Community-centered engagement framework

Community-centered engagement intentionally puts people first and centers community perspectives in the process of Met Council decision-making. It supports the equity framework by addressing the conditions of success in the following ways:

• Leading with race: Community-centered engagement intentionally prioritizes engagement with overburdened communities.  
• Action-oriented: Community-centered engagement includes intentional actions to highlight and amplify best practices, to address systemic inequities, and to identify policy changes that either limit or inhibit community voices.
• Address the historical context: Community-centered engagement provides space to identify and address historic and ongoing injustice. It also partners effectively with community in structuring engagement that builds capacity and meaningfully involves community in ways that repair historical harms and combat extractive practices.  
• Share power: Community-centered engagement prioritizes co-creation with community and intentionally integrates co-created solutions sustainably into decision-making and implementation processes.

Community voices shaped the Met Council’s Public Engagement Plan, created in response to the equity commitments in Thrive MSP 2040. Since that time, community voices and the experience of our public processes have identified ways to more intentionally imbed principles of equity and inclusion into engagement and decision-making processes – namely recognizing historical patterns of injustice and exclusion, and the impact of unilateral decision-making. Imagine 2050 advances previous engagement policy in several specific ways:

• Centering community voices in regional processes
• Partnering with community as co-creators
• Committing to shared agenda-setting
• Investing in community capacity-building
• Focusing on assets in community and the value community voices bring to regional processes
• Prioritizing overburdened communities in engagement  

Imagine 2050 principles of public engagement

Principles of the Imagine 2050 public engagement plan include:

• Equity: Residents and communities are partners in decision-making.  
• Respect: Residents and communities should feel heard and their interests included in decisions. 
• Transparency: Residents and communities should be engaged in planning and decisions should be open and widely communicated. 
• Relevance: Engagement occurs early and often throughout a process to assure the work is relevant to residents and communities.  
• Accountability: Residents and communities can see how their participation affects the outcome; specific outcomes are measured and communicated. 
• Collaboration: Engagement involves developing relationships and understanding the value residents and communities bring to the process. Decisions should be made with people, not for people.  
• Inclusion: Engagement should remove barriers to participation that have historically disengaged residents and communities.  
• Cultural competence: Engagement should reflect and respond effectively to racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic experiences of residents and communities. 

Updated practices more reflective of a community-centered approach to engagement will be included and expanded upon in implementation of Imagine 2050. For example, the Met Council has established Tribal relations policies – including formal government-to-government consultation, staff involvement, and community engagement expertise. The Met Council will update and continue to evolve its practices, policies, and procedures with the American Indian communities, including education of any changes to ensure implementation, as part of Imagine 2050 commitments. The Met Council also updated our interpretation of the public purpose doctrine to include incentives and compensation for engagement and community expertise. These examples highlight the impact established systems, policies, and procedures have on relationships with communities and people throughout the region.  

Community-centered engagement takes intentional actions to honor community expertise, addresses inequity by integrating and compensating the value of community expertise, and prioritizes processes that invite community participation and partnership. It recognizes a full spectrum of connection with community voices, from informing to co-creation. It ensures all people are represented in decision-making and that the weight of feedback from community is proportional to the impact a decision has on communities. Community-centered engagement represents a fundamental commitment to addressing equity in community engagement.