Before we get started,
we are required to inform all attendees that this webinar is being recorded.
Webcams and microphones have been disabled for all participants
to protect your personally identifiable information.
Communication for today's webinar will be via the chat box.
So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jan Kucklick to get us started. Jan.
Thank you, Shannon, and good morning.
Good afternoon and welcome.
My name is Jan Kucklick, I'm with NOAA's Office for Coastal Management.
My pronouns are she/her and I'll be the moderator today for the webinar.
So this is the third in a series of webinars that our office has provided
for applicant that were invited back to submit full proposals
for the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge.
If you missed either or both of our prior webinars,
the recordings of those webinars are on the website, so I encourage you
to take a look at those.
So today we're going to be exploring meaningful community engagement
and how to center it in the grant proposal process.
So why are we providing this particular topic to you all today?
Well, meaningful community engagement is integral to two of the four competition
priorities equity and enduring capacity.
In addition, meaningful engagement is woven
in to three of the evaluation criteria.
One evaluation criteria around equity
and inclusion, one around enduring capacity,
and then a third one
around outreach and engagement.
So given the importance
of meaningful community engagement in this competition,
we wanted to provide you some information and ideas around this topic.
The information presented today by our two
speakers is not specific to the competition.
It really applies to lots of different work
and grants that that we may apply for,
but it certainly can help you specifically around the CRRC proposal
and give you some ideas around how to incorporate it into your proposals.
We're going to be holding all the questions till the end, but
you know, don't hold those questions in your head as they come to you.
Go ahead and put them in the chat
and we'll capture them and then we'll come back to them
at the end after our speakers have finished presenting their material.
And we'll get through as many of the questions
as we have time for and all of the questions
and the responses, even those that we don't get to, will also be incorporated
into the frequently asked questions on the CRRC website.
Now, we're not going to be addressing here today any questions
specific to the competition and proposals.
If you have questions around
that again,
we always encourage you to go ahead and email those kinds of questions
to the resiliencechallenge@noaa.gov email address.
All right.
So with that, let me go ahead and introduce you to our first speaker.
Dani Boudreau is a colleague of mine here at the Office for Coastal Management
and she's a coastal hazard resilience specialist
and also the Northeast Learning Service coordinator.
So I'm going to turn it over to Dani.
Excellent. Thank you, Jason.
So, hi, everyone.
I'm Dani.
And as Jan mentioned,
a lot of my work focuses around working with communities in the Northeast.
So I'm going to kick us off today just to think a little bit
about what is meaningful community engagement.
So since this is what our webinars focused
on, I thought we'd kind of take some time to define it a bit.
Acknowledging that this definition is not,
you know, all inclusive.
And I'm sure there's additional thoughts that you all could add to it.
But when we say meaningful engagement at the center of it,
we want to be sure that you all understand that it means
we are focused on engagement that builds trust
and has a foundation of strong relationships.
They provide opportunities for the community
to be a part of visioning, decision making, and leadership of projects.
It removes barriers to participation
and it makes connections across priorities and values.
So, you know, if a community has obviously most communities,
all communities have multiple priorities, multiple values and so your proposal
or your engagement activities would make connections across those.
I also just want to make a quick distinction between engagement
and outreach, which I think will come up several times throughout this webinar.
And that outreach is seen as tends to be more unidirectional communication.
So direction flowing in one direction.
So often outreach is say, an agency or organization providing
information for awareness purposes,
for education purposes to another audience that's outreach.
Information is flowing from one entity to another.
Engagement is more about bidirectional communication.
And so engagement really focuses on more of kind of facilitating a dialogue
where information is not only flowing from an organization or agency,
but flowing to and between the agency and organization
and community.
And so I just want to kind of make that distinction
before we get too much further.
And then I would actually just love to hear from our audience members
Why meaningfully engaging communities is important.
So I'm going to I'm going to be quiet for a minute here.
You can just put your response in the chat.
Thank you, Shannan, for adding that in there.
So just answer the question why?
Why is it important for projects, for organizations
to meaningfully engage communities?
Let you be quiet, let you think through
how to answer that question.
It's not necessarily an easy one.
Yup. Leads to more impact and success
makes for a better, more lasting outcomes.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Lasting change provides ownership to the community.
Yes, it's more effective when we work together.
It helps people feel like their voices are being heard.
Absolutely.
Mutual benefits that are mutually defined.
Excellent.
More buy in is fundamental to building lasting capacity.
Some other answer is engaging with communities.
It's important to avoid work being conducted in silos.
It involves a broader range of people.
Absolutely, yeah.
Different organizations have different priorities and goals
and so working together really helps streamline that.
It's ensures equitable distribution of funds and project buy in.
The more people know, the more they care and will be involved.
Absolutely. And then yeah, trust. Absolutely.
So those are just some of the responses put in the chat.
I encourage you all to look to see what other folks put in.
I will just share a couple that that we came up
with alongside our partners.
So why engage in search ensures decisions
are embraced and supported, which we heard from a lot of you.
Absolutely. And increases project impact
and simultaneously decreases project delays right.
It's engagement takes time.
But when decisions are made there, since people are bought in, it's less
likely to, you're less likely to have an issue at the end of your project
and it ensures benefits flow back to the community.
So these were just some that were brainstormed
amongst our group and also brainstormed amongst our partners.
But as you can see that I think there's a lot of additional reasons why
engaging communities is important.
And so with that, I would like to actually now that we kind of have
an idea of what meaningful engagement is and why it's important,
I'd like to hand this over to my colleague, Aranzazu, who's
going to give us some additional ideas on meaningful engagement.
Thank you, Dani.
Hello, I'm Aranzazu Lascurain, the Southeast and Caribbean Regional Lead.
And because meaningful engagement
will comprise
such an important and significant part of the overall review of your proposal,
I'd like to give you some overarching reflections on meaningful engagement
perspectives and actions we'll be looking for in your full proposals.
But first, I'd like to start off with this reflection.
Listening to and elevating community voices
is one of the best chances we have for successful climate adaptation.
This and similar statements
come from the climate adaptation planning community and from environmental
justice advocates who have been working for decades in this space.
I'd like to walk you through
five reflections that center key steps towards meaningful engagement.
And these are Before the Proposal, Consent,
Building the Proposal, Benefits,
and what happens after the project.
Before the proposal,
thinking about the engagement piece of your proposal before you begin
writing and gleaning the pieces is one of the most important
parts of the process for this particular funding opportunity.
In fact, for any kind of community work,
being mindful of your intentions and the place
from which you intend to collaborate is essential.
And it's often the case that the engagement and equity
pieces are plugged in at a later time of the proposal.
So we want to emphasize flipping that.
You might begin asking yourself why did you choose this particular
community or community based organization or these sets of collaborators?
And as a quick side note, I'll be using the acronym CBO
for community based organization to save a little bit of time.
And I may also use the singular form in my examples
referring to community or CBO, knowing
very well that you might have numerous collaborators and partners.
But being open and transparent on the
why will help you advance meaningfully and respectfully.
Your soon to be partners will want to know that from the beginning
and is often one of the first steps in trust building.
After all, you'll be working together for the better part of five years
and hopefully much longer.
If this
is an existing relationship, all the better.
If it's a new one, then there's a bit of heavy
lifting to do at the beginning, which we'll get into here shortly.
You might pose to yourself and to the community.
What do we do for you?
What will help you advance
your resilience needs, your community's well-being,
and help address their challenges.
Will the proposal have lasting impact?
Support and capacity built into it?
And this gets into the idea of enduring capacity, as Jan, both
Jan had mentioned earlier and referenced on page 46 of the NOFO.
So begin to think of ways the project can execute planning
and decision making capabilities beyond the project timeline
and ways in which capacity building skills
and training can be carried on locally and after the project timeline
consent by communities and CBOs is often
overlooked or not considered but is imperative.
This also sets agreements and right
relationships from the beginning of any engagement.
Consent is always important for any engagement, but also paramount
when working with tribal nations and indigenous communities.
And we'll have a webinar focused on tribal engagement at the end of the month.
So stay tuned.
Consent may take the form of verbal or written agreements.
It may take approval of councils
and it may be also expressed in a letter of support.
But additionally, will your partners have the time to commit
to the activities planned, including the timeframe.
And knowing who's who in the community or the CBO,
are you beginning engagement conversations with elders, council members?
Are they in a position to speak for the community,
making sure to understand their position?
Positionality the community is very important.
Also knowing historical challenges
and trauma and doing this homework ahead of time is very important
and will help understand the circumstances and priorities of the community.
Similarly, knowing about values, objectives
and even aspirations is also important because they are aspects
you will want to consider in consultation with the community.
As in talking through risks that may come to the community
from the grant, such as uncovering certain data, historic sites
and data, privacy and governance.
Now building the proposal.
As you've heard,
co-development is key to trusting, effective and long lasting impact.
As we've mentioned,
and you've probably heard this in practice and in the literature,
but what it does is ensure that benefits
reach the community and they’re reflective of their priorities.
And there are agreed upon protocols of engagement.
One strategy, for example, is to draft MOUs,
memorandums of understanding, with the community and checkpoints along the way
to ensure that equity and power sharing throughout the life of the project.
Also demonstrating iteration
that back and forth and tweaking in the proposal
is a really positive process and it's okay to write about it in your proposal
to demonstrate the desire to get it right
or better than where you started.
It also demonstrates that you're in tune with the needs of the community, right?
We don't always know the questions we need to ask them to work
further into the relationship building stage
Benefits.
We all want to reap the benefits of our work and collaborations.
And just like this gorgeous handful of ripe berries, we want to make sure
they all get shared and spread around for all to enjoy and benefit from.
And as a result,
this means that benefits should be borne by all involved in the team.
And Dani will take a deep dive into the budget.
But consider there the room to make sure that communities
are compensated for their time, including their labor and their knowledge.
Consider having a community member or two
to touch base with frequently and then adjust accordingly.
Other aspects of benefits include Does the project
include community capacity building and support?
In other words, doing with and in support of rather than instead for.
Will the project make connections across community priorities and values,
including care of the environment, human health
and well-being?
And now for the Post Project.
And this loops back to the concept of enduring capacity
that we've been mentioning.
So consider how the project will be handed off,
what kind of relationship or activities will endure beyond the project timeline.
Have thoughtful conversations with your writing team and partners
and the mechanisms to ensure that that enduring capacity, so that
these investments have the opportunity to be long lasting and resilient.
And like this picture here, the possibility for a project
for activities, skills and decision making to be carried out
by the community indefinitely.
And on
that note, thank you for your time and I will pass it along.
Now back to Dani.
Hey, thank you, Aranzazu, I appreciate you kicking us off.
So to take us a little bit further
and for those of you who have questions, please put them in the chat.
We're going to Aranzazu we're going to take questions at the end.
So Aranzazu will be here.
So just wanted to
point that out since we're transitioning a little bit here.
But I want to take a little bit deeper dive into the proposal writing.
So, Aranzazu outlined some really great kind of considerations
that we should all be kind of aware of as we are working both
before, during and after the grant writing process.
And I want to zoom a little bit in on the actual grant writing process.
So what are some considerations you all should potentially be thinking
about or having dialogue about as you prepare to write your grants?
What I'm
going to share with you here has been these are ideas that have been
brainstormed in conversations with reviewers, applicants, communities.
These are kind of lessons learned that have been compiled over the years
and hopefully can help you all work alongside communities
as you pull together a proposal.
Recognize that all of you may be
in very different points in your relationship with communities.
So some of you may be just starting out in the relationship building process.
You know, we like to point out that really 90% of the engagement
work should be done before a proposal is submitted.
So hopefully this means you have a history of engagement with a community or that
you have put in the work
before submitting the proposal or even coming up with a proposal idea.
But we recognize that that doesn't always happen for a multitude of reasons.
And so
this is the
opportunity that while you're co-producing a proposal to actually,
if you haven't already started a relationship, to start the relationship
now and lay a really strong foundation for
the work that you may do if, if funded or,
you know, if you submit a proposal with a community and it's not funded,
this is a great opportunity, you know, to start.
If you start building trust and build the relationship now, there will always be
other opportunities in the future.
I also wanted to just point out before I get into a little bit
more of the nitty gritty is that
we're trying to just give some, some ideas
on places to start having a dialogue with a community.
This is kind of conversation starters recognizing that what I'm about to share
may not be relevant to every project, it may not be relevant to every community.
And so really it's
important to kind of take what we're going to be sharing here
and think about how it might apply to your specific situation
and get to better understand how it may or may not apply to the community.
You'll be working alongside.
One final point
before we dive in here is that,
you know, for those of you on the call
who are community based organizations
and those community based organizations that are leading proposals,
what I'm about to share with you may already be information that you know.
And so, you know, that is great and I hope that you'll share
maybe some additional ideas in the chat as we go along here, because I'm sure,
you know, with the limited time, there's points that we may miss.
But I think the audience for this kind of conversation
is going to be a little bit more for those of you who are
maybe have a little bit less experience working alongside communities
or are looking to strengthen your skills in that space.
And so with that, let's dive into a little bit
about the kind of the specific elements that you might need.
You might want to think through as you are pulling together a proposal.
So I've listed here some basic
and the common sections that you might find in different grant proposals.
Often you have to think through the project team.
There's going to be a grant narrative
which will include an overall approach, potentially an engagement approach.
You're going have to think through the timeline,
the budget and letters of support.
And so let's look at each of these elements and think through
how you can demonstrate meaningful engagement in these elements.
I'm going to at the end of my presentation,
I'm going to provide a resource that will give you much more detail on
what I'm about to go through.
But I just want to give a broad brush on kind of
some of the pieces you might consider in each of these sections.
All right. So for project team,
there's Leadership and Decision-Making.
So this is really where you want to start to similar to what Aranzazu
you said, right?
You want to sit down with your key community partners, whether those are
community based organizations or community members or community leaders,
and you're going to want to demonstrate
and better understand how you can
share leadership and decision making with that organization or person.
So some examples of this are, you know, if you had a community
based organization as a principal investigator or
if you had a community based organization that shared decision making power as
maybe a co-investigator,
you know, just demonstrating that the community has both power
in decision making and is an actual leader on the project
is often a great way to meaningfully engage with the communities.
Identifying Community Points of Contact.
So you know there's sometimes, you may not have your specific
point of contact specifically identified when you submit a grant, but
it's really important before
submitting an application that you have a very clear vision for what
community based organizations will be engaged in the process.
And the reason we suggest that is because
community based organizations like all of us have limited capacity.
And so if every person writing a grant, our proposal says, well,
we will identify who we're going to engage after the grant writing process is done,
odds are that there will be a disconnect both from what's in the grant
and from what the community based organization is willing to engage with.
And you may end up in a situation where no community based organization is willing
to engage with you after the fact, even if there is money budgeted for it.
So it's really important
to have a clear vision of exactly who you are engaging with,
why you're engaging with them, and have a clear understanding
of the leadership role that they will play in the project.
We recommend Community-Led Engagement.
So a lot of times when pulling together a proposal,
a proposer will lean on a nonprofit or lean on
an academic institution or a consultant to lead engagement.
However, a lot of projects benefit from having community level engagement.
Now, what do I mean by that?
It means that the proposed project
has a community based organization, has maybe a community member or community
champion that is actually facilitating the workshops,
leading the engagement process, leading the participatory process.
Why we recommend that is because these organizations will have established
trust, established relationships, and will be much more effective
at leading the engagement process than potentially having an outside entity
that maybe doesn't have that trust and those relationships built.
Your project team.
It's important to have folks on your project team
that have a History of Engagement in a community.
A lot of times project teams don't have even
one member who has ever engaged in a community directly.
So these are all things, as you're thinking through with your project team,
you know how to how to demonstrate this in a proposal.
These are all, History of Engagement
is something that can be listed in the qualifications section.
Community Priorities.
It's really great if someone on your project team represents
a community priority that is maybe
slightly adjacent to what what the whole project is about.
So let me give you an example.
It could be that maybe the whole project is focused on ecosystem
restoration or marsh restoration.
You might have someone on the project team that works for an affordable
housing organization or works for a public health organization
that demonstrates kind of that you're trying to better make linkages between
the co-benefits, between your project
and the community priorities.
We encourage everyone to think about the Location of the Project Team.
So the ideal situation is that at least one
project team member either lives or works in the community that
you're all working alongside of.
The reason that is, is because then you will have a much better
understanding of what the strengths,
the needs of that community are.
Whereas if you have a project team, for instance, if you're proposing, perhaps
you're from Oregon and you're proposing that you engage a community in Maine.
Well, that maybe there might be reasons behind that that are very valid,
but you're going to miss out on some of the day to day...
the day to day
concerns, the day to day challenges that that a community may be facing.
And so we always encourage kind of the project team to be
as co-located as possible.
Think of the difference between a community based organization
and a community serving organization.
So community based organization right there in the community there
they are alongside the community on a daily basis.
Community serving, they may be providing services to that community,
but they may not necessarily be based in the community.
They might be based in the state capital over 150 miles away.
Right.
So thinking carefully about the location of the project team is important.
If social science is an element of the project, we always encourage
Equitable Social Science Research, often during proposal
development, many teams,
they equate social science research with engagement.
Conducting research on a community is not the same as engagement.
And if social science is a component of your proposal, well, then we would want
to see demonstrated, a history of equitable social science practices.
So there's a lot of
resources out there that you can look at to better understand this.
But just to give you some examples, think of
you know, if you have a community member that is participating
in social science research,
that they are a coauthor on any publications coming out of that research,
if you are doing a survey with a community that the community doesn't have to wait
three years for an article to be published before that survey,
the results of that survey are shared with them, right?
Think of how to set up
reciprocal relationships when conducting social science research.
And then if you are hiring new positions,
the ideal situation is that you're hiring New Positions for Community Members
and that you have specific community members in mind.
So this would ensure that
new positions aren't being hired
in, for instance, a state capitol that's over 150 miles away.
New positions are being hired in
like postdocs
and academic institutions that maybe have no actual linkages
and no history of engagement in the communities.
So these are just some things to think about as you're forming your project team,
as you're having conversations amongst your project team about,
what are some key qualifications in pulling together a project team
that will be well positioned to engage meaningfully in the community.
Now thinking of our grant narrative and our overall approach,
here are some things to think about.
It's really important to define community,
so a clear description of the priority community should exist.
There should be a rationale for why they're being engaged
and a clear connection between community needs and the proposed project.
It should also be clearly stated who and what constitutes the community.
This includes geography, population, socioeconomic structure.
It should go beyond a regurgitation of, you know, census data.
It should go beyond
simply pointing to a place on map.
It should be very clearly described what
community you're specifically working with.
And if you identify the community as underserved, an explanation
should be provided as to why they are being labeled as underserved
for community benefits.
You know, it's really important to not only define the benefits,
but really outline who will benefit, how
they will access those benefits and for how long they will benefit.
The project in an ideal situation, will result
in a community owned impact change or tangible benefit.
This is really important because a lot of grant proposals often
will outline a bunch of benefits, but there's no direct linkage to the community
and no understanding of how the community
may access it. So,
you know, if you say improved
community access to the beach and an area
through a restoration project, that's fantastic.
But take it a step further.
How does a community, how will they actually access that project?
So, for instance, suppose you have new trails.
Well, how would they access those trails
if it's not on a public transportation route, perhaps,
you know, perhaps there is no way for people to actually get there
and take advantage of this increased public access.
So really be thoughtful about connecting communities
to benefits, to the community needs assessments.
I think a lot of us are familiar with it.
I do want to point out, though, that in the best situations, it's
a community led needs assessment, so that it's a needs assessment
that has been conducted by the community and has been,
essentially has buy in from the community that the results
are clearly reflecting community vision and priorities.
It's important to focus on community strengths.
A lot of proposals tend to focus on the need, the vulnerability,
which can be important,
but the proposals that really work well alongside communities, often
they will build on the strengths the community already has.
So, for instance, maybe they have a really strong social network already in place.
Maybe
they have really strong
cultural and social institutions,
maybe they have great youth programs, right?
Think about what assets are already in the community and don't
solely focus on just the needs
or the gaps that are perceived to exist in the community.
Community vision. This is a big one.
It's really great in all proposals when there's a linkage to community vision.
So thinking about
often communities will have visions that have already been outlined.
How is your proposal contributing to that, to advancing that vision, to
bringing the future the community wants to life.
It's important to,
aligning with the vision, also aligning with the values of the community,
really thinking through how your project aligns with community values.
And then community expertise.
This is one that is really, really important in terms of
I thinking about what is included in best available science.
You know, that really alongside what many deem
as experts, so your scientific and your technical experts,
we should be elevating local knowledge, local methods, local expertise.
There are a wealth of information that should be equally
contributing to
the design of the project and the implementation of the project.
In designing the engagement approach, a few things to think about.
So we recommend often to teams to think about
maybe having their first task be an engagement plan.
You're kind of outlining somewhat of an engagement plan in the proposal
writing process, hopefully, like through these dialogues
with the communities, you should be in a position
where you're starting to already outline an engagement plan.
But this is, you know, proposals.
There's only so many pages, right?
And a lot of what I'm going over now, you might find difficult to capture in the
required length of a proposal.
So having your first task for any project being, we're going to take the time
to develop an engagement plan, really helps you flesh out
anything that maybe you were unable to incorporate into the proposal.
The best engagement approaches are reciprocal engagement.
So I touched on this a little bit earlier, but really thinking about,
you know, beyond awareness
building and fully supports knowledge sharing and community dialogue.
So this is not outreach, this is not, you know, where you are
as a project team, simply educating the public about what you're doing.
This is about engaging the public in the process itself
and providing them an opportunity to shape
the project as a whole.
Another common approach
that is really beneficial are providing professional development opportunities.
So this is specifically
for providing professional development opportunities for community members.
So think about paid internships, job training, apprenticeships.
There's lots of possibilities.
When a project is going on in a community to provide
professional development opportunities for actual community members.
Also think about the location and the timing of engagement.
So when I say location,
this is about going where the community already is.
Are there already festivals, neighborhood parties that you can leverage?
Always be thinking about where you're hosting something.
Think about the cultural and historical context of that.
For instance, you're hosting all of your engagement events in a
government institution or
in perhaps even an academic institution carries a certain cultural
and historical context for the community members in and around that.
And so really being thoughtful about what it means,
how important it is to have specific locations that a community trusts in
and that they aren't necessarily having to make effort to go to you. But
you are going to them.
For the timing of engagement.
So timing of engagement would reflect the daily life of community members, right?
So you're not necessarily, you're not saying,
we're only engaging with you between 9 to 5.
Thinking about weeknights, weekends, providing
different times, different dates for multiple engagement points
will be really important to engage with communities.
And then language and cultural translation is a big one.
This is something that often will be seen in proposals as almost an afterthought.
“Oh well, we'll translate
all our one pagers into Spanish.” Well,
why are you translating that information into Spanish and translating it
into Spanish as an afterthought is not really engaging with anybody.
It doesn't really, it's more of an outreach or educational effort.
So we encourage all teams
to think about the nuances of cultural and language translation.
For example, there are different dialects.
If you say to me, you are translating something into Spanish, I'm going to
perhaps want to know what dialect you are specifically translating it into.
Every thing that is translated should have a clear purpose
for why it's translated and think beyond written translation.
Think about also oral translation.
Oral translation is really where you're going to be able to have a dialogue.
Written translation often is something that is, you're already translating
a document that has potentially already been finalized.
And so really thinking about the nuances of translation can be really
All right, timelines.
So in thinking
through the timeline here, I'm just going to give you a few pointers.
So allowing time for participatory process and community led outcomes, this is,
you know, I'm sure this is
not news to anybody, but it takes time for a full participatory process.
It really takes time to make it so that outcomes are led by the community.
So being sure that as you're developing the timeline,
you are allowing for flexibility, allowing for iteration,
allowing for shifts in your timeline as the community may move slower,
you know, it may take longer to build trust than initially anticipated.
And so thinking about how to build that
into a timeline in your proposal is really important.
And then
we also recommend that you demonstrate some long term commitment
to the community beyond the grant.
So this could be as simple
as including a sentence or a piece in your timeline saying, you know,
we have these other projects going on that will continue past this project
or we anticipate to do this with the community moving past this grant.
It's always nice to have an indication that the engagement
won't end with the grant funding.
And then some considerations for budget.
So equitable funding across the project team.
So what is meant by this, is that you really
look at all project team members, whether they are academic agency
or are they are from local community
based organizations and you fund equitable time for them to engage.
So really thinking about the funding that if you want
community based organizations,
community members to really fully engage in a project,
you need to make sure that they have the time and capacity and funding to do that.
And so that takes some thought to ensure
that they are funded in a leadership position.
It's recommended you identified specific community organizations. So
I mentioned this a little bit beforehand, but it comes back again in the budget.
If you have a line item
for community based organizations, it shouldn’t say to be identified.
You should have specifically who the community based organizations
that you are working alongside with
listed aid compensation for community members.
So there's community organizations and then there's community members.
You might have members that are serving on working groups
that are serving in advisory roles.
Also, those roles require compensation as their expertise
and time should be valued accordingly.
Funding that stays in the community.
So as you're developing your budget, think about how can you help funds
stay in the community, providing funds to organizations
in the community, community members, community businesses.
Maybe it's getting, if you're doing a workshop,
getting food at a community business, thinking about how to
keep as much funding within the community as possible.
Professional development funding.
So that was getting back the internships, the apprenticeships
that I mentioned earlier for community
members.
This is really important
that they are fully funded professional development opportunities.
They're not a volunteer and they take into consideration
the cost of housing and the cost of living.
We also need to budget
to remove barriers to participation.
So this is where you kind of start to think about, okay,
if I'm throwing a workshop, I might need to fund public transportation,
food, I might need to fund
childcare costs. Right?
This is where you start to remove barriers to participating in your events.
And then always encouraged to hire professional translators.
So you may have someone on your staff
or you may you yourself may speak a second language,
but it's not always fair to rely on those who speak second languages
to be translators.
A translator is a specific job with a specific skill set,
and it may be worth a conversation with your project team.
If folks do speak second languages, do they feel comfortable translating?
And if not, it really should be budgeted for.
And then one last thing Letters of support.
We always recommend that you have letters of support from community members.
They demonstrate a commitment,
whether you're
committing organizational or individual capacity, they're genuine.
So, you know, no boilerplate language.
They're really from the community organizations and members
and genuinely supporting the project.
They might reference long term engagement
that has already occurred in the community
and they might reference
how they were engaged in the proposal development description.
I know a lot of you are already going to say, well, community
based organizations are really taxed and can't necessarily take the time
to write letters for every project that they're engaging in.
A colleague of mine recently suggested that one solution to this is
maybe you write down a few questions, you have a conversation with that person,
having some questions that you would like them to answer,
and then you develop it into a letter and then send it back to them.
So that might be a way to help take the burden off of them a little bit.
And so now I'm going to ask Shannan to share in the chat.
We have this checklist here that goes into way more detail.
Everything I just shared with you that you can sit down with your project team.
And now, as I mentioned before, this checklist is really designed
for those who maybe have less experience engaging
with community based organizations or communities
and are looking to really strengthen their skillset in this space.
And so this is a checklist that you can sit down
with your project team and just talk through where on the spectrum you lie.
We've provided examples under each of the examples of areas
that might, maybe you're doing really well,
maybe you need improvement, and areas where, hey, we're good.
You know, our project team exemplifies this principle fairly strongly.
And so in using the checklist, I'm just going to remind you all, as I said,
the audience are for organizations with less experience
in developing proposals alongside communities.
The purpose is to facilitate engagement, focus, dialogue.
And then when you would use this checklist is during the grant writing process,
because it's really about laying a strong foundation for implementation.
If your project is funded, then
I'm going to leave you with one reminder before I hand it back to Jan here.
I just want to quickly point out that meaningful engagement doesn't end
once the grant is submitted.
Relationships and trust should not wax and wane based on grant cycles.
So I know we've spent a lot of time
talking about the proposal writing process today,
but this is really one piece, as Aranzazu kind of outlined early
on, around how to engage with communities meaningfully.
So with that, I'll hand it back to Jan.
Thanks, Dani,
and thank you to Dani and Aranzazu for all that really helpful information.
And we want to get to any questions that you have.
Before that, I actually have a question for you all participants,
because we always like to ask this in a lot of the webinars we do, which is
what was something that you learn today about meaningful
engagement, something that Aranzazu or Dani shared?
It's always fun to for us
to see kind of what resonated with you and what you learned.
So go ahead, put it in the chat
and I will pause, let you do that, read a few of them.
So recognizing that the community based organizations
are decision makers in the project,
focusing on assets,
describing and building on the community strengths,
adding the create engagement plan
in the timeline, like really being very, very deliberate with that.
And then the professional development funding was something
interesting to learn. 90% of
the community engagement is expected before the proposal submitted, right.
Something that maybe we don't
always consider Included in budget funds to help pay for community engagement.
Yeah.
And I want to say to that question in particular, if you're not sure what can
and can't be included in the budget for our competition, definitely send
that note to the Resilience Challenge email to confirm that.
Yeah, hiring from the community for all the roles,
thinking about removing barriers to participation.
Yeah. And meeting space.
Thinking about the meeting space. Absolutely.
The letters of support and yeah, maybe how to do that.
As Dani noted that there are often overtaxed and so helping
prepare that by interviewing them
and then drafting it and these are great.
Thank you all so much.
I really love to see kind of what stuck with you and what might have been new.
That's always helpful for us. All right.
So I have one more question for you
all before we get to your questions, which is we do have a quick poll.
Again, really good for us to know if this was a good use of your time.
You know, we've been here for 45 minutes, maybe a few more minutes
longer for questions. And was this a good use of your time?
So if you would just go into our poll, which is the Triangle Circle Square,
click on poll and answer that question, that will be super helpful for us.
All right.
And so with that, I'm actually going to, we do have a few questions that came in
while Dani and Aeanzazu were speaking.
But please, please, please go ahead and throw any other questions
you have in the chat and we'll go ahead and try to answer here.
Now, we do have a few minutes left, so with that, I'm going to start,
I will throw this at you Aranzazu, first and again,
this may be a little too specific to our competition,
but maybe you can talk a little bit more broadly.
The question was that they're pretty big region for the grant
and there may be multiple communities rather than one community
and which could entail a lot of MOUs, as you were mentioning, as a suggestion.
And so the question was, you know, should it be narrowed down,
the scope narrowed down a little bit.
And actually another participant suggested
targeting a few in advance, help better address their interests.
But then part of the project itself is going to be engaging,
learning and adapting throughout.
So I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that Aranzazu.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you. Jan. Yes, great question.
And you're right, I had just suggested
certain things like an MOU, and I think
a lot of it is getting to know
those communities and knowing what's feasible.
We don't know all the parameters.
We don't know the extent of your region.
So you’re your best gauge on that.
And so what we provided was just helpful
tips, best practices to think about
as you're moving along in the conversation and planning the proposal.
I think the person that answered that is wonderful.
You know, I mentioned iteration, so did Dani,
I think that issue is and it also lends itself
that you're listening and hearing and you're having conversations
and that you will arrive at a place
where it seems feasible to do the work meaningfully right.
And so we've been going over what is meaningful engagement.
I think,
I think you could potentially bring down the scope of that was of interest
again, making sure that the meaningful engagement does happen.
So I hope that answers a little bit.
And that's why in my presentation mentioned just using singular
a community in CBO, because knowing very well that you are all probably
likely have many collaborators and communities and partners.
Thanks, Aranzazu.
All right.
So, Dani, here's one for you.
And again, I know that you can't answer specifically for this competition,
but just maybe in a general sense.
When engaging with community during proposal development, how explicit
can we be that we're developing a full proposal for the competition.
Yeah, I mean, so I mean, engaging with a community,
I would say you should always be 100% upfront
exactly what what you're doing and working on together.
So I would be very explicit about what the intentions
are for any dialogue or conversation,
for any proposal that really you're submitting.
Because I think what ends up happening in a lot of instances
is that a lot of and this happens frequently,
I think at every scale and level is that
the communities are always reached out to after an idea has already been formed.
They're already reached out to after maybe a grant has even been submitted.
And so just being honest
and upfront in the beginning about where you're at in that process and saying
how you would like to engage, I think goes really, really far
because any sort of
dishonesty or maybe not being upfront with exactly what the intentions
are regarding what funding you're going after, how much I mean, in
a true situation where you're really meaningfully engaging
with the community, they should be aware of how much money is on the table
and how that's being distributed, because really, as I mentioned
in my conversation, like you should be going over the budget with them.
It shouldn't be
kind of a
power dynamic where the person writing the proposal says,
well, here's how much you can get if you if you work with me.
Right?
So I would say as open and upfront as
with any situation about what
proposal you're working on, why you're working on it,
why you'd like to work together, and then really dive into the nitty gritty
of what relationship might look like moving forward.
Thanks, Dani.
Yeah, and there was a comment to your point
in the chat about being told not to announce that...
we were told not to announce that we've been invited back for full proposals
and NOAA's not going to do any kind of formal announcement.
But we also recognize that as you are preparing your full proposals,
you will be reaching out to communities and to other potential partners.
And so that's going to happen.
And we totally understand and recognize that
NOAA won't be doing a full, a formal announcement.
So just wanted to clarify that. Okay.
So yeah, and there was another comment about that as well.
So that's along those lines.
And then we did have a question around the budget,
which is very specific to the competition.
So we're not going to answer that here.
I just wanted to acknowledge that and to let you know that
we'll be getting back to those questions will be in the frequently
asked questions and responses there.
But encourage you to definitely use that resiliencechallenge@noaa.gov email
for any questions like that when you're you're
not sure especially around that.
Okay. So any other questions
All right.
But am seeing that this was a very useful webinar.
So thank you, Dani and Aranzazu for everything.
And let's go ahead then, we can go ahead and wrap it up.
And again, you know, remember, we've got the email address for questions.
We will be posting this recording online as well.
And another reminder that we've mentioned the last two webinars,
which is we do have technical assistance that we are offering
during the application period through these one on one consultations.
And so thank you, Shannan.
Just put into the chat the link to the form.
So if you haven't already signed up, I encourage you,
if you would like from one on one help to please reach out
using that form to schedule your consultation and
our next webinar.
As Aranzazu noted, it's going to be at the end of November.
It is November 30th at 4:00 Eastern and it's really kind of a part two
to today's webinar focusing on meaningful engagement
specifically around tribal and indigenous communities.
So we're going to have a few fabulous speakers talking about that.
So I hope you can join us then and then we'll have some upcoming,
diving into Digital Cost Deliveries in December.
So be looking at the website for those dates and time
and then in January, on January 17th will be another webinar
around performance measures and metrics as it relates to the competition.
So we'll be sending out email reminders on all of those.
And with that, I will say thank you all very much
and I hope you have a great rest of your day.