To ensure all voices are heard and represented in community advocacy, it’s essential to combine active listening with inclusive outreach and collaboration. This can be achieved by creating diverse channels for input, focusing on underrepresented groups, and developing outreach strategies that make them feel welcomed and empowered to share their perspectives. Forming collaborative partnerships, maintaining open communication and transparency, and empowering community leaders with platforms and resources will extend their reach and relevance across various communities. Balancing these efforts builds a more inclusive and dynamic approach to advocacy, ensuring that a broad array of voices guides decisions and initiatives.

Identifying a diversity of opportunity I think is key. Strategy centering around what has worked or methods traditionally used might actually hinder and limit outreach efforts, especially with nonuniform circumstances. If you want to be more inclusive to different or historically unheard voices, creating new and possibly more individualized methods is a good start, and ensuring an open and safe space for those voices to be amplified allows, I believe, for a greater level of trust, which potentially means more information shared.

A commitment to engage different voices in advocacy work requires the question, "Is anyone missing from this group?", to be asked at every meeting. If the answer is "yes", it must be a priority to loop in any missing groups or stakeholders. The work of inclusion must be ongoing and be a foundation for the development of "belonging" so that all voices feel welcome and heard.

Its difficult to get all views on board but you can minimize exclusion by ensuring community-led selection of participants in your activities. Identify the marginalized ie disabled, elderly and even youths and demand that in the planning of events they are consulted and included in implementation. When they participate, say at a workshop, assure them that their voice and concerns matter. Protect them from bullying. In terms of mobilization beware of community gatekeepers who may select according to their biases. Don't be controlled by gatekeepers - tell them you appreciate their support but you work with a broad network of community actors. Not all participants must be selected by 1 individual - let there be a diversity of mobilizers

The people in our communities are the true experts—they live the experiences, understand the unique challenges and needs of their neighborhoods. I recently attended a council meeting where community outcomes were presented by paid officials, while the volunteers and third-sector representatives who helped shape those outcomes were not. This highlighted the need to value and amplify all community voices, including those often underrepresented. When we show genuine respect for every contribution, word spreads across the community, reaching even those harder-to-engage groups. By valuing and listening to everyone, we build trust, participation, and achieve outcomes that genuinely reflect the diverse needs of the whole community.

Take your time. When you approach people with time, and a posture of honour, respect and humility, you’ll be surprised at how much people want to share their thoughts. Be authentically yourself. People can generally spot insincere motives, so be honest.

L'intérêt communautaire peut se percevoir au regard des relations de forces au sein d'une même communauté ou encore dans la façon dont l'apport de solutions exogènes pour une communauté tient compte des priorités réelles de la communauté dont on entend défendre l'intérêt. Dans l'une ou l'autre de ces acceptation ou tout autre acception, il reste difficile de satisfaire pleinement à la volonté de chaque personne, de chaque groupe spécifique et particulierement des minorités. Il faut toutefois assurer une large consultation directe ou indirecte, comprendre la monographie locale pour proposer les solutions les plus équitables, réduisant les gaps entre groupes et rétablissant une sorte d'équilibre communautaire concessionnel pour chaque partie.

This is going to be a hard one for some people to hear, but it is okay to not post every public engagement meeting you are planning out to the at-large public! I've been guilty of this myself on the other side by consistently showing up to public hearings and talking my points to try and stack the deck in favor of a pet issue -- but if you are truly wanting to hear from *everyone* then its best to establish a dedicated meeting with that group and make sure that it is only with that group. Keep people like me out by keeping it discrete if able!

Creo que nada mejor que la empatía, ponernos en lugar del otro en el proceso de escucha. Una escucha "activa", donde trato de comprender desde dónde me hablan las personas, las circunstancias que viven y las razones por las cuales, piensan como lo hacen. Bienvenida la empatía, para la escucha activa.