Chapter 1: Guidebook Introduction

Chapter 1 provides a brief Introduction to the Guidebook – its design, purposes, scope, definitions, and intended audiences.

Chapter 2 highlights the History and Background of the Water for Agriculture project and the rationale, strategies and research methods we employed in developing this five-year initiative. 

Chapter 3 explores the concept of Community-led Engagement as central to our strategy and approach toward working with partner communities.  We explore both the promise and assumptions of community-led engagement as well as what distinguishes it from other approaches to engagement and the tensions and limitations it presents in practice.   

Chapter 4 explores the three Principles at the heart of all engagement efforts – and from which all other activities are designed to flow – trust, actions and outcomes, and adaptive engagement. 

Chapter 5 discusses the core Process Attributes the social science literature highlights as important preconditions or structural goals under which engagement efforts are most likely to succeed. These process attributes are the foundation for the development of our process model, facilitation goals, and several important metrics for us to assess within our research strategy.

Chapter 6 then dives into our Process Model – the framework of processes and strategies we used as the foundation of engagement initiatives used in each of our five sites.  Employing this modified action plan process afforded us a consistent, yet flexible engagement approach to build our efforts around, and study, the individual, organizational, and community changes that subsequently occurred and under which conditions.

Chapter 7 reviews the key Facilitation Principles and Goals at the foundation of how we approached implementing our process model.  While most of the principles and goals reviewed here will be familiar to many with facilitation experience, what distinguishes them in our contexts is that they were purposefully designed to both reinforce our process model strategies and each other.  Regardless of your engagement strategy, these principles and goals are important considerations for anyone who seeks to successfully facilitate a collaborative approach to decision-making in natural resource contexts.

Chapter 8 investigates the metrics, options, considerations, and strategies of studying and Evaluation Approaches to engagement initiatives.  Tailoring your metrics and strategies to the goals, objectives, internal, and external conditions in which your engagement initiative takes place allows you to assess its social, behavioral and environmental outcomes – from both a formative and summative perspective – as well as provide you with important opportunities to build your organizational capacity.

Chapter 9 then provides an overview of the lessons we’ve learned in developing an Engagement Strategy and Team.  Many of these insights will be useful as you assemble your team, consider your budget, time, and resource needs and capacity, and communicate both within your team and with your community partners and groups.

To conclude, the Appendices provide several miscellaneous but important sections relevant to the Guidebook. These include a glossary of terms, links to resources related to stakeholder engagement training,  publications that emerged from the Water for Agriculture project, acknowledgements & thanks, and a description of how to cite this Guidebook.