Community Involvement

Our team’s goal is to include the community through the design phase, implementation phase and the final sustainability phase.  To involve the community thought the design phase, we plan to survey MGV to find out more about what they are looking for in the uses of Perseverance Park.  We want to design the space to be functional for all ages of the community.  The community will be more accepting to our designs and us coming to work in their village if they know they can trust us and that we are not just going to come in and build a park and leave without consulting them.

Many members of the community excel in different skills. We want to maximize their involvement by focusing on their strengths rather than their weaknesses or limitations (“Involving communities in strategic planning,” 2013).  To do this, we will be adapting some of the ABCD project plan from 2011 (MGV Park Team 2011, 2011).  From reading through past projects, one of the best ways to involve a community is by investing them in the park and by having them be a part of it.  If there happens to be a particular task that a member of MGV finds interesting or can provide assistance through past experiences, they will be more willing to give both time and energy to the project; however, if an assigned task was given to a volunteer not based on any personal interest of theirs, then they are less likely to complete the task successfully to meet our project requirements.

Based off past project experience with working with MGV, the community responded well to focus groups, interviews and town meetings.  Using these methods we can contact different groups of the community and inform them about our project.  For example, speaking to the community at Village Day about our work can spark an interest in aiding us through the process at the beginning.  If the MGV Community has a newspaper we can advertise meetings to them or update information on the stages of the project.

Having a co-research team made of members of the MGV community will help us reach out to them a little easier.  The co-research team will help us with our research, while if there was ever a cross cultural confusion, such as a language barrier the co-research team could help us overcome that issue.  The research team will also be helpful with finding our way around MGV in our first couple of weeks (“Involving communities in strategic planning,” 2013).  To get the best results out of the community they need to trust us first.  If we as a project team open up to them and share things about ourselves they will feel more comfortable opening up to us.

When we first get to MGV the people we believe we should get closest to first is our co-research team.  Once we are on good terms with them we will be able to reach out easier to other groups in the community.  The GLP is going to be a great resource in the Community, and more specifically Ronell.  She seems very excited and eager to help us and we are sure she will be a great person to know in MGV to help us see more of the community’s strengths that can aid us in our project.