Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

I sat through a meeting earlier this week where we discussed all the ways to engage with communities. A friend of mine shared the same thing too about how she attended a meeting with folks trying to figure out just what community engagement entails. Both communities were academic and both had minimal input from folks outside research circles. In the meeting I attended, I shared the issue is language. Outside of research circles, I belong to communities and I know who we are and how we gather to address our needs and concerns. There are no hidden agendas, we gather because we must, whether to celebrate or to mourn. We are a community and every member has insights as to what makes us a community.

Anyways while helping my kids clean their room today, I glanced through the book “The light in the attic,” and a poem in it resonated with this issue for me. Community engagement to me these days is like asking a zebra a question. Shel Silverstein wrote about a little boy who asked the zebra whether it was black with white stripes or white with black stripes. The zebra went on to ask the boy questions such as whether he was good with bad habits or bad with good habits. Whether he was noisy during quiet times or quiet during noisy times. Whether he was happy with some sad days or sad with some happy days. Whether he was neat with some sloppy ways or sloppy with some neat ways. And on and on the zebra went until the little boy decided never to ask a zebra about its stripes again.

We keep asking the same questions with community engagement. Are we engaging with communities or are communities engaging with us? Is research conducted for the community or is the community conducting research? The answer for me is language. When you are a community, you will know and the questions about engagement won’t be necessary because you are a community. The sooner we see the community for who and what they are, the sooner we stop asking these questions and instead do as communities do. Keep this the next time questions around community engagement arise.