What is the best legal way to approach companies to convince them that it is a good idea to make the information public?
Tom Wolf, the PhD, who specializes in the community psychology made some research on how to maximize the involvement of the community in the process. Some of his ideas are interesting and can be adapted and used for the research.
Tom Wolf describes the community as those, who are the mostly affected by the issue, and according to him the main key of involving any community is to do with the community and not doing for the community.
He describes main elements which are essential for true collaboration
- Building the trust
- Providing safe place.
- Accommodating the members
- Being inclusive
- Honoring diversity of membership through understanding and practice.
- Sharing governance and decision making.
These examples are very specific, but we still can adapt them for our purpose to make sub-system “Texel as a host” sustainable”:
- Building the trust: In terms of sub-system “Texel as a host” this is the trust between local people and tourists. To establish the key points and define strengths and weaknesses YUTPA analysis is used.
- Safe place is not only physical, but also psychological space for gatherings and meeting. For our proposal we can consider that Texel Island itself has to be a safe place, where people meet and discuss different issues. On the other hand we can say that Texel Island needs to have a specific gathering place for all Texelaars or Tourists.
To make the involvement of the community possible, it is important to answer following questions:
- Who might you engage?
- Who cares about the issue?
- What are strengths and gaps?
- How much you go about engaging them in your work?
Also Tom Wolf states, that this is important to define the formal and informal community sectors. Formal sector is part of the community that represents the major institutions such as government, education, health, business. Informal Sectors: parts of the community best connected to the residents themselves, such as neighborhood associations, PTO’s and church groups. These sectors have different influence on the community and to make the engagement of the community possible, it is important to involve grassroots organizations and their leaders. It is important, because according to Tom Wolf: “The main reason for someone to participate is that someone they know asks them.”
Other aspect is to keep community involved in the process, because it is very common that people lose their interest in the participation or their expectations do not match the reality. To handle this problem Tom Wolf presents 6R’s: Role, Respect, Relationship, Reward, Results, and Recognition. These 6 aspects create the motivation of community members. Moreover, community has to be in the charge of the norms and changes, because only then norms and changes stop being someone else’ program and are adapted more easily. A good example of community being in charge of norms and changes are smoking and seatbelts.
Adapted from: http://webmedia.unmc.edu/Community/CityMatch/DataTraining/CommunityDimensionsofPractice/player.html
