Participatory Approaches

Local communities tend to be viewed as those “outside” the company gates. In reality, however, a good part of a companies workforce may be part of these communities or reside among them. Whether implicitly or explicitly, employees communicate messages about the company and the project to the outside world and help to create perceptions as well as pass along information. This provides a great opportunity for companies to leverage this built-in channel of communications as a means of outreach and dissemination to the local population. Feedback from the local workforce can also be a way to identify emerging issues and concerns of local communities. Companies who do this well make an effort to keep their employees well-informed, involve them in the company’s stake-holder engagement strategy, and recruit their help as front-line ambassadors in relationship-building with the local population. To help promote the informed participation of indigenous communities, special care should be given to the form and manner in which information is communicated. The aim is to ensure cultural appropriateness, and to help affected communities gain a genuine understanding of the impacts of the project and the proposed mitigation measures and benefits. Ways to do this include translating project information into the appropriate indigenous languages, taking oral traditions into account, and developing audio-visual materials where appropriate. It may also be necessary to adopt non-document based means of communication, such as community briefings and radio programs. A key question to pose is whether all members of the community understand how the project may affect them and are able to communicate their concerns, leading to their potentially benefiting from the project.