Every day organisations bring forward initiatives or projects, many of which will affect the communities around them. Whether these initiatives and projects succeed or fail will often depend on the response of those same communities.
Connecting with communities is what Nurture Development does best. When you engage with people at an early stage and in an open and transparent way, they will respond much more positively and often bring real added value to initial proposals. With a wide array of communication, consultation and liaison tools at our disposal we can ensure that:
- the local community, politicians and the local media get the real facts
- expectations are managed
- support is nurtured
- concerns are aired and put in context
Connecting on the ground: Community Consultations
Where projects/initiatives have an impact on local communities, the need for community consultation is self evident. Communicating detailed project proposals is a skilled undertaking at the best of times, but the ability to identify key concerns and take on board suggestions and proposed corrective action is central to effective public consultation.
Our role is to facilitate the consultation process with local residents, public officials, councillors, TDs, not for profits, the local business community, issue groups, associations, the media and other local influencers with a view to maximising support for projects and contextualising any opposition. Our services include:
- Public consultations
- Focus group sessions, organising workshops to explore project proposals
- One-to-one/door-to-door consultations and opinion surveys
- Social auditing of project areas
- Corporate Social Responsibility mentoring
- Liaison service, including contact point and provision of intermediary supports with a view to maintaining dialogue with local community and key stakeholders
- Community communication strategies
Strengths Oriented Real Time Evaluation & Development
The SORTED programme was developed by Nurture Development in conjunction with Sean McGearty. It integrates their respective approaches as leaders in the field of evaluation and strategic planning in the Third and Public sectors and offers both sectors cost effective high quality monitoring, evaluation and strategic planning supports. Three cutting edge approaches, namely Real Time Evaluation (RTE), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) combined, offer a highly responsive yet cost effective framework for evaluation, monitoring and strategic planning.
SORTED aims to use evaluation, monitoring and strategic planning to bring about organisational and cultural change, and is especially relevant to organisations operating within difficult circumstances where resources are scarce and challenges are many.
Click here for more information.
Click here for some of the agencies we have worked with in this area.
Click here to see what some of our clients say about our consultation work.