Community profiling
Community profiling helps you describe the stakeholder mix and determine appropriate strategies for engagement. Community profiling may be specially relevant for regional or statewide projects. For any given area, you may identify a range of community characteristics such as:
- population, age and education level
- minority group make-up
- household, business, industry make-up
- existing social infrastructure – networks, community centres, schools and churches
- expectations regarding interaction with government
- dominant values – espoused and practised
- land use.
Community profiling may help you identify appropriate methods for engaging with communities.
Example
- High growth areas. Consider the duration of your project and the need to identify and inform new stakeholders along the way.
- Ethnicity/minorities. Consider the need for communication in alternative languages or through people known to the minorities.
- A significant farming or industrial workforce. Consider contact through peak bodies.
- Education levels. Consider how best to word your communication.
- Diversity. Consider which community sectors should be targeted.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Contact the Department of Communities for advice, as well as other local workers or groups.
- Age levels. Consider specific engagement strategies for young people and children. The Office of Youth Affairs has specific resources to assist engagement with young people.
- Unemployment and income levels. These are usually good indicators of participation, as communities with high unemployment rates are usually disadvantaged and hard to engage; they spend so much of their lives getting by that they often do not have the skills, desire, resources or access to engage.
Tips for building your community profile
- Talk with others in your own agency about any engagement they may previously have undertaken in this community and what the outcomes were.
- Talk to other agencies about their engagement with communities.
- Talk to state members and/or local government, as these organisations usually have a comprehensive list of community groups, detailed social data and atlases and know their local communities.
- Access statewide community agencies such as the Queensland Council of Social Services.
- Conduct an inspection tour if you are not familiar with the area of interest.
- Advertise in the press for individuals or organisations interested in being engaged on the project.
- Meet with community/industry/business leaders and seek their views, especially on local information networks and resources such as existing community structures, local newspapers and networks.
Previous