The Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government has put together a handy toolkit to help outback councils improve their community engagement.

There are suggestions in the ACELG’s new Online Community Engagement Toolkit for local governments in virtually all rural, remote and Indigenous (RRI) communities.

While there are virtually endless resources available for community engagement in general, a unique set of challenges in RRI areas required a specially-designed toolkit.

“[The toolkit] will be pertinent to all councils looking to revise their approach to engaging with their communities,” ACELG Director Associate Professor Roberta Ryan said,.

“I am confident that elected and appointed council staff will find this toolkit an immensely useful reference for their work.”

Recent research by ACELG found that small councils in regional and remote Australia may not have the staff and resources to undertake elaborate community engagement activities.

Staff at RRI councils also indicated they would like more practical support to build skills and capacity in this area.

“The key theme underpinning feedback from interviews with practitioners was the need for simplified, user-friendly resources to support RRI local governments to undertake community engagement activities,” ACELG Deputy Director Melissa Gibbs said.

“It was also noted that many RRI local governments currently engage consultants to undertake their community engagement work. This is a costly practice that rarely results in any skills transfer to local government staff.

“Our research identified a strong desire to build internal capacity and undertake community engagement in-house, provided there were tailored community engagement guides and resources for staff.”

The toolkit aims to address these needs through practical guidance, simple tips and useful advice on engaging communities. It includes ideas, methods and downloadable templates specially suited to the circumstances of RRI councils.

It has been compiled as an online resource, and is accessible here.