, Digital Storytelling is a powerful way to engage the community and for girls to have their voices heard on their own terms. See how it works in the video below.
Mapping Community Groups & Stakeholders
In order to work effectively with community groups and your stakeholders, it’s important that you have awareness of who they are and what role they play in the lives of your participants. See here how you can carry out a community mapping exercise with your participants to identify these stakeholders.
