Abstract
The Problem
The centrality of community engagement to the success of higher education is incontestable. When the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic emerged in early 2020, organizations and institutions, including universities had to suspend most community engagement activities, which is predominantly done in-person, across states in order to reduce the spread of the virus. This was a call for strategic rethinking to remain mission focused in adverse situations.
The Recommendation
I recommend the modified Framework for University Community Partnership (UCP) and scenario planning, a widely utilized support scheme for strategic decision making to human resource development (HRD) practitioners as pivotal for community engagement. This article seeks to help organizations adjust effectively to the “new normal.”
The Stakeholders
This article seeks to provide the impetus for higher education institutions to effectively develop community engagement processes in the post-COVID-19 era. Furthermore, the article is written to benefit HRD professionals, nonprofit organizations, volunteers, and other community engagement programs.
Keywords
Community engagement can be described as a primordial concept. Since the early part of the 21st century, many colleges and universities in the US have embraced community engagement as an integral part of their core responsibilities (Weerts & Sandmann, 2010). As indicated by Osafo and Yawson (2019), “university-community partnership is exigent in addressing tenacious issues that threaten community life” (p. 4). Thus, the collaboration between institutions of higher education and the larger community has been found helpful in addressing community defined needs and keeping residents safe (Marullo & Edwards, 2000; Osafo & Yawson, 2019).
The mandate of engaging communities has been performed successfully by universities through research, teaching, volunteer programs, and partnerships with some community organizations. For example, the Master Gardener (MG) volunteer program operates as part of the Land Grant University Extension system by providing gardening education and other forms of support to the community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the underserved and disadvantaged population who are targeted to benefit most from these interactions were disproportionately impacted due to preexisting social and economic inequalities. This eventuality called for creativity and innovation in the community engagement process.
The main objective of this article is to discuss the community engagement experiences of a county Master Gardener Volunteer program of a Land Grant University in Northwestern United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. After a brief literature review, I will provide an overview of the models and concepts that constitute the core components of the article: the Master Gardener volunteer program, scenario planning, and the framework for university community partnership (UCP). A brief overview of community engagement during the pandemic, lessons learned, and a proposal for a post-COVID-19 strategy to engage communities will be presented. Finally, the implications of this work on the future of human resource development (HRD) will be discussed and a conclusion drawn.
Background
In the past, most colleges and universities have used the face-to-face approach as the most common means of providing community education, advise, and advocacy on various community issues. This effort was nearly marred by the COVID-19 pandemic that swept through nations across the globe in the early part of 2020, rendering many communities muffled due to suspended socioeconomic and in-person activities, except those deemed essential by federal and state government ordinances. Businesses, organizations, and institutions of higher education that traditionally require face-to-face interactions as the form of engagement had one or the other option, thus, to move into the virtual workspace or close down indefinitely. This phenomenon resulted in inadvertent disturbance in organization strategy, declining revenues, and a distressed workforce. As US unemployment rates soared from 3.6% in January to 14.7% by the end of April 2020 (Trading Economics, 2020), the need to engage distressed communities and help mitigate the overarching negative effects of COVID-19 on individuals and families had become eminent. As organizations, institutions, and communities struggle to adjust to the new normal working conditions, the penchant to be imaginative has revealed many breathtaking approaches to the community engagement process.
During the pandemic, state governors ordered businesses and organizations whose operations do not meet the criteria defined under the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers—businesses whose work help state, local, tribal, and industry partners as they work to protect communities while ensuring continuity of functions critical to public health and safety, as well as economic and national security, to suspend their operations (coronavirus.wa.gov). The MG volunteer program which was identified as part of the food supply chain, was granted the essential status by the State Governor’s office to continue some activities that directly lead to food production to be donated to the Food Bank. The essential MG volunteer program had to adopt new COVID-19 protocols mandated by the Land Grant University that they represent to continue their community engagement agenda.
Literature Review
Community Engagement Defined
Community engagement has been defined differently by different scholars, professionals, and institutions. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defined community engagement as “the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the wellbeing of those people” (CDC, 1997, p. 9). Community engagement is a planned process specifically designed for a group of people with special interest, operate within a common geographical boundary, or affiliated by other means to identify and address pertinent issues that affect their well-being (Center for Economic and Community Development, 2019).
In 2005, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching announced a new classification for higher education institutions to help adopt community engagement as a core constituent of their culture and identity (Driscoll, 2009). To this effect, the Carnegie Foundation defined community engagement as the “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Driscoll, 2009, p. 6). The classification was in three parts: curriculum engagement, where faculty and students collaborate with the community to address community-identified needs and enhance community well-being through service learning and civic engagement; outreach and partnership, thus, application and provision of institutional resources for community use and application of knowledge and scholarship to enhance community development; and considerable application of both curriculum engagement and outreach and partnership (Driscoll, 2009). Fitzgerald et al. (2016) asserted that, “undergirding this renewed approach to engagement is the understanding that not all knowledge and expertise reside in the academy, and that both expertise and great learning opportunities in teaching and scholarship also reside in non-academic settings” (p. 227).
Due to the complexity in finding a common definition for community engagement, the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) introduced the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum to guide institutional activities in communities (Nelimarkka et al., 2014). The spectrum consist of five dimensions: inform—gathering information to understand the complexity of societal issues; consult—receiving feedback from participants to aid decision making; involve—ensuring information from feedback is considered in decision making; collaborate—enhancing communication between stakeholders and; empower—implementation of a joint plan. Table 1 below provides details of the public participation spectrum and its usefulness in the community engagement process.
Modified Spectrum of Participation.
Source: Nabatchi (2012); Adapted from the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation (IAP2, 2007).
Additionally, the different perspectives of community engagement are important in this discussion. The four main community engagement perspectives of interest here are, systems, individual, social, and virtual (McCloskey et al., 2013). The systems perspective defines community engagement as having different parts that play specialized roles in ensuring community well-being. According to McCloskey et al. (2013), each part needs to function effectively for the community to thrive. Individual perspective emphasizes a sense of belonging and community membership as key to desiring to be part of a community. The social perspective on the other hand describes community engagement in the realms of social and political networks. The virtual perspective emphasizes computer-mediated communications. These perspectives function interdependently to enhance the community engagement process and ensure greater stakeholder benefit (McCloskey et al., 2013).
All these perspectives interplayed to ensure success of the MG volunteer program in fulfilling the demands of their essential status during the COVID-19 pandemic. The manner in which the different perspectives meshed together in the community engagement process will be discussed later in this article.
Overview of the Master Gardener Program
The Master Gardener program was established in 1973 by Dr. David Gibby of Washington State University Extension to respond to the high demand for horticulture and gardening advice in the Pierce and King counties of Washington State (Meyer, 2007). This volunteer led program operate as part of the Land Grant Universities Extension programs serving various communities in all 50 US states, parts of Canada, and other parts of the world. Faculty and staff are assigned to train and provide programmatic and policy advice to volunteers who have a passion for gardening to help community members with horticulture education.
Master Gardener volunteers engage communities in various aspects, including community food gardening, plant clinic, gardening education, and demonstration gardens. The community gardening team provide gardening education and logistics assistance to low income families through recognized organizations that serve as garden sponsors. The plant clinic serves as a diagnostics center for gardening issues in the community, thus, they provide answers to problems related to plants and other technical gardening needs. The education team provide community members with gardening education and engage school children by reading gardening novels and demonstrating practical gardening skills. The demonstration gardens serve as community resource for gardening education and a place for leisure and other social activities. All these activities are mainly done in-person and at various locations within the community.
Even though the Master Gardener program had been given the essential work status by the governor’s office, volunteers were allowed only restricted in-person meetings, a swift deviation from their traditional practice. Because going virtual would not fit into the entirety of the activities the program engages in, innovation and creativity became eminent. Using scenario planning and a modified version of the framework for UCP (Osafo & Yawson, 2019), the volunteers with the help of the extension agents came up with ideas to enhance their community engagement agenda. Before discussing some of the innovative ideas used by the MGs, let’s quickly look at scenario planning and the framework for UCP.
Scenario Planning
Herman Kahn is credited to have initiated the scenario-based planning idea when he worked on thermonuclear war for the US Military at RAND Corporation in the 1950s (Khor & Khan, 2003; Verity, 2003). Based on a technique referred to as future now thinking, Khan and his associates did detailed analysis and imagined various futuristic situations as if they in the present, a technique which was later dubbed scenario planning (Verity, 2003). Kahn and Wiener (1967) described scenario planning as ‘‘a set of hypothetical events set in the future constructed to clarify a possible chain of causal events as well as their decision points’’ (p. 6). Thus, a method for conceptualizing numerous future possibilities related to experiences in an organization’s life across a range of issues. According to Amer et al. (2013), “scenario planning stimulates strategic thinking and helps to overcome thinking limitations by creating multiple futures” (p. 23). Diverse criteria have been suggested regarding how scenario planning is conducted. For this article, the framework for UCP which served as a guide for the MG volunteers community engagement processes during the COVID-19 pandemic will guide a proposed plan for future eventualities.
The Framework for University Community Partnership
As indicated by Osafo and Yawson (2019), partnerships between universities and communities helps to optimize both human and material resource utilization and builds the capacity for developing communities. Figure 1 below clarifies the modified version of the framework for UCP.
Modified framework for university community partnership.
The model uses a five-step approach in guiding the scenario planning agenda for community engagement:
Define—define the target community with the intent not to restrict entry and information inflow and dissemination, but to understand community needs from an interpretivist viewpoint, and to limit the inflow of extraneous information that may create ambiguity.
Public scholarship—establishment of an open forum for stakeholders to share information on issues of concern to the community for further assessment and planning.
Participatory research—a select group of people from the various stakeholder groups meet and plan the community engagement process based on information gathered during the open discussion.
Community partnership—empower a leadership team from the selected group to collaborate with the lead agency to analyze and report the final community engagement implementation plan to stakeholders. This team is tasked to identify community resources and available technology to enhance the community engagement process.
Public information network—a public information network should be set up via available platforms to provide stakeholders the opportunity to share ideas and ask questions (Osafo & Yawson, 2019).
MG Volunteers Engaging the Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Since the publicization of the internet in the early 1990s, many individuals, organizations, and communities have garnered resources to be able to connect to the world. In fact, since the late 1990s, the use of the internet has become so eminent that the term virtual has redefined community away from dimensions such as geographical location, social interaction, and locality. Currently, virtual community is a common concept to many entities. When the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent lockdown and stay-home order compelled many organizations to move offices into the virtual workspace, contrary to their regular operations, it became inevitable for the MG volunteers to partially join the trail. This was an ad hoc measure to engage the community and to stay mission driven.
Immediately following the infamous lockdown that was implemented to ensure public safety and reduce the spread of COVID-19 across states, the MG volunteers with the help of the university’s faculty and staff who oversee the program followed the steps described in Figure 1 above to plan scenarios and adopt new ways to engage the community. With the university serving as the lead agency, series of meetings were held to gather information to help define what aspects of community engagement could be fulfilled under the circumstance. Next, an open forum was conducted to deliberate via Zoom about community resources and community needs to help with innovation and creativity. A team was formed to brainstorm and develop a plan of action based on selected scenarios. The proposed plan was reported to the group for further consideration and amendments. Following the acceptance of the plan, a forum was created via Microsoft Teams for stakeholders to post and access information as needed. The information gathered served as the central resource for developing strategies to mitigate some of the psychosocial and food needs of communities during the pandemic and innovate for post-COVID-19 community engagement.
Community Engagement During COVID-19
Following the plan described above, the MG volunteers adapted many strategies to stay mission focused and continue providing for the community. Innovative ideas such as learning new skills and following protocols were adopted to ensure food and personal safety whenever the MG volunteers engaged the community by providing gardening education, working in the vegetable garden, or donating fresh vegetables to the Food Bank that served low income families. One safety measure beside the regular wearing of face masks and hand washing was to use only brand new, instead of donated used bags, in packaging the food items to avoid possible spread of the virus through infected fresh food.
Again, scenario planning was used in deciding how to continue their longstanding commitment to providing horticulture education and life skills to incarcerated youth at a Juvenile Justice Center (JJC). This education program was executed by providing YouTube videos on relevant subject matter. Thus, to observe safety protocols of the JJC facility and that of the affiliate university, the volunteers replaced their in-person activities with videos of their work in the garden and screened them to the youth participants in a classroom. Volunteers were available via virtual means to discuss and answer questions from the youth. Only a specified number of youths were allowed to watch at a time to prevent overcrowding and possible violation of social distancing protocols.
Furthermore, the Plant Sale; an annual fundraising activity that was done in an open space with free access to the public in a regular period was done in a hybrid fashion. Thus, pictures of the plants were displayed on the Square Point of Sale software where buyers would choose and pay for plants. A scheduled date and time were planned for pick-ups to avoid a big crowd at one place at a time. This plan worked out well and sales target were closely met. Other in-person meetings that did not require work on physical projects or direct contact with community members were conducted virtually via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. The shift from in-person interaction to virtual has been helpful but with some challenges.
Lessons Learned
Below are some lessons learned from engaging communities through the various media.
Not everyone has access to technology—Some volunteers and community members complained about not having access to any technological device beside their cell phones. They rely on the library for these resources, but the libraries were closed. This lack impedes progress of community engagement because those in this population are mostly low-income families who need help the most.
Not everyone knows how to use technology—Some people are simply not tech savvy and cannot use technology devices even if the organization provides one.
Not everyone is interested in excessive use of technology—There is another group of volunteers and community members who may have access to technology devices and are computer literate but, would not want to stay online for an extended period and therefore not interested in Zoom or Microsoft Team meetings.
Some community members do not have access to the internet even if they are fortunate to have a computer.
Seek diverse opinions from stakeholders before making critical decisions—It is important to involve all stakeholders from the scratch to make sure the proposed plans are relevant to their needs.
Assign a single authority for communication at every level to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation of information. People working virtually may have limited interaction after computer mediated meetings and therefore not be able to seek clarity about ambiguous statements from peers. Therefore, they may interpret indistinct information based on their understanding and act contrary to the required standards. It is important to disseminate information from a single source. Communication should be concise and simple.
All meetings should be recorded and made available via email or other means to all interested parties for reference when needed. These and other considerations are helpful as we move into a new era of impending virtual workspace.
Proposal for Post-COVID-19 Community Engagement
The versatility of technology in the 21st Century workplace cannot be overlooked, but it has become even more evident with the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequence lockdown that compelled many organizations and businesses to go virtual. Canceling and shelving community engagement events to reduce the spread of COVID-19 was a clarion call for organizations to adapt to change and modify the way they interact because, it is incontestable that the pandemic has altered the way work is done, especially those that require face-to-face interactions. The scare of this emerging unpredictable path has become a challenge to organizations to be innovative and apt in their survival strategies. This is where adept knowledge and experience in community engagement comes to bear. Based on extensive experiences in community engagement prior to and during the coronavirus pandemic, I propose a six-step approach to enhance the community engagement process in the post-COVID-19 era:
Focus on scenario planning. Thus, scenario planning allows for the consideration of multiple futures, it helps in preparing for, rather than predicting the future. Scenario planning provides an avenue to select a few authentic plausibility out of the different alternative futures and identifies a number of relevant effects the selected scenarios can potentially trigger. Furthermore, scenarios do not conceal risks and negativity, embrace every plausibility, negative or positive, do not focus on a single desired future, and uses many paths to reach the future. Risk identification and mitigation are some of the defining factors of scenario planning.
Integrate the various perspectives; systems, individual, social, and virtual. Thus, use available networks to access resources. Optimize the use of every resource in the community, both human and material; create a deep sense of belonging among community members; and use virtual platforms to be prepared for future eventualities that might impede face-to-face interactions.
Intensify technology use to complete work that would otherwise be done in-person. It should however be recognized that not every community member has access to technology devices. Also, some community members may not be skillful, interested in, or have a conducive work environment at home. It is recommended that organizations work more with community libraries to help provide assistance in these areas when needed. Facebook post, email, YouTube videos, Microsoft Teams and other technology-based resources are helpful channels of information sharing.
Provide other channels of communication for those who may never assimilate to technology use, have no access to tech devices or the internet, and disinterest in online interactions.
Use a single source but multiple media to communicate. Ensure that information shared with stakeholders is simple, concise, and unambiguous, and serves a specific purpose.
Make sure to involve all stakeholders in planning and implementation of programs. Consider diverse views from different contributors and respect opposing views.
Using the framework for UCP to guide the community engagement planning and implementation will help leadership to focus and meet all the dimensions of the Spectrum of Participation; inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and empower for a more positive outcome. The model uses a combination of the above five constructs in achieving community engagement goals.
Implications for HRD Research, Theory, and Practice
The need to retrain employees to be effective and provide employable skills for the unemployed in the post COVID-19 workplace poses a challenge to HRD professionals to strategize and ensure training meets the current needs of organizations, communities, and the larger society. The reported hike in unemployment from a low 3.6% in January 2020 to 14.7% by the end of April 2020 (Trading Economics, 2020), and potential changes in the way work is done is a call for HRD professionals to reconsider their approaches to training. Thus, in many institutions, there is the likelihood of a perennial need for people to acquire new skills to remain relevant. For instance, universities across the United States, many of whom value their campuses with the flamboyant landscape designs and high-tech classrooms that present students the opportunity to access the globe with ease, had to swiftly move virtual to continue providing the knowledge and skills that students require to participate effectively in society. This is a call on HRD professionals to continuously use the scenario planning approach to prepare for such unpredictable eventualities. Thus, scenario planning is more effective in mitigating the negative effects in adverse situations because, it embraces negativity as an element of the plausible futures.
In my view, HRD’s success in the post-COVID-19 era requires knowledge of community engagement. Such knowledge is important in serving defined community needs (Reid & Howard, 2016), building trust by involving community members in deliberations, and discussing and implementing integrated programs. This is an assumption for careful observation, classification, and defining the problems towards new theory development. Understanding the community engagement processes and using scenario planning will provide HRD professionals the impetus to navigate the training and development needs and help mitigate some of the negative effects of unpredictable situations on organizations.
Conclusion
In early March of 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) a pandemic, organizations including universities across the United States had to quickly move employees and students out of their campuses with the flamboyant landscapes and high-tech offices and classrooms into a virtual space to continue engaging their communities. Universities across the US, especially those with Land Grant status were bent on staying mission driven in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The declaration of some of their community activities essential precipitated a high spirit of innovation to continue their community engagement agenda. For example, a county Master Gardener Volunteer Program in a North Western US state that was declared essential, adopted scenario planning and the framework for UCP to guide their community engagement activities. Using their success story as benchmark for future community engagement, HRD professionals are encouraged to embrace the various perspectives; systems, individual, social, and virtual to achieve the broader goals of informing, involving, collaborating, consulting, and empowering communities through training and development.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.