Community Engagement Essay

In my own neighborhood no one really says hi, or introduces themselves, nor does it seem that they care too. It seems harder than ever before to even strike up a conversation with someone let alone to come to an understanding of what is really going on in our own backyards.Aurora, like many Communities has city council meetings that all citizens can attend. It is sad to say that even myself as a citizen, lack certain characteristics helping to making progress in my community.

Well I’m here to say not being involved in your community, or at the very least not knowing what is going on in your own backyard is detrimental to our progress in becoming more unified. Well for one how can we improve city funded programs that could be made more cost affective, that could bring us closer together, if we don’t even take the time to see what the city offers, or what they could offer if we were more involved in bringing certain programs needed to our community.

What about law enforcement, and everything that it entails for our safety, and maybe how we could be exploited by our own ignorance in being prosecuted.

Youth attachment to the community can be viewed in almost the same light.

As youth get older, they will look for other attachments in addition to the relationship developed with their caregiver(s).

The steps are: Other programs exist to assist communities in the process of building community coalitions for engagement.

One such program is Communities That Care which helps communities assess their needs and implement tested and effective programs to address their identified issues.For the purposes of this article, a community refers to the geographical boundaries established by municipalities (e.g., city or town), a neighborhood, and/or a school environment encompassed within larger geographical boundaries (e.g., a campus or a district).Past research on youth engagement has been grounded in two theories: 1) youth development theory and 2) attachment theory (Brennan, Barnett, and Lesmeister 2007; Brennan, Barnett, and Mc Grath 2009).Current research acknowledges engagement’s socially-situated nature. Community engagement therefore offers an ethical, reflexive, and socially responsive approach to community-organizational relationships with engagement practices that aim to both understand and be responsive to community needs, views, and expectations..Community engagement enables a more contextualized understanding of community members’ perceptions of the topics and contexts, and facilitates stronger relationships among and between community members .I can guarantee that most of Auroras citizens could care less to attend, or even find out where these meetings are held, and what issues are covered that might directly affect them. Not enough time, who cares, how is my attendance and concern going to affect city officials to improving my life?That probably doesn’t even cross most peoples minds, especially if they have there own car, a place to sleep and property taxes stay about the same.Community engagement may involve the use of particular key concepts relevant to the community benefit sector such as: Civic engagement refers to political activity, membership and volunteering in civil society organizations.A social level of engagement, such as community engagement, refers to the process by which community and organizations collectively build ongoing, permanent relationships for social benefits and outcomes.While most current standards implore more static means through standard marketing techniques, community engagement involves actively implementing a specific process towards activism such as the 8-step guideline listed below developed by Hildy Gottlieb of Creating the Future.While the process may have similarities to a controversial form of friendraising, the emphasis in community engagement is that of honest relationship building for the sake of community, not for the sole purpose of money-making.