The community engagement (CE) approach is an intermediate approach between the community development approach and societal outreach and campaigns approach, which requires you the community engagement facilitator or a trained community change agent to directly engage with individuals or groups to facilitate behaviour change to improve animal welfare. This approach relies heavily on using recommended tools and techniques in effective communication for behaviour change and adult learning theory and recommends involving communities in the identification and prioritization of animal welfare issues and working with them to identify solutions for achieving desired changes through a collaborative process of inquiry and reflection. In this way, members of the animal owning community are supported to progress through the stages of change with an in a way that aims to promote sustained behaviour change for lasting animal welfare improvements.
While this approach promotes working through community change agents (CCAs), if it is not feasible to work through CCAs, you are encouraged substitute your project’s community engagement staff and adapt the approach as needed to support working in this way. Before deciding, whether to work through change agents or your project’s own staff, consider the benefits and limitations of both ways of working:
| Agent of Change | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|
| Community Change Agents (CCA) | • Builds lasting internal community expertise in animal welfare beyond the scope of project. • Community change agents knows the community context better and know what is likely to be well received. • Can be more efficient in reaching more people (as accepted as part of community and reduced language barrier) | • Less expertise in behaviour changes and requires training, and skills/lessons may be diluted when transferred. • Requires support, monitoring and management which can take additional time. • May be constraints on change agent time/availability. |
| Project Community Engagement Staff | • May be more experienced and skilled in core competencies/effective group facilitation. | • Less familiar with local context and may not be as influential/respected by community. • Efficiency/reach limited to project staff capacity and workload on staff. |
Table 7: Key Considerations for Working through Change Agents
While the guidance within this approach are based on best practices in participatory community engagement and behavioural change science [31, 21, 66, 20], the steps are not intended to be prescriptive and can be adapted based on need and context.
An overview of the entire community engagement approach, including each intervention phase and its associated step is mapped in the figure below.
Figure 45: Overview of Semi-Intensive Community Engagement (CE) Approach
The diagram below illustrates the general progress through the stages of change throughout the different phases of a project adopting the community engagement approach. However, as change is a process, community members can progress or relapse through the stages of change at any time during the project. As such, it is recommended that community engagement agents pay careful attention to where individuals are in their change process and adapt their engagement techniques as needed to support people’s continued progress through the stages of change. Refer to the Human Behaviour Change Learning Module for an introduction to the stages of change.
Figure 46: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Community Engagement Approach
Ensure you read and consider the content in Essential ethical considerations for working with communities and 1. Gender mainstreaming checklist throughout all phases of the project.