Community Engagement Approaches - Introduction

RurALL addresses the difficulty of depopulation in rural areas that is considered a major challenge in the Danube area. The project’s main objective is to develop a governance model on addressing depopulation in rural areas. To do so, it aims at improving planning, management, and decision-making, or collaborative capacities respectively, of rural communities in exploiting the potential of deteriorating dwellings.

The core concept of RurALL is the New European Bauhaus initiative. In line with the initiative’s motto »beautiful | sustainable | together«, community engagement is a crucial element in bringing forth sustainable and aesthetically pleasing innovative solutions for rural areas. Thus, RurALL aims to create a critical mass of international experts, policymakers, and citizens to enable intense knowledge exchange and generation and to pool ideas and resources for the successful uptake of good practices and innovative solutions.
 
 

This deliverable constitutes the first step towards RurALL’s Community Engagement Plan (CEP), which will provide an outline for the piloting activities in the later stages of the project. It introduces the New European Bauhaus Principles, provides an overview of the status quo on community engagement in RurALL municipalities, and presents the first draft of the RurALL community engagement plan.

 To select a suitable process, we iteratively combined top-down and bottom-up strategies. We deduced overall guidelines for community engagement from the New European Bauhaus initiative and further literature for our overall approach, while simultaneously complementing and enriching this structure based on partners’ inputs via desk analysis and questionnaires.

To better understand communities’ needs, preferences, and perspectives, we have gathered insights on community engagement in rural areas that are part of RurALL and systematically reviewed and analyzed their responses. This analysis of questionnaire data helps us identify the most suitable engagement approaches and methods and ensure that the project’s initiatives will be well-aligned with the community's context and expectations. Moreover, to acknowledge the unique situations of rural areas, we will conduct interviews to deepen our understanding of the specificities of the Danube area and to tailor the overall framework to partners’ needs.
 
 In the next stages, it will result in Community Engagement Plan which goal is to enhance the project's impact by leveraging community strengths, addressing their concerns, and ensuring that engagement activities are both inclusive and effective.