Public engagement hub

The new Public Engagement Hub is jointly coordinated by the IPU’s CIP and the International Parliament Engagement Network (IPEN). The public engagement community is now growing on the IPU Public Engagement LinkedIn page. Parliaments interested in advancing their public engagement practices are encouraged to participate actively in this community, to take part in webinars and peer exchanges, and to share good-practice examples.

Public engagement webinar series:

Since launching six months ago, the Public Engagement Hub has hosted five webinars, bringing together more than 220 participants from 48 countries and 33 parliaments. The first three sessions covered the public engagement journey, the effectiveness of public engagement tools, and delivering public engagement with small teams. The two most recent webinars are detailed below:

• Promoting inclusion and diversity in parliamentary public engagement (5 October 2022)

This webinar explored how parliaments can promote inclusivity and diversity in their public engagement activity. Andres Lomp (Community Engagement Manager, Parliament of Victoria (Australia)) presented the Inclusion Checklist from the 2022 Global Parliamentary Report, and drew from examples of how his parliament has promoted diversity and inclusivity in its engagement work. He focused on four main elements necessary for inclusive participation:

1. A commitment to inclusion
2. Building relationships with disadvantaged and underrepresented groups
3. A cultural shift that sees the people working across parliament taking deliberate actions to include disadvantaged and underrepresented groups
4. Adequate budget to support specific inclusion programmes

The recording of the webinar can be found here.

• Public Engagement: Reaching out to remote communities (9 November 2022)

This webinar focused on creative ways for parliaments to connect with remote communities. Participants heard examples from the following parliaments:

• The National Assembly of Serbia, about field hearings with local communities
• The Parliament of South Africa, about the use of constituency offices as satellite parliamentary offices
• The Parliament of South Australia (Australia), about how they manage to cover considerable distances to engage with remote communities

The presentation by Natalie Young (Community Education Officer, Parliament of South Australia (Australia) can be found here.

This webinar addressed how small parliaments and those with limited resources  can implement effective public engagement. In these parliaments, public engagement is often delivered by very small teams with limited budgets. The seminar explored how the Parliament of the Isle of Man has developed capacity for innovative public engagement programmes despite its very small team. This was supplemented by reflections from an UNDP official on his experience supporting public engagement in the Pacific islands.