Learning Activity 4: Engage a Community

Community engagement is a key part of all Emergency Risk Communication planning and response. You know that community engagement was described as a 'game changer' during an Ebola outbreak a few years ago. You also know it's a critical element of your ERC planning. 

In Learning Activity 3, you created a profile for an imaginary person to represent an audience you intend to reach as part of the emergency risk communications efforts in your country and Neighborville.  Now it's time to create a community engagement plan directed to the community where your imaginary person lives. People with these characteristics live in the same community, alongside the imaginary person you created in Learning Activity 3:

  • A highly respected traditional healer who is skeptical about the risks facing her community;
  • A frightened farmer who is secretly burying his dead animals at night to avoid facing stigma for causing or perpetuating the RVF outbreak; and
  • A school teacher who is actively engaging students and parents in understanding and following prevention guidance.

Your mission is to create a community engagement strategy that addresses the concerns and actions of this community, and supports their engagement in the response. Your plan should be no more than 10 pages.

Considerations:

  • Cultural context;
  • Level of community concern; 
  • Level of risk the community is facing; and
  • Community's perception of your organisation or agency (level of trust)

Community Engagement Principles

  • Involve people and communities in understanding the risks they face;
  • Include people and communities in developing responses and practices that are culturally appropriate and acceptable to those they impact;
  • Recognise and respect community diversity; and
  • Express empathy as part of your community outreach.

When you're finished, please upload your plan.  

Please use this naming convention on all of your assignments: 

LastNameFirstInitial_LA#

For example, when George Weah turns in his Learning Activity, it will be named:

WeahG_LA4

(LA = Learning Activity)