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Engaging communities

Community engagement is about people becoming involved in the decisions and activities that affect their lives.

WWF believes that people working and learning together at a community level can deliver the changes that will make sustainability happen. So it's important to build communities ability to manage and create change. Engaging with communities on sustainability is important because: 

  • if we are to build a sustainable future, change needs to happen in the places where we live and work, and in the way we live our lives individually, as communties and within society. 
  • policy and regulation alone can't achieve this change.
  • there is a trend towards decentralised decision-making for local planning and environmental management.
  • ‘community’ is closely connected to local government. 

Within the UK, local authority, voluntary and community sector workers may help communities to:

  • identify their needs, opportunities, rights and responsibilities
  • plan, organise and take action
  • evaluate the effectiveness and the impact of their action. 

Here are some of the community engagement projects WWF has been working on:

Community Learning and Action for Sustainable Living (CLASL)

The Community Learning and Action for Sustainable Living project offers an approach to working with community groups - identifying solutions that work and bringing about change that can be sustained.

Community Engagement and Sustainable Development

This project has developed a new tool designed to help community engagement workers measure the impact of their work on sustainability. We are gathering results from local authorities and groups across the country, and plan to share the findings with practitioners and policy-makers.

Changing the World with Girlguiding UK

In 2008, WWF - along with 18 other partner organisations - worked with Girlguiding UK to offer young people a range of stimulating activities to help "change the world". WWF's One Planet Challenge helped participants (aged 7-25) to explore the environmental impacts of their food and shopping choices and to take action  - individually, as part of their Girlguide Unit, with their family or friends, or out in the wider community.

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