Stakeholders engagement is a crucial phase of a research, trial or project. In my organization team and other mates from working groups we always keep this on mind in the first steps of the project, and we use to discuss and brainstorm looking for the key agents of the field.
Also I use to train my team and other activist about community engagement following some main topics:
– Stakeholder mapping
a. Steps for mapping: identify, prioritize, visualize, engage, monitor and actions to take
b. Stakeholder matrix / key stakeholder grid
– Mapping stakeholders and community: practical part / exercise in which they develop a visual tool with all this mapping information
– Reality of the different communities
– Stakeholder engagement
– Strategies for a meaningful engagement
As I like to say, it’s better to look at one stakeholder too many, finding it to be irrelevant, rather than discover later that a stakeholder of importance to the project has been overlooked.
And also we work with a methodology in Apoyo Positivo, calls co-creation based on include all the key stakeholders in all the project / research phases: design, planning, developing, implementation and evaluation. We don’t want just consultation to stakeholders, take the information that we think is important with that conversation and then keep them out, We believe that giving a meaningful participation for the stakeholders during the process helps to get a better outcomes.
