3.7 Engaging in community dialogue

Community dialogue is a process that draws community participants from as many parts of the community as possible to exchange information, views, ideas, share personal stories and experiences. This allows participants to develop solutions to community concerns. Its value as a process is that:

• It enables common values to be explored.
• It allows participants to express their own interests.
• It enables participants to grow in understanding and to decide to act together with common goals.
• It creates space for participants to question and re-evaluate their assumptions.
• It facilitates behaviour change.
• It can make unexpressed concerns visible.
• It encourages people to learn to work together to improve their situation.