The Role of Community Engagement in Government Engagement

Olga: Roseanne invested a lot of energy into fostering the community in Brownsville and that had multiple strategic implications for her engagement with government. So first of all the active participation and co-creation of the community ensured that the issues to be addressed by government were probably well articulated, she says. And then second such broad participation from community also naturally increased the legitimacy of demand that Roseanne helped articulate. Olga: The fact that community members were so deeply involved in the process also ensures that they own the whole process and will be there as you said to hold government accountable on implementing the desired change and approach going forward.