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10 Powerful Community-Building Ideas

Strategies for ensuring that students in every grade feel like they’re part of the classroom community.

Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning. And the research bears that out: A 2018 study found that when teachers deliberately foster a sense of belonging by greeting each student at the door of the class, they see “significant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior.”

Edutopia already covered that study , and we’ve shared many other ideas from teachers for ensuring that every student in the classroom feels like they belong.

Some of the activities below take less than five minutes. They’re divided up among the grades, but many can apply across all of the years from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Elementary School

Shout-Outs: This is a quick way for students to celebrate each other for doing a job well or for attempting something difficult. Shout-outs can be incorporated at any point in a class. First-grade teacher Valerie Gallagher of Providence, Rhode Island, rings a chime when she wants to get the class’s attention to ask who has a shout-out.

“It’s not just me as the teacher saying, ‘You’re doing well’—it’s a way for them to interact with each other and celebrate positivity,” says Gallagher.

Friendly Fridays: Elizabeth Peterson, a fourth-grade teacher in Amesbury, Massachusetts, uses Friendly Fridays as a simple way for students to lift each other and themselves up. Peterson has her students write a friendly, anonymous note to a classmate, practice using positive self-talk, or use storytelling to give a peer a pep talk.

Sharing Acts of Kindness: Fifth-grade teacher Marissa King, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, shares two activities that encourage kindness . In the first, the teacher gives students secret kindness instructions, such as writing an anonymous note to a peer who is struggling in one of their classes.

The second activity revolves around noticing others’ acts of kindness: When a student sees a peer tidying up in the classroom, for example, they can post a thank you note on a shared digital “kindness wall.” Both activities coach students to be kind to their peers in the hope that they’ll begin to practice kindness unprompted.

Middle School

Paper Tweets: To build community in her seventh-grade classroom, Jill Fletcher of Kapolei Middle School in Kapolei, Hawaii, created a bulletin board modeled on Twitter . Students use a template to create a profile, and they enlist at least three followers—a friend, an acquaintance, and someone they don’t interact with much.

When the class does this activity—which takes about 45 minutes to set up the first time—Fletcher has them respond to prompts about their current mood or new things happening in their lives, and then their followers respond.

Class Norms: Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, has his students develop a set of norms for themselves—adjectives that describe them as a community of learners. Having students come up with their own norms creates “a pathway toward belonging for every single student in that class,” says Dr. Pamela Cantor, founder of Turnaround for Children.

“Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together,” says Shaddox. “It helps us own the behavior in the classroom.”

Group Salutes: A moment shared between two or more students at the beginning or end of an activity, a Group Salute is a teacher-prompted interaction that is a quick, low-prep way to cultivate community. The shared gesture can be physical—like a high five—or social—a teacher could ask students to express gratitude to their group members.

There’s some interesting data supporting this idea: Researchers found that NBA teams whose players touch the most early in the season—high fives, fist bumps, etc.—had the best records later for the season.

High School

Morning Meetings: Morning meetings have long been a staple of elementary classrooms, but they can help students in all grades transition into class. Riverside School, a pre-K to 12th-grade school in Ahmedabad, India, uses a version of morning meetings at every grade level as “a pure relationship-building time.” Bonding exercises led by teachers or students include physical or social and emotional activities, or discussions of sensitive topics like bullying.

Appreciation, Apology, Aha: As a quick, daily closing activity, students gather in a circle and share an appreciation of one of their peers, an apology, or a light bulb moment. The teacher models the activity by sharing and then asks for volunteers to speak.

“Those types of appreciations and community recognitions can go a long way toward building bonds,” explains Aukeem Ballard, an educator with Summit Public Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rose and Thorn: At the start of class, the teacher and students take turns sharing one rose (something positive) and one thorn (something negative) each . The process takes about five minutes.

“A low-stakes thorn might be ‘I feel tired.’ Yet many students choose to share more personal items, like ‘My thorn is that my dog is sick and I’m really worried about her,’” writes Alex Shevrin Venet, a former school leader at a trauma-informed high school.

Snowball Toss: Students anonymously write down one of their stressors on a piece of paper, crumple it up, gather in a circle, and throw their paper balls in a mock snowball fight. When that’s done, they pick up a snowball and read it aloud.

“The idea is that we’re moving around. We’re able to have fun, laugh, scream, be loud, and then have that discussion about stress,” says Marcus Moore, an advisory leader at Urban Prep School in Chicago.

7 Reasons Why Community Involvement in Schools is Important

Some schools are just starting to commit to working together with the community, while others have made significant progress in this regard. Each community’s involvement in schools is different, as each community has different needs. However, the basics are the same—student success. So, how does community involvement actually benefit students and schools? Read along to find out!

What is Community Involvement?

Has your mom ever volunteered at the school bake sale, or has your family ever participated in an event organised by your school, maybe with support from the local council? 

If your answer is yes, you have witnessed community involvement first-hand. 

According to Street Civics , “ Community involvement is meaningful, consistent participation in activities that support and improve upon social wellbeing. 

Community involvement examples include engaging with, volunteering for or donating to local schools, neighbourhood associations, government, and/or nonprofit organisations.” 

So, shortly – community involvement means civic participation and engagement, promoting the local community’s wellbeing. 

Schools are essential for community involvement. They are the main point where families and children interact and learn how from each other, to become even better members of society. 

Examples of Community Involvement in Schools 

In-person events.

Having events where families can come together, share insights into their needs, put the bas is of their community, and see how they can work together to create a better future for their children are great opportunities.

Large-scale events like this help create opportunities for community participation. Significant or short-scale events effectively improve and grow community participation, connect with teachers, and understand the classroom’s needs. 

Workshops with local professionals  

Engaging businesses and professionals in holding different workshops for students and their families is also a great way of community involvement in schools.

These can have different themes, and students can learn from professionals and gain skills that can help them in the real world.

They can also create relationships with these people and opt for different workshops where they can learn and help diminish the gap between education and industry fields. 

Virtual experiences

They will see how the skills they learn in education will help them solve real-world issues.

❓What was your favourite community involvement activity or event you participated in? 

Benefits of community involvement in schools

Community involvement in schools greatly benefits students, parents, and teachers. More than just offering your time, being involved in activities with your children improves the relationship between children and parents.

“I am a highly satisfied parent with my daughter’s progress at Spark Generation… The Spark Generation online platform is well-structured and helpful for independent work and understanding the subject matter. 

Parents have access to the innovative platform and their children’s evaluations… Whenever I needed to, I could easily reach out to someone to discuss any issues. 

I have also had the opportunity to participate in meetings where my daughter presented her general development plan and final results. Overall, I feel valued as a parent by the school, and I am personally grateful for that. 

My daughter has communicated her satisfaction to me, and I have witnessed her taking charge of her own life with enthusiasm.“

Dana D ., mother of Spark Generation ‘24 Alumni

This is just the starter, as community involvement in schools has many benefits:

 – Improves academic engagement

 – Increases life success in the long term

 – Helps students choose higher-level programs

 – A decrease in the school dropout

The Importance of community involvement in schools 

It is no secret that community involvement in schools is a great tool to boost student engagement, relationships, grades , etc. But what about the benefits for the school or the community? 

🟡 Advantages for teachers

  a better understanding of children’s needs.

Students whose families participate and get involved in the community at school have a more transparent life for teachers.

That means teachers get to know the families they come from, their needs, how they are helped at home, and the possibilities they have. The direct relations with parents that teachers can have can help teachers understand where children need help with learning.  

Shared responsibility and accountability

Teachers have a big responsibility to provide the best education to their students. However, when a community of parents is involved in helping and supporting the student’s success, they can commit mainly to providing the best academic information. 

🟡 Advantages for parents

As parents are directly involved in their children’s education path, they help with homework, provide at-home learning opportunities, and help their children understand how to strategise their learning path. 

Increased Student Achievement

More than just making their parents proud, the happiness of having their parents at their side and guiding them cannot compare to anything.

Seeing their parents’ involvement and interest in their education, children tend to follow in the footsteps their parents leave and demonstrate they can grow and learn.

They will just be happy to give back to their parents the feeling of happiness when their results come in. 

Improved Student Attendance and Behaviour

Student absenteeism can be a severe problem for today’s teenagers who lack the will and guidance from their parents or counsellors. 

Thus, school initiatives involving parents and the community can help students with low attendance find their path and see how education affects their lives.

This means parents that know their children’s whereabouts pay attention to their children’s needs and, listen to them, talk to them to help them solve any problems they may have in understanding a course. 

Continue with higher education

Higher education programs are sometimes seen as an extra not necessary step in one’s career.

However, being a part of a school where community involvement shows how important education is, what they can accomplish when they are specialists in a field, and what contributions they can bring to the world can help change their minds. 

🟡 Advantages for schools

Stronger school reputation.

The success of a school is built on its reputation. 

While there is subjectivity, subjective or not, each review the parents see about the school helps them decide whether to enrol their children there. 

A school that offers the opportunity for parents to get involved and creates a solid family-school community is a school where parents feel the needs of their daily are listened to, and they can have a say in the school’s decisions. At the end of the day, it affects their children’s future. 

Improve their practices

Once the community gets more involved in the education program, schools can discover their strengths and weakness and solve them accordingly.

By finding best practices for the educational programs they offer, they can improve them and become a school where children’s success is essential. 

Quick Guide to Launching a School Community Involvement Program

Implementing a community involvement program in your school can significantly enhance both educational outcomes and societal engagement. Here’s a streamlined approach to get started:

• Assess Needs : Conduct surveys and community meetings to identify the key needs and resources available within the community.
• Define Goals : Set specific, measurable, and achievable goals that align with both educational objectives and community values.
• Design the Program : Plan diverse activities such as workshops, mentorships, and community projects, tailored to the community’s needs.
• Recruit Volunteers : Launch a campaign to enlist volunteers from parents, alumni, and local businesses.
• Initiate the Program : Start with pilot projects to gather insights and adjust the program accordingly.
• Evaluate and Adapt : Implement feedback mechanisms to monitor the program and make necessary adjustments.
• Expand and Sustain : Gradually increase the program’s scope and develop strategies for long-term sustainability.
• Celebrate Success : Highlight and share the program’s successes to inspire continued involvement and support.

TIP: If you want to start implementing community involvement in your school, Edutopia also has a useful article on tips & tricks for Better School/Community Collaboration . 📖

As we conclude our discussion on the pivotal role of community involvement in education, it’s clear that active participation from all stakeholders—students, parents, teachers, and the broader community—forges a path toward a brighter, more connected future. 

This isn’t just about enhancing educational outcomes; it’s about crafting a resilient community that supports each other’s growth and well-being. 

Here’s how you can take action and become a vibrant part of this transformative journey:

1. join the spark generation community 🧑‍🎓.

If you believe in the power of collective effort and community engagement, we invite you to join Spark Generation. Your voice and action can drive real change. Interested? 

👉 Send us an inquiry to become a member of a community dedicated to making a difference. 

2. Access Personal Development Resources 📚

Not ready to commit full-time? No worries! 

You can still benefit from the wealth of resources Spark Generation offers. From well-being to future readiness, our individual plans are designed to help you grow at your own pace. 

Explore our resources with our unlimited learning subscription , and start your journey toward personal development today!

3. Bring Spark Generation to Your School 🏫

For high schools ready to take a revolutionary step forward, we have an exciting offer. 

Schools can now try our platform free for a month —teachers, students, and the entire school community get access to all our courses and resources.  Moreover, you’ll join an international network of schools committed to quality education. 

📥 Interested? Contact [email protected] to learn more about this opportunity.

Community involvement in schools FAQ  

1. why is community involvement important in schools  .

Because of the community involvement programs, students can be more successful and engaged in their school life. This leads to higher achievement both for them as well as the school. 

2. What are some examples of community involvement? 

Community involvement examples can be events with local community and business, parents’ participation in after-school and extracurricular activities, and participation in the school’s decisions. 

3. How does community involvement in schools help students? 

More than just being thrilled to have their parents near, students are more engaged in their activities, participate in extracurricular activities, are actively more interested in the classes, and have better academic success. 

4. What are the first steps to start a community involvement program in schools?

Begin by assessing the specific needs of your community through surveys and meetings. Next, set achievable goals based on these insights. Finally, plan and launch initial activities that engage various community members. Regularly gather feedback to refine and expand the program.

More on this topic

Case Study: The impact of online learning platforms on schools

Flexibility in Online Learning: What It Means for Students

Apply for a high school scholarship at Spark Generation!

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Community-connected learning in community schools: Why it is essential for whole-school transformation

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, stacey campo and stacey campo community schools consultant - national center for community schools hayin kimner hayin kimner nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education.

August 8, 2023

In January 2023, the Community Schools Forward Task Force introduced a national consensus framework along with supporting resources to develop a common understanding of community schools and articulate essential implementation practices. The framework reflects the evolution of community school development, in particular highlighting the shift from a predominantly “wrap-around” services model to a whole-school, whole-community approach to teaching and learning that reflects the science of learning and development and explicitly includes rigorous, engaging, community-connected classroom instruction. 

What is community-connected classroom instruction and what does it look like in a community school?

Community schools are a place-based strategy ; the school acts as a hub for students, educators, families, community-based partners, local leaders, and other key stakeholders. These schools provide an ideal environment for “community-connected learning.” Activities are designed so students can practice skills in their real-world contexts; build upon those skills; and see their communities, identities, cultures, language, interests, and experiences as valued assets to their learning.

Community-connected learning cultivates more porous boundaries between classroom and community, and often explores social identity, equity, language, and culture. It can be learner-centered—the student identifies the direction of the work—or teacher-centered—the curriculum and partnerships are initiated by the teacher. Perhaps most importantly, community-connected teaching and learning is rigorous and relevant to the lives of students.  

Best practices for community-connected learning include:  

1. Inquiry-based pedagogy that prioritizes youth voices

Students develop questions and answer them through critical examination and reflection. For example, the Netter Center’s Moelis Access initiative brings together University of Pennsylvania students with students in Philadelphia’s K-12 schools for community-based, science lessons with an emphasis on problem-solving.   

2. Experiential learning that promotes collaborative skills

Learning is experience-based, applied, and enables opportunities for students to work together and/or with external partners.  During the RadioActive internship with a local radio station in Seattle, high school students are trained in radio production while simultaneously helping the station to center youth voices. And at Minneapolis’s South High , students learn about education by working with neighboring third graders while the district builds a pipeline for future teachers. 

3. Partnerships with local organizations

Lessons are co-created by either the teacher and the organization and/or the students and the organization. In East Los Angeles, Farmdale Elementary students develop a garden in partnership with a local café and explore environmental activism.  

4. Learning outside of the school campus and within the community

The city or town becomes the classroom and learning occurs in a local park, business, or museum. In rural Berea, Kentucky, community schools partner with the local library to develop a “storybook trail” that celebrates new books and cultivates community.  

5. Affirming and sustaining students’ and families’ knowledge and expertise

Students share the wealth of knowledge and experience gained from their families’ lives and work with teachers to build lesson plans based on this content.   For instance, students and families in Aurora, Colorado , share stories of immigrating to the United States, which are exhibited at the local history museum. And in Cuba, New Mexico, community school students are hired by the University of New Mexico and the University of Colorado Boulder to share and research local culture and language. 

6. Equity-focused content and topics

Learners are encouraged to consider their role and responsibility within their community. At the UCLA Mann School in Los Angeles , the student steering committee uses youth participatory action research strategies to collect data on students’ classroom experiences to improve their school. And across the country at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in New York City’s South Bronx community, students explore the mathematics of gerrymandering in their borough.

What is needed to strengthen community-connected teaching and learning? 

Community-connected learning starts with building trust in the classroom, where teachers learn about their students and cultivate connections with and between their students. Teachers understand their students’ assets and gifts, develop a deeper understanding of community inequities, and cultivate the skills to deconstruct these inequities with their students.

 In the same way collaboration and leadership are essential ingredients for community-connected learning, so are dedicated time and resources for professional learning .  Schools must develop professional learning opportunities that teach educators youth participatory action research , restorative practices , and critical consciousness , couched in an understanding of the community school strategy and a whole-child approach to education. Once properly trained, teachers require agency, sufficient planning time, and instructional coaching to design and facilitate these learning experiences.  

Like all facets of a community school, community-connected learning can’t happen without intentional systems and a supportive infrastructure —such as reliable funding and staffing—to meet desired outcomes . For example, community schools are staffed by a coordinator—hired by the district or a lead community partner—who is tasked with “managing partnerships.” Historically, this has meant bringing in resources like eyeglasses, tutoring, extended day programming, mental health services, or access to other services so students are ready to learn. However, working with school leadership, teachers, expanded learning providers, and families, the coordinator can also play an integral role in making connections that support community-connected learning by fostering learning partnerships with local universities, arts organizations, museums, businesses, and more.   

Why is community-connected learning important to community schools?

Community-connected learning must be central to how and why we educate. It is more than a different approach to teaching; it is the most effective way to teach. The science of learning and development tells us that learning happens best when students are engaged in meaningful and relevant work . As one of the key practices of a thriving community school, community-connected learning creates a crucial intersection between students’ lives and experience, real-world opportunities, and academic rigor.

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Build a School Environment Where All Community Members Are Involved

June 13, 2022

Catherine Daly

How community involvement in schools will help students prosper.

Schools play an integral role in every community. And since children eventually grow up to become members of those same communities, it stands to reason that communities should take an active role in ensuring schools deliver optimal learning environments to ensure happy, healthy, successful students.

While families and community partners often donate their time and resources to help schools thrive, the responsibility for driving community engagement lies with the schools and their school districts. In this short blog post, we explore the importance of encouraging community involvement in schools and provide tips on successfully doing just that.

Importance of community involvement in schools

Increasing access to community-based learning.

Community-based initiatives can help students gain access to learning opportunities they would not have had otherwise. The Catapult Canada Access Innovation Fund (CCAIF) is a great example of this. It is a government-sponsored initiative that recognizes the importance of community involvement in schools. It provides funding to community-based organizations that focus on how young people learn, how they engage at school, and the tools they use to learn.

Northern Youth Abroad is one community-based organization receiving CCAIF funding to implement a pilot project that will connect over 20 Indigenous students from across the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon to learning opportunities and academic and other supports at Camosun College in British Columbia.

Boosting student retention

Promoting teacher optimism, improving school attendance rates.

Some groups of students are more likely to feel lower levels of belonging. Those who identify as LGBTQIA+ , who have a disability, or who are from different cultural, language, or ethnic backgrounds than their peers often feel underrepresented and are less likely to do well than others, even when their previous academic achievement is the same.

Community involvement in schools can help with this. When students in minority groups see themselves represented in the wider community—and see the involvement of that community in their school—learning experiences and attendance rates are greatly improved.

How to promote community involvement in schools

• A teacher may not know what’s happening in a student’s life outside of class that may impact success and well-being
• A parent may not understand or agree with a teacher’s approach to delivering the curriculum
• A local business may not understand the importance of supporting its local school to ensure future employees have a well-rounded education

Involve both formal and informal community groups

A school’s community is made up of formal committee groups such as School Management Committees (SMC), Village Education Committees (VEC), School Development Committees (SDC), and Parent and Teachers Associations (PTA) as well as informal groups of community members who can get involved in the school through special activities or events.

Both sets of community groups bring important perspectives to the table—the formal groups bring perspectives informed by the inner workings of the school, and the informal groups bring perspectives from the wider community.

Create opportunities for inclusive education and decision-making

Community-inclusive processes like participatory decision-making (PDM) cultivate a broad range of perspectives to inform decision-making.

Encourage participation from all community groups in events and provide them with opportunities to contribute to decision-making by using unbiased engagement platforms. Diverse perspectives result in better decisions and help build social capital.

Illinois’ Elgin School District U-46 is committed to providing an inclusive environment for all students—especially those who have been historically marginalized and missed out on learning opportunities as a result.

When a group of African American students explained they didn’t feel represented by the school curriculum and requested a mandatory African American Studies course, the school nominated Dr. Teresa A. Lance, Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Innovation as the champion for inclusive, equitable education and she got to work, engaging the community for input into the new course.

Dr. Lance knew from experience that African American history was either missing or insufficiently covered in K-12 education and that representation matters as it relates to student outcomes and their sense of belonging.

She used AI-powered engagement to reach out to all students, gathering their ideas and perspectives, and received an incredible response from 1,321 participants, including almost 800 ideas and over 10,000 ratings to help inform the direction of the new course content.

Build community awareness campaigns

Community awareness campaigns help parents and community members understand the benefits of their involvement with their local schools. They also inform community members about the different levels and types of involvement opportunities, policies, and programs. If your community is bilingual or trilingual, translate the information to ensure inclusivity and boost representation across all groups.

UNESCO recommends that community members and school staff feel responsible for the success of community awareness campaigns. Arrange regular and open meetings about the school to share important information such as results, funds, and activities to keep people accountable for any goals set.

Use school community hubs

Founded in 1962, Palenque LSNA (formally known as the Logan Square Neighborhood Association) explored ways to improve economic conditions in the Logan Square neighborhood and realized the local public schools—comprised of 90% Latinx and 95% low-income students—played a key role in connecting and strengthening its community and vice versa.

In the early 1990s, the association formed an education committee to support schools and organized families, teachers, and principals around a campaign that—through the power of community involvement—opened five elementary school annexes and two new middle schools to relieve severe overcrowding in local schools.

The association also rallied its community to facilitate the creation of a parent mentor program that trains mothers, mainly immigrants, as paid classroom assistants while also providing leadership development training and a welcoming community. The parent mentor program has since spread to seven other schools, and more than 1,300 parents have graduated from the program.

Today, students benefit from community involvement in schools facilitated by Palenque LSNA initiatives like the youth leadership program , community learning centers , and more.

How will you engage your school’s community?

When we asked education leaders how the last two years have changed their approach to work, one central theme emerged: communication and relationship building with the community is critical.

Building strong relationships with community members, parents, and students is an education leader's most important job. So, what are you doing to build these relationships?

Giving communities a neutral platform to share their ideas and opinions is an excellent place to start. However, it can be difficult for schools to connect with the diversity of their community using traditional methods like town hall meetings, surveys, and focus groups. Fortunately, new online engagement platforms like ThoughtExchange have made it much more manageable.

An unbiased engagement platform provides community members with a safe and convenient way to share and learn from the diverse thoughts and ideas of others.

“If ThoughtExchange were a person, I would hug them. I used it in my previous district as a superintendent. What I love about ThoughtExchange is that there’s this opportunity for ideas to be put out anonymously, and then a coalescing around ideas—and that’s what I was looking for. I wasn’t looking for a Likert scale. I wasn’t looking to lead students by saying, here’s what should be included—do you agree or disagree?”

~Dr. Teresa A. Lance, Ed.D. Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Innovation Elgin Area School District 46

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Innovative examples of community involvement in schools.

May 14, 2019 | By Kelsie Anderson

No matter which perspective you consider it from, creating opportunities for community involvement in schools is difficult.

While educators, families, and community partners genuinely care about student success and well-being, they often approach both with different ideas and methodologies. Furthermore, there are often many barriers when it comes to any of these parties interacting smoothly with each other.

These barriers can be good (schools vetting local businesses carefully before choosing them as a partner or service provider), bad (using a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to communicating with families), and understandable (educators aren’t always privy to what’s going on when a student isn’t in class).

Even if you’ve overcome one of these hurdles, sustaining community involvement is often more difficult than creating the opportunity for it in the first place.

Schools are often a focal point for community involvement: families send children to school, where they’ll learn many of the skills they need to become happy, healthy, successful members of society. That means the majority of the work involved in breaking down barriers to community engagement in schools often falls to educators. While families and community partners might step up to help out, it’s often on school districts to make the first move to work more closely with the community.

Luckily, many districts have done just that. If you’re looking for innovative ways to involve your community, see if some of the examples below inspire you to act.

League schools provide creative examples of community involvement in schools

Districts across the country are building windows and opening doors to make more room for community involvement. They’re attempting to both meet members of their communities where they are and invite community members to reciprocate. Through invitations to events, offers to contribute to decision making, and the creation of physical spaces where the community can gather, districts are exploring new ways to involve their communities in the education process.

Holding in-person events (on large and small scales) for community members

One major way to connect with families and members of the community is to hold in-person events. Compton Unified School District does this with its STEAMFest. Around 10,000 community members attend the event, which spotlights the district’s STEAM programs. The event includes interactive stations, student exhibitions, and the winners of the district’s science fair. In addition to student work, the district invites community partners to create STEAM booths and activities that students and families can enjoy. By creating this large-scale event, Compton Unified’s STEAMFest showcases student and district innovation and invites all members of the Compton Unified community to get involved as partners or attendees.

Check out other examples of large-scale community engagement events

• Fullerton School District’s FSD Fest
• The Maker Faire at Gurnee School District 56
• Middletown City School District’s Midde XL event

However, you don’t always have to invite thousands of people to an all-day event to create opportunities for community engagement. Creating events on a smaller scale can also be effective—and more manageable—when fostering community participation.

One district that makes it a point to bring families into the classroom for smaller events is Wyckoff Township Public Schools . During events like “Maker Nights” and “Art Room Afternoon,” students and their families are encouraged to attend workshops and take part in hands-on learning experiences. These events engage students  and the family members who accompany them. They also give parents and caregivers a chance to connect with teachers and school leaders while seeing what their kids are up to.

Some events are particularly focused on parents and caregivers. Group talks with educators, such as “Math Fluency” and “Mindset Matters: A Growth Mindset Seminar,” give adults the opportunity to understand the theory behind what goes on in the classroom and ask questions about what their children are learning. These talks give everyone involved in the teaching process—educators, parents, family members, caregivers—a chance to connect and get on the same page about what happens when their children are in school.

Building community partners into your curriculum

Events and group meetings aren’t the only ways to engage community partners. Sometimes the best way to bring people together is to find common interests and create a project you can work on together.

Cajon Valley Union School District , for instance, found common ground with local businesses and community leaders in their passions for student engagement, the health of the community, and life after high school graduation. Working together, the district and its community partners came up with the World of Work, which exposes students to various career opportunities starting in kindergarten.

To create the World of Work, the district collaborated with members of local government and business, inviting them to share their visions for the community and discuss the trajectory of their fields. The district continues to engage local business through participation in the program’s “Meet a Pro” chats, where students go on virtual tours and physical field trips to learn more about the job opportunities their community offers. High school students also have the chance to earn certifications and complete post-secondary education, which allows them to gain real-world skills. The district hopes these efforts will help bridge the disconnect between education and industry, and demonstrate how students can participate in their community through a career aligned with their interests after high school graduation.

Find other examples of districts who encourage community involvement for student success

• Lee County School District’s student app development for area tourists
• An internship program for Pascack Valley Regional High School District’s seniors
• Stephenville Independent School District’s community WiFi partnerships

Creating spaces for community involvement alongside the classroom

Sometimes, encouraging community involvement entails more than recurring events, big or small, or working with community partners to build education initiatives. Some districts have gone the extra mile to create physical spaces where their community feels welcome and cared for.

One such district is Vancouver Public Schools , which has established 18 on-site Family-Community Resource Centers (FCRCs), along with two mobile FCRCs, to help students and families address challenges they might be facing outside of the classroom. Through their FCRCs, Vancouver Public Schools connects families to resources and information related to health care, housing assistance, transportation, food, clothing, hygiene items, school supplies, and more. The resource centers give parents and caregivers a physical place to connect with the school system and gives community partners with students’ best interests in mind a space to offer services that help district families.

FCRCs were created—and continue to be organized—by input from students and their families. Through Parent and Family Leadership Advisory Groups and students and families who serve as staff and site coordinators, FCRCs ensure that they’re responding to urgent and ongoing community needs. Building on the success of their existing spaces, Vancouver Public Schools hopes to expand their FCRCs’ offerings to include vaccination clinics and on-site childcare.

By creating a physical space to accommodate its community, Vancouver Public Schools shows up every day in support of its students and their families.

See other examples of districts who have created spaces in their communities

• Middletown City School District’s Wellness Center
• School-based clinics in Owsley County School District
• Pascack Valley Regional High School District’s social/emotional wellness centers

How will you engage your community?

By creating pathways big and small for community members to get involved, League districts are paving the way for higher levels of family engagement, curricula that connects students with real-world opportunities, and caring for the basic needs of students and their families.

Following in the footsteps of any of our example districts, your district can also make moves to engage community members in meaningful ways. And for more examples of district community engagement, you can also check out our full collection of League of Innovative Schools Innovation Portfolios .

In the meantime, we’d love to hear how your schools are engaging their communities. Drop us a line in the comment section below or tweet at @DigitalPromise to tell us about the innovative ways you’re getting your community involved in the classroom.

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5 Ideas for Building School-Community Engagement

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Getting students involved with the community is a wonderful strategy for boosting academic success, teaching students about the world of work, and improving positive behaviors . Building community involvement through the school can take many forms, both student-led and community leader-led. In this post, I’ll discuss 5 ways to get your students involved with community members to build a stronger bond between your school and the surrounding community!

1. Community Mentors: 

2. Interns for a Day: 

3. Class Grandparent: 

4. Adopt a Group: 

As a class, small group, or club, have students choose a group or organization to “adopt.” Students could choose a local nursing home or hospital and complete service projects or simple kind acts throughout the year to support the group. For example, if your students chose to adopt a local pediatric hospital, they could write encouraging notes to the patients, collect gently used toys to donate, write a class joke book, and more to support the organization throughout the year. Plan a field trip to visit the organization at least once if possible! Allowing the students to see the people they are supporting and learn more about the environment and events can fuel their desire to help out throughout the year.

5. Community Improvement: 

Allow students to choose a long-term community service project that they believe will make their community a better place. The goal of this project is for students to lead the way in order for them to grasp the idea that they are already community members who can make a difference. You can read more about my 8-step vision for these types of projects on Confident Counselors by clicking the picture below.

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Connecting your students to their local community gives them real-world experiences and helps you maximize available resources. Young people develop a sense of civic duty when they see first-hand what their community has to offer and what they have to offer to their community. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Bring the museum to your students

Field trips to museums connect students to their community in interesting ways. If that’s out of the question at your school, ask the museum to send a representative to talk to your class.

Many museums offer traveling trunks that showcase pieces of exhibits to take around to schools. Some museums let you rent these trunks, while others offer presentations where a museum staff member comes and presents the trunk’s artifacts to a group. This is a great way to bring the museum to your students if a field trip isn’t possible. Instead of reading about and discussing fossils, students can learn directly from the fossils themselves. A movie on the Civil War might entertain students for a while, but if they’re able to learn from the actual mementos and letters of soldiers and African-Americans, they could understand those divisions in a more personal way.

An educational experience like this can ignite a student’s interest in going to museums, enable them to give back to their community and support the preservation of history and scientific evidence.

Invite local professionals to problem-solve with your students

Posing a hypothetical problem to students can get them to think critically for a moment, but presenting an actual problem in their community that relates to your curriculum can really intrigue them.

Invite a few local professionals to come into your class so students can ask them what they know about the issue and how they’ve tried to solve it. Studying what a carbon footprint is and why it matters? Why not bring in a local scientist and someone from the local waste management facility to discuss your community’s waste issues?

Together, students and professionals can discuss ideas, incentives and ways to spread awareness. Students can then create a proposal detailing a new course of action that they think should be tried and why, or they can create an informational pamphlet to spread awareness in their neighborhood.

Have students interview locals and present to the community

Incorporating interviews into your curriculum gives students a chance to learn first-hand about a local person’s experience with topics such as their experience immigrating to America or what they went through during a historic moment that occurred during their lifetime.

Students can apply what they learn from the interview to create a treasure box of mementos that represent key elements of that person’s experience, adding in symbols and writing a reflective essay or a poem. Then you can host a presentation night where students present their displays to their families and the community members who were interviewed.

This exercise creates a powerful connection between the assignment and the community, promoting diverse perspectives and illustrating the power of listening to our neighbors’ stories.

Invite a professional to lead a workshop

Inviting local professionals to share a bit of their knowledge and experience shows students how their lessons have real-world uses. Ask a retired lawyer to talk about how to build a strong argument, invite a journalist to talk about reliable sources and how to spot fake news, or bring a farmer or gardener in to talk about pesticides and organic produce.

Students can prepare questions, engage in hands-on activities with the professional, and come away feeling excited about the experience they’ve had while still learning all of the required material. It also shows them there are adults in their community who are eager to help them and hear their ideas and questions.

Involve your students in a local non-profit’s PR campaigns

Encouraging students to engage in community service is great, but another way to get them involved that can relate to your curriculum is having them create a PR campaign for a non-profit they support. Whether they’re excited by the mission of Habitat for Humanity, Relay for Life or the local food bank, you can use their enthusiasm to teach them about marketing, social media strategies, graphic design, press releases and persuasive language.

To create an effective campaign, students need to research and connect with the organization’s local staff, create an organized plan and collaborate in groups. Meaningful connections between students and non-profit organizations helps both parties feel valued.

Ideally, students will learn a great deal and better understand what exactly those organizations are doing each day to help their community and many others.

Kara Wyman has a BA in literature and a MEd from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She has worked with adolescents for a decade as a middle school and high school English teacher, the founder and director of a drama program, and a curriculum designer for high school and college courses. She works with 13- to 19-year-old students as a project manager of a non-profit organization.

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6 Ways Schools Can Involve Communities Better

“our community is the epicenter of a big urban city facing a number of environmental and….

By Anna Sudderth

“Our community is the epicenter of a big urban city facing a number of environmental and social justice issues, like food deserts, gentrification, polluted air and water, flooding, and climate change,” says Furr High School principal Steven Stapleton “These are not abstract issues—they’re right here, right now, every day.” That’s why Furr High School , an XQ school in Houston, TX, redesigned its traditional high model into one that prioritizes learning about community-based problems and solutions. Located in east Houston near the city’s refineries and petrochemical plants, Furr doesn’t draw back from the challenges facing the surrounding community, they approach them head-on and with students at the center.

That’s right. Furr students aren’t just learning about community challenges. They work alongside community members and learn how to be part of the solution. Case in point: the Herman Brown Park Community Garden and Fruit Orchard . The garden is a community-driven initiative, funded by the National Recreation and Park Association and maintained by Furr students. Through the garden, students get to learn about ecology, environmental justice, and food sovereignty in a hands-on context. Students also get to contribute to their local ecosystem while actively learning from community members, like partner organization Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (T.E.J.A.S), a Houston-based non-profit dedicated to environmental activism. Yvette Arellano, Senior Staff, Policy Research & Grassroots Advocate at T.E.J.A.S., explained, “It’s awesome for us to be able to partner with Furr, and be able to shed some truth and break their reality a little bit and say, ‘Look, here are these problems and issues with systems. Here’s the problem with trying to address those issues in an equitable approach with folks who don’t necessarily look like you or share your backgrounds.’”

As Furr students learn from their community, they’re also contributing to it through cultivating the garden that all residents can enjoy—and in doing so, gaining confidence in themselves as citizens. “Furr makes me want to stay involved,” explains Furr student Juan. “I want to stay committed to what I’ve been doing. I’ll continue to be that voice locally and hopefully have an impact on a larger scale.”

High schools everywhere can learn from this approach.

Community Involvement in Schools: What, Why, and How

It’s easy to say that the community should be involved in high schools. But what does meaningful community engagement look like, and what are its concrete benefits—for students, and for the community at large? 

The most common understandings of community involvement in schools usually include community members dropping into preexisting school structures, through opportunities like: 

• Volunteering in schools
• Mentoring students
• Inviting families to school events
• School visits from local professionals
• Workshops with community organizations

Taken alone, each of these examples can yield positive benefits for students and community members alike. However, community involvement in schools can go even further. High school should prepare students for success in the real world, as original thinkers, collaborators, and citizens . Part of this work means breaking down the barriers between the “real world” and the classroom, to create learning experiences embedded in the community. 

To do this, instead of asking, ‘How can we fit the community into what we’re already doing?’, educators should ask, ‘ How can we partner with community members to design learning experiences that center the community from the very beginning?’ This question opens the door to examples of meaningful community engagement like:

• Student projects that solve community challenges
• Long-term partnerships with businesses and nonprofits
• Sharing physical space and resources with community organizations
• Family leadership in decisions about school structure
• Student internships for class credit

The Importance of School and Community Collaboration

Community involvement in schools holds significant benefits for students. As this policy brief from the National Education Association illustrates, community involvement in schools leads to:

• Improved attendance
• Greater academic aspirations for students
• Higher grades
• Stronger school reputation
• Positive relationships between students, teachers, families, and the community at large

Community involvement in schools also offers students the chance to gain real-world skills through solving problems and building relationships outside of the classroom. In doing so, students learn: 

• Critical thinking
• Project management
• Problem solving
• Collaboration
• Self-awareness

Deborah Park, the curator of projects and partnerships at Círculos —an XQ school in Santa Ana, CA— summed up what these benefits look like in action for her students : “They’re getting access to experts in the field. They’re not just leafing through pages in a textbook. They’re learning from the world around them, and seeing how their work impacts the community. That’s a real level of empowerment for students.” 

Read on for six ways high schools can get the most out of community involvement, to foster this kind of deep, engaged learning. 

Six Ways to Involve The Community in High School

Involving the community isn’t a one time intervention. Getting the most out of community involvement means making relationships with the community a central tenet of school mission and culture . These six recommendations focus on how to do just that, building sustainable, equitable systems for community involvement.

#1: Focus on Involvement from Families and Caregivers

Students’ families and caregivers are some of the most immediate and important community members surrounding schools. Families and caregivers have crucial insights into what their students need to succeed, and can help ensure that students feel supported academically at home, as well as at school. The Urban League of Louisiana synthesized several studies on the relationship between family involvement in schools and student success, to find that, overwhelmingly, family involvement creates positive benefits for students. These benefits include improvements in: 

• Graduation rates
• College enrollment

However, despite these benefits, families often face barriers to getting involved with their children’s school. Some of these barriers are logistic, like not being able to make an in-person school town hall. Others are more relational, like parents not feeling that their perspective is valued by the school system. 

Brooklyn Laboratory High School , an XQ school in Brooklyn, New York, has worked to overcome these barriers to prioritize family involvement since day one. As a school with a commitment to serve all learners, where over a third of students qualify for special education services, Brooklyn LAB leaders understand that getting family input is crucial to supporting students. This became especially true during the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic, when educators and caretakers all faced a crash course in how to support a new set of student needs. To meet the moment, Brooklyn LAB stepped up their partnership with families to a new level: they hosted over 150 town halls, focus groups, and one-on-ones with students and families to ensure that families were heard, seen, and valued. Based on community feedback and expertise, Brooklyn LAB crafted a unique hybrid schedule that truly served students—allowing meaningful learning to continue with minimal disruptions. 

Brooklyn LAB’s approach is a road-map for how high schools can invite meaningful engagement and involvement from families. Based on their experience, Brooklyn LAB compiled equity by design, a resource that guides schools on how to communicate with families to foster involvement. Explore this guide to build relationships with families that are: 

• Collaborative
• Transparent and truthful
• Accessible and inclusive

For more examples of how to involve families in high school, check out our deep dive into the relationship between parental and family involvement and student success , where we’ve compiled resources around how to:

• Create parent and family advocacy groups
• Expand volunteer opportunities
• Offer home visits
• Get information out in the community
• Schedule regular student meetings
• Host family workshops

#2: Prioritize Flexible Learning Approaches

Inviting deep community engagement means having the flexibility to shape learning experiences around the challenges, expertise, and projects that community members bring to the table. Approaches to meaningful, engaged learning that offer this flexibility are often: 

• Project-based : Students gain skills and knowledge through tackling real-world projects and challenges
• Interdisciplinary : Students synthesize skills and content from multiple disciplines to come up with new ways to address challenges
• Competency-based : Students progress through content based on how well they’ve mastered material, not the time they’ve spent in classroom seats
• Student-centered : Learning is rooted in and driven by student interest, with students leading and evaluating their own progress

Círculos embodies how to build a curriculum that centers community involvement. Círculos’s place and project-based learning curriculum, P 2 BL, opens the door to meaningful community involvement by engaging students in projects in the community related to their interests. As part of this curriculum, Círculos students spend two afternoons a week with a local business or non-profit, working on projects to enrich the community. Through these partnerships, students gain confidence in their own skills as well as exposure to different industries and community expertise, opening the doors to their futures. 

For example, Círculos student Sofia discovered a passion for architecture, a field she had never considered through partnering with local design firm Visioneering Studios. Sofia always knew she loved art, but didn’t believe she could make a career out of it—until she saw architects working in the field. And Sofia didn’t just observe experts at work. As part of this partnership, she worked to design a public gathering space out of a previously under-used alley, gaining confidence and academic skills through real-world applications. Sofia described the power of getting to do this work in her community: “It’s a lot more fun to work on (a project like this) when you can actually be in the physical place you’re learning about. It’s inspiring.” Círculos educator Jessica Salcedo underscored this, explaining, “We’re taking all the resources of the community and making them available to our students. The mentors, the expertise—it’s all at their fingertips.”

It takes planning and intentional design to ensure that community projects map onto students’ academic development—but as Círculos shows, the benefits for students are well worth it.

You can ensure that community-based projects meet rigorous academic standards by asking these questions: 

• Does the project address an authentic community need? 
• Does the project support interdisciplinary learning, requiring students to draw from a range of knowledge and skills? 
• Is the project student-driven, connecting to student interests?
• Has the project been designed with attention to school and state academic standards and competencies?
• Do students have an opportunity to demonstrate and evaluate their learning?
• Do students have an opportunity to receive feedback on their work from teachers and community members, and revise based on that feedback?

#3: Design Learning Experiences Together

For better community involvement, don’t wait until you’ve already planned a lesson or designed a class to invite community partnership. Instead, invite community involvement from the very beginning of a design cycle—whether designing a class, a project, or even a whole high school. This approach ensures that community interests are represented from day one, creating partnerships that are rigorous and mutually beneficial. 

No school community exemplifies this community-based approach to design more than Iowa BIG , an XQ school in Cedar Rapids, IA. School builders made Iowa BIG with the vision that students and community members could work together to solve real problems in Cedar Rapids. To put this vision into action, 60 community members representing a wide swath of Cedar Rapids went “back to school” for a day—and used what they learned to build a whole new model for high school. Now, Iowa BIG students learn by doing, and work on community “initiatives” proposed by community partners, like partnering with a non-profit helping immigrant and refugee families to build a 20-plot community garden , or building a replica Berlin Wall for a local museum. These projects empower students, and they also help the community—Iowa BIG now receives more project proposals from the community than they can actually take on!

While designing alongside community members is crucial, it’s not always easy. Engaging a wide range of community stakeholders—from business leaders, to activists, to families, to artists, to nonprofits—also means navigating a big range of opinions and interests. Our comprehensive design tool, XQ In A Box , can help navigate these conversations. We built this tool to help schools engage in the process of redesigning and rethinking the high school experience—and we specifically focused on how to engage the community. Explore XQ In a Box to find conversation-guiding resources on:

• How to build a team of stakeholders from the community
• How to expand community partnerships
• How to articulate a shared vision

#4: Center Equity

Equity in outreach: bring all voices to the table.

At its best, community involvement is a powerful way to ensure that high schools function by and for the communities they serve. However, this isn’t always what happens in practice. Too often, the way that high schools facilitate community involvement excludes large portions of the community. Jonathan Santos Silva, founding executive director of The Liber Institute , explained, “The people who are most impacted by the way our system is designed to reinforce oppressive structures or White supremacy are the last ones we usually engage.” Recognizing and correcting this pattern is crucial to promoting equity for students and community members alike. Santos Silva described what this looks like: “It’s really about elevating these talented, innovative, creative leaders so that we can say, ‘Hey, these communities have ideas and solutions, if we would only engage them to truly be partners.’ Our work is incomplete without those perspectives.” 

Elevating all community voices starts with communication—with who schools reach out to, and how they do it. Our colleagues from the Educating All Learners Alliance shared tips on how to promote equitable communication around school decisions: 

• Recognize the cultural values that parents bring to the table
• Prioritize input from BIPOC families, low-income families, and families of students with disabilities
• Communicate with consistency and intention, following up if initial outreach efforts don’t work
• Be transparent about how community feedback is being incorporated into school politics

Equity in Resources: Make Sure All Students Get What They Need

Equity in high schools means that every student is given the tools and support they need to succeed in school. Community involvement can supply students with these resources, going beyond what high schools alone can provide. 

These benefits of community involvement for students are evident at DaVinci RISE High , an XQ school in Los, Angeles, California. School builders founded Da Vinci RISE High to meet the needs of students undergoing serious disruptions to their academic journeys: students in foster care, students experiencing homelessness, and students involved with the carceral system. In order to succeed in school, these students need more than the academic support that teachers can provide. To fulfill these needs, Da Vinci RISE co-located with community nonprofits: A Place Called Home , a multi-service agency for Los Angeles youth that provides support in the arts, education, and wellness, and New Earth , a nonprofit providing mentor-based arts, educational, and vocational programs to juvenile justice and system involved youth. Students can easily access these community resources as part of their high school experience, enabling them to show up to class fully supported and prepared to succeed. 

Your school doesn’t have to co-locate with community organizations to take a lesson from Da Vinci RISE’s model. Consider how you can weave community resources like counseling, mentorship, arts programming, and wellness into your high school through these questions:

• How can we gather input from students and families about what resources they need?
• Where are the gaps in terms of resources our school can provide?
• What community organizations and stakeholders provide those resources?
• How can we integrate opportunities for students to access those resources into the day-to-day structure of the school? 

#5: Make the Community the Campus

Expand the possibilities of community involvement by expanding your idea of where a high school campus starts and ends. Instead of asking community partners to come to you, consider how you can facilitate community involvement within the community itself.

One literal way to make the community the campus is to co-locate, like Da Vinci RISE, sharing classroom space alongside community partners. That’s the idea behind Crosstown High —an XQ school in Memphis, TN. When Memphis community members began the process of dreaming and designing their ideal high school , they knew they wanted to set students up for collaborative, real-world learning. So, in partnership with Crosstown Arts, they located their school in Memphis’s newly developed Crosstown Concourse , a hub of local activity that includes arts organizations, health care providers, a YMCA, restaurants, a credit union, a pharmacy, higher education institutions, foundations, and nonprofits. By sharing space with these community businesses, students get to learn from and with community members on a day-to-day basis. This includes informal interactions as well as formal projects, like a partnership with a local graphic designer to design logos for student-run businesses. Of course, not every school can physically share space with community organizations. But even educators working in traditional school buildings can adopt the mindset of making the community the classroom. Crosstown environmental science teacher Nikki Wallace embodies this mindset , expanding her classroom beyond the walls of the concourse to include the city of Memphis as a whole. Wallace asks students to examine the city, including their own backyards, for evidence of the concepts they’re learning about in class. For example, Wallace is working with doctors at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis to create a curriculum called Cancer Learning in My Backyard, exploring how diet, environment, behavior, and other factors impact individuals’ cancer risks. By making the community the classroom, Wallace empowers students to connect their learning to their real lives—and to take action as a result. She explained, “In order for kids to ‘get it,’ they have to see what the problems are in their own communities. But that makes them more committed to learning, too. I tell my students, ‘you are the ones who are going to solve these problems.”

#6: Create Real-World and Workplace Experiences for Students

Community involvement can lead to concrete outcomes for students beyond just grades—like job experience, and even compensation. Facilitate these opportunities to motivate students and prepare them for success after high school. 

Skylar, a student at Elizabethton High , an XQ school in rural Tennessee, experienced the benefits of a paid internship first-hand. He spent the summer after his junior year of high school completing a paid internship at Lobaki , a small tech firm that creates virtual reality experiences for schools. While Skylar was nervous at first, the experience ultimately changed his life. “I love it here. It’s been amazing. I wake up excited to go to work,” he explained. “And there’s nothing like real job experience. I’ve learned and progressed so much. … And it’s exciting to be a part of the VR industry. VR has so much potential, and we’re only beginning to see what that is.” Getting paid to complete this internship was a crucial factor for Skylar. ​​“I grew up in a poor family. If this job didn’t pay, I never could have done it,” he said. “I’ve even been able to save some money.”

This transformative experience was possible because Skylar’s teacher, Alex Campbell, pursued a partnership with Lobaki’s chief executive Vince Jordan. After Campbell heard about Lobaki and realized it might be a good fit for his students, he invited Jordan to campus to build a relationship and see what Elizabethton students could do. Students were ready to seize the opportunity, thanks to the preparation they’d received in school: in an effort to prepare students for well-paying jobs in tech industries, Elizabethton launched a virtual reality program that gives students the skills they need to do entry-level VR work. Now, students like Skylar are more than prepared for opportunities like the one at Lobaki. 

Educators can set up students for internships and paid work experience in the community by:

• Identifying sectors that align with their students’ career interests
• Looking for areas of mutual interest, where working with high school students can benefit an organization’s goals
• Building relationships with community business leaders
• Designing learning experiences that will give students the skills they need to be prepared for work in the field

Building Stronger High Schools Through Community

Ultimately, high schools are community institutions. Each day, students come to school carrying their experiences of community, and when they leave school, they take the knowledge and skills they’ve gained back out into the community with them. Intentionally involving community resources, energy, and expertise in high school improves learning outcomes for students, has a positive impact on the community, and contributes to the sustainability of high schools moving forward. We hope you join us in continuing to build strong partnerships with communities on behalf of students.

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Creating a Culture of Positive Community Involvement in Education

It is no surprise that fostering community involvement in the educational process can have a profound impact on student success. When schools and educational institutions actively engage with their communities, this leads to long-lasting benefits for students, teachers, families, and the wider community. Let’s explore the importance of creating a culture of positive community involvement in education and provide some practical insights for educators and administrators.

Education is a collective effort that requires the participation and support of the community. When communities actively engage in the education process, it enhances student outcomes, strengthens the bond between schools and society, and creates a culture of shared responsibility for future generations. More recently, community engagement has even been listed as a vital requirement for the lasting improvement of schools and school systems.

Benefits of Community Involvement in Education

Community involvement in education refers to the collaborative efforts between institutions and their surrounding community . It involves building partnerships, encouraging collaboration, and involving various stakeholders, such as parents, to promote the holistic development of students and address educational challenges collectively.

Enhanced Learning Experience

Establishing a culture of positive community involvement enriches the learning experience by bringing real-world perspectives into the classroom. Students are provided the opportunity to connect their learning to practical outcomes and understand the relevance of their education in the larger community context.

Increased Support and Resources

Positive community engagement opens doors to additional support and resources for schools . When you are actively building connections with local businesses and organizations, you unlock the possibility of increased financial assistance, mentorship programs, internships, and scholarships. These valuable contributions and initiatives empower students to reach their full potential with greater support from the entire community.

Strengthened Community Relationships

Greater trust is established and a sense of shared responsibility is nurtured when collaborating on various community involvement initiatives. Parents and families are able to become effective partners in their children’s education, working together with educators and the wider community to ensure student success. Research shows that this solid foundation of community involvement positively impacts attendance rates, student achievement, academic aspirations, and school reputation.

Maximize Positive Community Involvement with Online Engagement

Community involvement should not be a one-off occurrence . To pave the way for equitable engagement, you need to establish an ongoing, two-way process to build community relationships and work collaboratively to support all students.

Equitable engagement also helps bring a range of voices and experiences together to broaden perspectives and generate a wider, more representative array of ideas to act on. To truly develop a culture of positive community involvement, online engagement platforms can be used to create a centralized engagement hub for schools and education providers.

An accessible and inclusive engagement hub will empower your community to share ideas, seek advice, and contribute feedback. You can also sustain community involvement over longer time periods with fewer resources – without minimizing impact or safety. And with a secure, moderated platform supporting your community involvement, everyone will feel welcomed, respected, and heard.

Creating a culture of positive community involvement in education is a powerful way to enhance student success, enrich learning experiences, and strengthen the overall educational ecosystem. If you’re looking to provide a safe, accessible space for your community to provide meaningful input, get in touch with the Social Pinpoint team today.

Start engaging with your community today.

Our expert team is available to show you how to get the most out of your online community engagement platform.

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What is Community Involvement? Examples and Why it is Important for Students

• May 29, 2023

Samantha "Sam" Sparks

• Student Community Centre

At its core, community involvement is the act of participating and engaging in activities that benefit your local community. It can take many forms, from donating time or money to a charitable organization, volunteering for an event or project, or even participating in a neighborhood clean-up day.

For students, getting involved in their local community can be incredibly beneficial – not just for the people and places they are helping out, but for themselves too! By learning about different causes and getting hands-on experience with real-world problems, students can gain valuable skills such as problem-solving and communication and build relationships with community members.

In this article, we will talk about the benefits of community involvement activities for students. You can also find some community involvement success stories here. Keep reading.

Personal Development

Educational benefits, career benefits, volunteer work, community service, civic engagement, choosing the right community involvement activity, developing a plan, maximizing the impact, examples of successful community involvement projects, impact of community involvement on society, benefits of community involvement for students.

Here you can read about all the benefits that come from community involvement for students.

By volunteering, participating in extracurricular activities, and taking leadership roles in community organizations, students can develop a range of personal qualities and traits that will serve them well in the future.

1. Confidence building

When students volunteer or participate in activities that align with their interests, they can feel accomplished and fulfilled. This can help them feel more confident in their abilities and motivate them to continue pursuing their goals.

2. Leadership skills

Through community involvement, students can develop important leadership skills such as communication, decision-making, and problem-solving. By taking on leadership roles in organizations, students can learn to inspire and motivate others, delegate tasks, and work collaboratively toward common goals.

3. Social skills

Community involvement allows students to interact with people from different backgrounds and cultures. This exposure can help students develop empathy, respect, and understanding for others. By working with others towards a common goal, students can learn to communicate effectively, listen actively, and build strong relationships with others.

4. Emotional intelligence

Students can develop empathy, self-awareness, and self-regulation through volunteering and working with others. These skills can help students navigate interpersonal relationships and better understand the needs and perspectives of others.

5. Sense of responsibility

When they participate in community service and volunteer activities, they learn about the needs of others and the importance of giving back. The students will develop a sense of social responsibility and become more engaged citizens.

6. Self-esteem boost

Community involvement can give students a sense of purpose and meaning. Students can feel a sense of accomplishment and pride by contributing to something larger than themselves.

Community involvement has long been seen as an effective way to enhance students’ academic performance, problem-solving skills, and motivation. By engaging in activities with their peers in the local community, students learn to take responsibility for their actions, become more engaged in learning, and gain the necessary skills to succeed.

1. Better academic performance

Studies have shown that students who participate in service-learning programs tend to have higher grades than those who don’t. This is because these activities help strengthen critical thinking, research, and problem-solving skills which are necessary for successful academic performance. Additionally, community involvement helps build student confidence in tackling difficult tasks by providing a real-world context for learning new subjects.

2. Enhanced problem-solving skills

Engaging in community involvement activities helps students become better problem solvers. These experiences allow them to practice critical thinking skills as well as develop strategies for tackling difficult tasks or challenges. By working together on projects or initiatives, students learn how to think outside the box and develop innovative solutions using resources available in their local communities.

3. Increased motivation and engagement

Students involved in community projects are more likely to stay engaged with their studies and motivated to achieve success. These service programs provide a sense of purpose and give students an opportunity for personal growth by putting them in contact with diverse communities or organizations. Through this interaction, students can gain insight into different perspectives beyond what is taught in the conventional educational setting.

If you’re a student looking to find more ways to stand out in the job market and gain valuable career-building experience, community involvement can be an excellent addition to your resume. By volunteering with local organizations or taking part in extracurricular activities related to your field of study, you can gain key practical skills that will benefit you throughout your professional life.

1. Building a professional network

Making connections through community involvement is a great way to build an effective network of professionals who may support your career goals. You never know when a chance encounter could lead to securing an internship or even a full-time job—so why not take advantage of this opportunity? By networking with people from different backgrounds, you can get advice from those who have already succeeded in their respective fields.

2. Gain practical experience

In addition to gaining professional contacts, participating in community involvement activities can provide you with hands-on experience that will help you stand out to employers. Not only will you be able to put your skills and knowledge into practice, but these experiences may also open up new doors for career opportunities. For example, if you’re studying engineering and decide to volunteer at a local robotics lab, that direct experience could be highly beneficial when it comes time for job interviews.

3. Stand out to future employers

Getting involved in the community is an excellent way to demonstrate your commitment to social responsibility and sustainability—both of which are highly sought-after traits in today’s competitive job market. By showing potential employers that you care about more than just yourself, you’ll stand out from the competition and make a lasting impression.

Community Involvement Activities for Students

There are many different community involvement ideas and activities students can participate in. Read on.

Volunteering is a great way for students to get involved in their community and make a positive impact. There are countless ways to volunteer, and no matter the type of activity, all volunteer work helps build important skills that can benefit students’ future career prospects.

1. Examples of volunteer activities

Here are some examples of volunteer activities and the benefits they offer:

• Animal Shelter Volunteering – Many animal shelters need volunteers to help clean cages, walk dogs, play with cats, and other tasks. This kind of volunteering teaches responsibility and provides training in caring for animals while also providing comfort and companionship to sheltered pets.
• Environmental Campaigns – If a student is passionate about the environment, they can sign up to volunteer with an environmental organization or conservation campaign.
• Tutoring Underprivileged Children – Many children in underprivileged communities don’t have access to proper education, so offering tutoring services or helping out at after-school programs can be incredibly beneficial for them. Student volunteers will gain experience teaching and working with kids while also learning empathy and patience.
• Collecting Donations for Charities – Donating items such as clothes, books, food, toys, and other goods helps those in need and teaches students the value of giving.

2. Benefits of volunteer work for students

These community involvement examples of volunteer work offer various benefits for students, ranging from gaining valuable experience and learning new skills to helping those in need and making a difference in the community. Participating in volunteer activities can provide an enjoyable way for students to gain important knowledge and grow as individuals and positively impact their local area.

There are many ways that students can get involved in community service, depending on their interests, skills, and community needs.

1. Examples of community service

Here are some examples of community service activities for students:

• Volunteering at a local food bank or homeless shelter
• Organizing a community clean-up day
• Participating in a charity walk or run
• Participating in a neighborhood watch program or community policing initiative
• Assisting with a community garden or urban farming project
• Providing companionship to elderly residents at a local nursing home or assisted living facility
• Participating in a community service trip or international service project

2. Benefits of community service for students

Participating in community service can benefit students, both in terms of personal growth and professional development. Through community service, students can develop various important skills, such as teamwork, leadership, communication, problem-solving, and time management. It can also help students develop empathy, compassion, and a sense of social responsibility, which are important qualities for personal growth and development.

Civic engagement is an important way for students to get involved in their communities and make a positive impact. Engaging in political and social activities allows students to learn about important issues, advocate for change, and make their voices heard.

1. Examples of civic engagement

Here are some examples of civic engagement activities for students:

• Voter Registration Drives – Encouraging eligible voters to register and participate in elections is an important civic duty. Students can help organize voter registration drives to increase voter turnout in their communities.
• Participating in Political Campaigns – By volunteering for political campaigns, students can learn about important issues and help candidates who share their values get elected.
• Community Organizing – Students can help organize and participate in community events and protests to raise awareness of important issues and advocate for change.
• Serving on School and Community Boards – By serving on school and community boards, students can provide valuable input and help make decisions that affect their peers and neighbors.
• Advocacy and Lobbying – Students can advocate for policies they believe in by writing letters, making phone calls to elected officials, and lobbying for change.

2. Benefits of civic engagement for students

Engaging in civic engagement can positively impact the community and provide a sense of purpose and meaning for students. This can help to build a sense of community and connection, fostering a sense of civic responsibility that can last a lifetime. In addition, civic engagement can expose students to new perspectives, challenges, and issues, which can help them to develop empathy and understanding for those who may be different from them. This exposure can broaden their worldview and provide new ways of thinking that can be beneficial to them personally and academically.

Best Practices for Community Involvement

In this section, we will discuss best practices for community involvement and how to choose the right activity.

Understanding the needs of the community is crucial when selecting a community involvement activity. It’s important to identify the issues affecting the community and the areas where assistance is needed the most. This can be achieved by talking to community leaders, conducting research, and participating in community events.

1. Factors to consider when selecting a community involvement activity

Firstly, it’s important to make sure your interests and goals are taken into account when choosing an activity. You want something meaningful and fulfilling, so if you’re passionate about animals or the environment, volunteering at a local animal shelter or environmental organization could be a great option for you.

Secondly, depending on how much time and energy you have available to devote to community involvement, choose an activity that fits within those parameters. If you only have a few hours per week available, then maybe traditional volunteer work isn’t feasible, but perhaps joining a social club or book club that meets once per month would be more manageable. Whatever activity you choose, make sure it is something that you are genuinely interested in and that it fits within your available time.

Finally, it’s important to remember the impact of getting involved in your local community. Making an effort to get out there and take part in activities with other people can have a lasting effect on yourself and those around you. By taking part in these activities, not only do you learn new skills and gain valuable experiences, but also build meaningful relationships with others who share similar interests as you.

2. Importance of aligning community involvement with personal goals

Aligning community involvement with personal goals is essential for increasing motivation and commitment. When individuals are passionate about an activity, they are more likely to be committed and make a positive impact.

Aligning community involvement with personal goals also enhances personal growth and development. Individuals can learn new skills, develop new interests, and expand their networks. When individuals feel they are making a meaningful contribution to the community, they are more likely to feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

It is important to create an effective and meaningful community involvement plan that will enable you to make lasting changes in your local or global community.

1. Importance of creating a community involvement plan

Making and executing a community involvement plan is essential for students who want to become involved with the local or global community. Not only will this help them stay organized, but it will also give them a greater sense of purpose in their own lives.

2. Steps to creating a community involvement plan

Here are some steps that can help any student create an effective and meaningful community involvement plan.

• Establish a goal: Before committing to any type of project or volunteering, students need to clarify what they hope to achieve from their efforts. This way, they can set realistic goals and measure progress throughout each step of the process.
• Research potential causes: After establishing a goal, students should research different causes that align with their interests, values, and goals. It’s important to remember that students can get involved locally or globally, so they should look at both options before committing to any one cause.
• Decide which volunteering opportunities fit best: After researching potential causes, it’s time for students to decide which specific volunteer opportunity would be most beneficial for them and the organization they choose to support. Many different types of volunteering are available including mentorship programs, environmental projects, fundraising events, or teaching classes.
• Create an action plan: Once students have selected a volunteer opportunity, it’s time to create an action plan outlining how they will allocate their resources to achieve the goal. Depending on the project, this could include designing a budget, creating an event timeline, or gathering volunteers to help.
• Track progress: As students execute their action plans, they must track their progress to stay organized and motivated. This can be done by keeping a journal of successes and failures throughout the process so they can reflect on what has worked and what hasn’t.

It’s important to make sure that you are making the most of your time spent volunteering and creating positive change in your community.

1. Tips for making a difference through community involvement

Here are some tips on how to maximize the impact of your community involvement:

• Choose Projects That Reflect Your Values: This will enable you to feel more invested in the work being done and ensure that you’re using your time most efficiently by focusing on something that truly matters to you.
• Research Organizations Before You Volunteer: Make sure that their mission resonates with you and that your efforts will be used effectively.
• Set Realistic Goals: This will help you stay focused on what needs to be accomplished while also giving yourself something tangible to strive towards.
• Utilize Resources: Look for ways to leverage relationships, skills, contacts, and knowledge to maximize the impact you make.

2. Strategies for making the most of community involvement experiences

First and foremost, students should keep an open mind and actively participate in opportunities offered to them by their university or other organizations in the local area. Additionally, students should look for ways to use existing resources such as libraries, museums, and parks to enrich their learning experience. Finally, students need to take the initiative and develop projects that benefit their community.

Community Involvement Success Stories

Here are some success stories to further motivate you.

When it comes to community involvement projects, many have positively impacted the world. Three such examples are Malala Yousafzai, Craig Kielburger and his organization Free The Children, and Ryan Hreljac and his charity Ryan’s Well Foundation.

1. The story of Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan in 1997. At the age of 11, she began writing for the BBC about her life under Taliban rule and soon became an outspoken advocate for girls’ education rights in her country. In 2012, she was shot by the Taliban but survived and continued to fight for equal access to education. Her work has since earned her numerous awards, including a Nobel Peace Prize at just 17 years old!

2. The story of Craig Kielburger and Free The Children

In 1995, Craig Kielburger founded Free The Children, an international charity and youth empowerment movement that focuses on ending child labor. He began a global campaign to bring awareness to the issue and advocated for improved rights and resources for children worldwide. Through his organization, he has inspired millions to participate in community projects and contribute to positive change.

3. The story of Ryan Hreljac and Ryan’s Well Foundation

When he was only six years old, Ryan Hreljac started Ryan’s Well Foundation. After learning about the water crisis in developing countries, he started fundraising to provide clean drinking water access for those in need. To date, his foundation has completed over 1,600 water projects and provided clean drinking water access for over 1 million people!

Community involvement is an important part of society and has been proven to have many positive effects.

1. Statistics on the impact of community involvement

One study found that having volunteer experience on a resume will boost students’ chances of finding a job by 27%. According to the same study, people who volunteer or participate in community service are more likely to be successful in school and work, have better physical health, and feel like they can make a difference in the world. So, individuals who volunteer are more likely to be healthier, happier, and more engaged in their communities.

It’s worth mentioning that between September 2020 and 2021, over 60.7 million people in the US formally volunteered with organizations. These volunteers contributed to a worth of $122.9 billion in economic value.

2. Case studies of community involvement projects that have made a difference

When it comes to tangible impact on society, there are many examples of how community involvement can help. For example, Habitat for Humanity builds affordable homes for those who cannot afford them normally. Through donations from individuals and businesses, this organization has been able to build over 1 million homes since its inception in 1976. This shows that even small donations can add up to make huge changes in communities around the world.

Another example is the work of the United Way , which provides funding for local charities and organizations that help people in need. Through their donation drives and volunteer programs, they can raise millions of dollars every year that goes back into communities to fund essential services like food banks, housing programs, and youth initiatives.

Here, we also must mention the Flint Water Crisis . In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, switched its water source to the Flint River, resulting in lead contamination of the water supply. Community members, including local activists and organizations, played a critical role in bringing attention to the crisis and advocating for action. Their efforts led to a federal investigation, allocating resources to address the crisis, and passing legislation to improve water infrastructure and prevent future crises.

In recent times, Black Lives Matter is worth mentioning as well. The movement began as a hashtag on social media and grew into a powerful force for change, with community members organizing protests, marches, and advocacy efforts to bring attention to the issue. Their efforts have led to increased awareness of racial injustice, the passing of police reform legislation in some states, and ongoing efforts to address systemic racism in all areas of society.

In conclusion, community involvement is an important part of being a student. Participating in activities such as volunteer work, social clubs, and tutoring can help students gain valuable skills and experiences that will benefit them both academically and professionally. Not only does it provide great life lessons, but it also helps build relationships with people from different backgrounds and enhances one’s sense of responsibility.

We hope this article has given you some insight into what community involvement is and why it’s important for students. If you are looking to get more involved in your local community, there are plenty of resources available that can help guide you in the right direction.

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15 Engaging Community Building Activities for the Classroom

“We’re in this together!” is a phrase we all like and need to hear. Not only that it says that we’re supported and can rely on other people, but it also makes us feel understood, safe, accepted, and thus, empowered to contribute to the relationships with our “supporters”.

According to experts, community building is the foundation of a happy classroom. For students to be productive learners, they need a sense of belonging, as their emotional and social development is deeply connected to their learning. When young students enter the classroom for the first time, they actually enter a new community away from their family, so it is essential for them to feel both empowered and invested. Or in other words, a great deal of students’ energy for learning comes from their social connectedness. 

Community Building Activities for Elementary Students

When it comes to young students in elementary school, it is utterly important for teachers to get to know each child and set the foundations of trust and familiarity. You can play games or do projects that focus on the development of these aspects, but you can also make discussions where children can express their opinions and demonstrate who they are to their peers. 

These community building activities will encourage students to work together, communicate, listen and think creatively.

Storytelling Round Robin

For this, community building activity, you’ll need a story of your preference. Have students seated at their desks and then start the game by reading the first line of the story. Then stop and tell each student to add a new line to the story, one by one, as they’d imagine the story continues.

Student B: …its name was Pirri…

Co-Created Rules Chart 

Guide your students in creating a chart of classroom rules together with you. Give each child a turn to suggest a rule. Write down the rules and leave a replaceable blank line under each rule (you can use an adhesive write-on strap).

Birthday Line Up

Kind mondays .

This activity will teach students about the importance of encouraging and lifting their peers up. Start every school week by sitting with your students in a circle with their legs straight. Tell your students to compliment the classmate opposite them, say why they are good friends or what they like most about them. 

Each time a student receives a compliment, they cross their legs. Make sure you change students’ positions and pair students that are not very close as friends to make them more interested in one another positively. 

Creative Solutions

If you need more resources to engage your young-aged students, look at these warm-up activities for kids .

Community Building Activities for Middle School Students

Step into my shoes.

Learning about diversity can be fun and very helpful for students to learn how to interact and relate with people who are different from themselves. 

Prepare a reading sheet with scrambled letters (free download below) and hand out a copy to each student. Ask for students to read the sheet aloud. After students have struggled reading, read the full text from the answer sheet. Ask students how it felt to read this and explain that this is how people with learning disabilities usually feel despite their intelligence (dyslexia, dyscalculia).

Walk Apart-Walk Together

For each difference, the volunteers take one step away from each other. When they finally reach the end of the walking space, tell them to turn and face each other. Next, tell students to call out similarities of the two volunteers. The volunteers take a step toward each other as each similarity is listed. Talk about the differences that are easy to see and mention but also the similarities that are sometimes not visible (interests, goals, preferences).

Anti-Bullying Campaign

Then give them the following tasks: creating an anti-bullying poster with messages that encourage nonviolent behavior, a song or YouTube video with a message against bullying, writing anti-bullying and pro-kindness tear-off messages, and creating anti-bullying memes and hashtags. Present these in front of other classes and spread the campaign in your school.

Paper Tweets

Create a bulletin board modeled according to a social media profile (e.g. Facebook or Twitter). Each student creates a profile and includes at least three followers- a close friend and two other classmates they don’t interact with much. The student writes their current mood, a problem or news and their followers respond.

After-School Hangouts

Tell students that they can bring food or drinks if they want and share them. Bring a portable speaker and play some relaxing music while chit-chatting together. This type of activity allows teachers, students, and parents to interact on a different level and build deeper connections.

Community Building Activities for College School Students

Two truths and a lie (icebreaker activity).

Students write down two truths about themselves and one lie. Then they present the three “facts” to the rest of the group, who tries to guess which one is the lie.

Weekly Class Meetings

Meeting and talking for 15 to 30 minutes with your students at the beginning of each week is one of the simplest but effective ways to build classroom community. And it doesn’t need to be complex or specific, just ask how everyone is doing, what are their goals for the week, and what they’re doing to meet those goals. This also works via Zoom in times of COVID-19.

Gratitude Journal

I wish my teacher knew….

Create printable comment cards that read, I wish my teacher knew… with a blank line for students to fill out. Hand out the cards to students who can return them anonymously, and then you can read them aloud.

Compliments Ritual

Students like to hear that they’re doing well or that someone believes in their potential. Create a ritual at the beginning or at the end of the class where students would stand in a circle and give compliments to each other to recognize their work and positive traits.

Community classrooms can effectively impact students’ personal development and provide stronger motivation to learn. Studies have shown that community classroom students more often state that at school they feel at home or that they care about their classmates. And that, to conclude, results in greater social competence, higher educational expectations, and stronger problem-solving skills.

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7 Activities to Build Community and Positive Classroom Culture During Online Learning

Ideas for creating authentic connections, meaningful relationships and classroom camaraderie through the screen.

By The Learning Network

When schools transitioned to remote learning in the spring, teachers worked quickly to adapt lesson plans and curriculums for virtual classes, while also trying to maintain community and connection. This fall, not only will many educators continue that same work, but they will have the added challenge of building community with students they’ve never met.

To support educators who are trying to do this, we’ve compiled a list of strategies that can foster meaningful relationships and authentic connection in the virtual classroom. They come from the community building exercises we used during our three-day virtual New York Times Teaching Project summer institute . After several participants told us they planned to start the school year with some of these activities, we thought we should share them with all of our readers.

How are you planning to get to know your students while teaching remotely this school year? Let us know in the comments.

Please note: The activities we describe below were all conducted via Zoom , but many other video conferencing platforms have similar capabilities.

Activities:

Discussion starters.

• Flipgrid Introductions
• Human Bingo
• Write and Show
• What’s Going On in This Picture?
• Meditation and Mindfulness

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• Sexual Assault Victim’s Programs
• City of Naples Dedicated Survivor Trees

Community Awareness & Education Activities Programs

• Crime Victim’s Programs
• Support Groups
• Get Involved
• Mission Statement
• Project Help Calendar
• HELPline Satisfaction Survey
• Career Opportunities

Project HELP Community Awareness Activities Program – The goal of community awareness is to increase the community’s knowledge of the available programs and services offered. This is accomplished by informing the general public through various activities.

Participating in a Minimum of 24 Community Awareness Activities

• Activities are targeted to include under served communities and diverse populations in our county. The 24 community awareness activities focus on all our programs and services unless we are asked to speak on individual programs.
• Community networking promotes community awareness of program services and availability by networking with professionals and leaders in the community.
• Developing, building and maintaining Response Teams, which include representatives from victim advocacy, law enforcement, prosecution and healthcare.
• Joining community-based collaborations (e.g., disaster preparedness committees, social service consortiums,)
• Communicating regularly with staff at local social service agencies, hospital emergency room, law enforcement, state attorney, clerk of court and non-certified victim advocates
• Visiting local businesses and dropping off sexual violence materials, event flyers and brochures
• Joining local groups and sharing information
• Collaboration with other agencies

Training For Professionals and Non-Professionals

• “Training” refers to education about available programs/services that are provided to professional and non-professional audiences.
• Dynamics of each of our programs and all services that we offer
• Relevant community resources
• Crisis intervention
• Medical, criminal justice/legal and social service victim response

Training Sites Include:

• Social service agencies and organizations
• Educational institutions, including daycare centers
• Healthcare facilities
• Law enforcement agencies
• Youth organizations
• Legal – (e.g.. legal associations, clerk-of-court or prosecutors)
• Clubs (e.g., League, Kiwanis, Rotary, Senior Center, LGBTQ, 4-H)
• Local businesses (e.g., provide sexual violence training to employees)
• Churches (e.g., provide training to congregations and/or religious leaders)

Participation in Community Events

Program staff are involved in events throughout the community. Participation in community events often includes a table with promotional and informational items containing (at minimum) program names and hotline number, program materials and program brochures. Examples of community events:

• Community celebrations
• Social service outreach (career day open house)
• School events (sports events or campus clubs/activities>
• Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities/li>

Public Speaking

Getting the word out will increase community awareness of programs and available services. Things to consider for public speaking:

• Keep an agency speakers bureau – the list should include advocacy core trained staff and volunteers with public speaking experience, their areas of specialization and general availability
• Advertise your availability to speak on the topic of sexual violence
• Call potential sponsors for speaking engagements
• Seek opportunities to speak at community events
• Set up interviews for local television and radio programs
• Submit workshop proposals for conferences

Distribution of Materials

Programs should routinely distribute program materials to local businesses, churches, social service agencies, hospitals, law enforcement, court and legal personnel, clubs, schools and civic organizations. Things to consider:

• Materials should include information about all available programs as well as defined programs best suited for visit. Include on materials hotline and office telephone numbers, hours and location of services and website address.
• The community should be informed of materials that are available for distribution and a mechanism established to request material
• Drop off materials at local businesses (e.g., hotline tear off sheets, event flyers, program brochures)
• Contact law enforcement on a regular basis to check on the status of the “Victim Rights and Services” brochure. Responding officers are required to give the brochure to victims
• Develop materials that will be accessible to all members of your community

Resource Libraries

Information technology is a means of sharing sexual violence materials and program services with the community. Site-based libraries, web-based resources and links and community-based libraries are all sources for resource sharing. Suggestions for resource libraries and sharing include:

• Maintain a resource library that contains up-to-date books, manuals, DVDs and training materials
• Advertise availability of agency-based resource library to the general public and/or local professionals
• Host a reading group
• Host a movie night
• Develop your agency website to include program specific resources that can be downloaded or links to resources

Media Coverage/Campaign

Media provides a cost-effective means of advertising. Plan events to include media coverage. Use local media that reaches diverse populations within your service area; for example: rural, African American, Latina, migrant, LGBTQ or the elderly. Invite minority owned news outlets (newspaper, radio, television) to cover your events. Include coverage in language(s) that will reach all members of your community.

• Public Service Announcements on local television and radio stations
• Local media/newspapers – invite the news to cover program events such as Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities or fundraisers
• Social media – spread the news of your services through an agency Facebook page and/or Twitter account to keep professionals in your community up-to-date and informed on issues related to your program and sexual violence
• Agency website and blogs

Advertising

Advertising program services and the hotline number should be included in agency advertising and materials as well as ways to inform hard-to-reach populations such as the mentally ill, homeless, substance abusers and sex workers of the available programs and services. Examples of ways to advertise:

• Listed on the Collier County Sheriff’s Office Website
• Listed on the Collier County Elder Brochure
• Membership outlets (e.g., local newsletters for seniors, LGBTQ, minority or women’s organizations)
• Newspaper ads
• Television and radio ads or PSAs

• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
• Administration for Children & Families
• Upcoming Events

Teaching Practices

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• Creating a Caring Community

Caring refers to a set of prosocial skills and behaviors like being helpful, respectful, kind, thoughtful, understanding, and comforting. It also includes more complex behaviors such as cooperation, generosity, and empathy. Children need prosocial skills to fully take part in the many daily group activities in early learning environments.

A caring community of learners refers to learning environments where children and educators engage in warm, positive relationships, treat each other with respect, and learn from and with each other. These environments include center-based classrooms, family child care settings, socialization spaces, and homes.

Caring behavior is like a drop of water that ripples out as education staff establish positive relationships with every child in their care. In a caring, equitable community of learners, educators intentionally make it a priority to:

• D esign a caring environment
• R espond to individual needs
• O rganize awareness activities
• P romote and encourage a sense of community

Check out this 15-minute In-service Suite and find tips, tools, and worksheets to extend your learning.

Caring Community

Narrator: Welcome to this short presentation on creating a caring community. Learn about the importance of a caring community for young children and how to use practices that create a sense of belonging for everyone in the program. Quality teaching and learning practices incorporate the experiences, languages, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds of children and their families. By doing this, learning becomes more meaningful and interesting for children. The Framework for Effective Practice describes effective everyday practices that lead to school readiness for all children.

There are six parts to the Framework for Effective Practice: a strong siding, emphasizing equitable experiences for all children, a foundation of engaging interactions and environments, the supporting pillars of research-based curricula and effective teaching practices as well as ongoing assessment, highly individualized teaching practices that ensure every child makes progress toward school readiness, and, at the center, parent and family partnership and engagement. 

Creating a caring community is an essential part of the foundation. This presentation on how to create a caring community is one in a series of suites designed to help adults connect and build strong relationships with children and create an atmosphere of caring and belonging that permeates the program.

[Video begins]

Teacher: We're ready. Good morning, boys and girls.

Children: Good morning!

Boy: Sabah al-khair!

Teacher: Now let's try saying it in Arabic.

Children: Sabah al-khair.

Teacher: Sabah al-khair.

[Video ends]

Narrator: What does it mean to create a caring community? Think about words such as "respectful," "affirming," "kind," "thoughtful," and "understanding." A learning environment that exudes a sense of caring is one where the children and the adults value and respect each other, think about each other, and help each other. Caring behaviors in children develop over time and through many thoughtful interactions.

Educators model respect and caring. And they encourage children to care by helping them learn to share and cooperate and show empathy towards each other. Kindness can create a ripple effect in the learning environment. As educators demonstrate respect and kindness with children and families and other adults, the children feel more value and secure.

Why is it so important to create a caring learning community? Research tells us that children who are taught caring behaviors when they are young continue to show caring behaviors as they grow older. Positive social behaviors also predict children's performance in academic and social areas. And children who show higher levels of caring behaviors tend to be more ready for school than those who do not. Let's look at some of the ways that educators help children learn to be kinder and more respectful.

Teacher: We want to respect Amy's space. Let's slide over a little more. She's building something, and we don't want to keep knocking it down.

Teacher: Or you could ask Silvan to move his hand.

Child: Move your hand.

Teacher: Here, Silvan. Let's move our hand. Maz wants to put it down. Thank you for using your words, Maz.

Teacher: Si tu tienes oportuno, puedes anutar tu nombre y podemos contaro través el tiempo. Gracias por ayudante.

Narrator: Educators are purposeful in designing welcoming learning environments that reflect and affirm children's culture, language, and individual identities. They nurture a sense of belonging for all children and families. They display family pictures and children's artwork, use children's languages and integrate familiar books, stories, music, and objects that celebrate and sustain children's diverse social identities.

Teacher: Help.

Narrator: Educators build on the strengths, abilities, and interests of children to make each child feel valued and confident. They are aware of and responsive to the individual needs of children to help children feel supported and secure. Educators help children learn how their own actions affect others. They model and teach children about fairness and respect for differences. And educators acknowledge children's developing attempts at caring, kindness, and being fair. Educators let children know that their kind actions are valued.

Teacher: Where did you learn to write it in rainbow?

Oriel: He did.

Teacher: Thanks for teaching Oriel about the rainbow. I know you like to do that each day.

Narrator: It takes time and planning to create a caring learning community. Caring learning communities make wonderful and joyful places for children to thrive and learn the many things they need to know to be ready for school. We hope you have new ideas to expand on the ways you already support the social and emotional well-being of all children and can continue to build an atmosphere of caring, belonging, and fairness in your program. For more information and more ideas on creating a caring community, see our 15-minute in-service suite videos, tips and tools on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, or ECLKC .

Why is the practice important?

Caring communities help both educators and children by providing them with equitable, supportive, and welcoming learning environments.

Caring creates a ripple effect. The children begin to feel safe and secure knowing adults have their best interests at heart, and the ripple continues. This sense of security allows the children to look beyond their own immediate needs to the needs of others. Children who are taught and encouraged to show caring behaviors early on are more likely to continue these behaviors in later years. Prosocial behaviors also predict children’s strengths in other developmental areas, such as academic and social and emotional skills.

Sustaining Children’s Cultural, Ethnic, and Language Identities

Educators view all children as valued members of the learning community. They know that learning caring behaviors may be influenced by various caregiving practices and values like, for example, a family environment that emphasizes interdependence rather than independence.

Here are some ways educators can sustain children’s cultural, ethnic, and language identities:

• Work closely with families and community members to learn about children’s cultural and language experiences and create meaningful learning activities that affirm children’s familial and cultural backgrounds.
• Design environments that reflect and celebrate children’s diverse cultures and languages.
• Teach children pride in their cultural, linguistic, and individual identities.
• Show children ways to help a peer feel fully included in their learning community.
• Plan activities where children share and learn about each other’s cultural and language backgrounds and experiences.

Practices for Children with Disabilities or Suspected Delays

In a caring and equitable community, educators model appreciation for children’s diverse abilities. They display pictures and use books that portray people with disabilities in positive ways. They support the success of all children and offer individualized support when children experience difficulties in social situations.

Educators provide varying levels and types of support, depending on a child’s learning needs. Here are some effective practices and examples:

• Arrange the physical environment so that a child using a wheelchair or walker can independently move around.
• Post a visual of classroom rules to help a child with a language delay better understand expected social behavior.
• To provide more support for a child who struggles to participate in social interactions with peers, educators can invite a more socially competent peer to model a social behavior or directly invite the child to join in an activity.
• Educators can use an activity matrix to plan when and how to do this teaching practice during daily activities and routines.
• Provide intensive instruction to teach a child who struggles with social interactions important skills, like asking a peer to play, offering to help a peer who is struggling with a task, or consoling a peer in distress.

Infants – Early On

Children at an early stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Show interest in other children by smiling, touching, reaching, or making sounds directed to the child.
• Engage in simple back-and-forth interactions with another child by vocalizing, imitating each other’s sounds, using gestures, or sharing or exchanging a toy or object.
• Vocalize, gesture, or cry to seek adult help, or offer a toy or object to comfort another child who is crying or upset.
• Interact with children who have diverse physical, language, and ability characteristics.

Toddlers – Emerging Skills

Children at an emerging stage of developing caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Actively move near other children to play or engage in simple conversations.
• Show a preference for a playmate, such as greeting friends by name or seeking a friend to play with and moving toward them.
• Use words or actions to comfort another child who is hurt or crying.
• Engage in conversations about biases and injustices. Adults can support when they see instances of unfair behavior, such as when a child grabs another child’s toy, or when a group of children reject a peer who does not yet speak English.

Preschoolers – Increasing Mastery

Children who are increasing their proficiency in caring behaviors are ready to learn how to:

• Use a variety of skills to enter social situations with other children, such as suggesting something to do together, joining an existing activity, or sharing a toy.
• Play cooperatively with other children by communicating with each other and working toward a common goal.
• Recognize biases and injustices and speak up or offer support when another child is being treated unfairly.
• Describe their own cultural, language, and ability identities and how they are similar and different from those of other children.

Practices in Action

This playlist features examples of practices that facilitate creating a caring community in early childhood learning environments. As you watch these short videos, think about what you already do to foster a caring community and what additional practices you can implement.

Finger Play with Infants

[Speaking in Spanish]

Teacher 1: Very good.

Teacher 2: Very good. Estelita, Rubén... [Inaudible] OK? Ready? Come on, Estela. One, two, three friends. Four, five, six friends. Seven, eight, nine friends. There are 10 friends.

Teacher 1: Bravo!

Teacher 2: Yes! She dances. [Laughter] 

Teacher 2: One more time, Estela? Estelita? One, two, three friends. Four, five, six friends. Seven, eight, nine friends. There are 10 friends.

Teacher 1: Yes! Bravo!

Creating community happens in simple and complex ways. How is the educator fostering warm and positive relationships? 

Find tips, tools, and worksheets below to extend your learning.

This tip sheet explains how creating caring communities involves warm, respectful relationships among children and adults:

While watching the exemplar videos, use this tool to document observations around how education staff create caring communities:

• Creating a Caring Community: Tools for Learning Leaders

Tips for Educators

This printable handout provides ideas for implementing practices that create caring communities:

• Learning with Families

Tips for Families

Staff can share these printable handouts that include suggestions and ideas on ways families can engage in their child’s learning environment:

• Creating a Caring Community: Tips for Families

Reflect, Improve

These practical activities support planning, implementing, and reflecting on the use of a practice in the early learning environment:

• Staff Learning Activity
• Activities with Families

« Go to Engaging Interactions and Environments

Resource Type: Article

National Centers: Early Childhood Development, Teaching and Learning

Last Updated: September 10, 2024

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Community Involvement in School Activities: Its Effectiveness in Promoting Quality of Learning in Public Secondary Schools in Hai District, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

• January 2022
• 06(09):613-620

• Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT)

• St.Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT)

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• Open access
• Published: 02 September 2024

Building a learning health care community in rural and remote areas: a systematic review

• Shabnam Asghari 1 ,
• Jennifer Bent 1 ,
• Ali Modir 1 ,
• Alison MacDonald 1 ,
• Alison Farrell 2 ,
• Cheri Bethune 1 &
• Wendy Graham 1  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  1013 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

22 Accesses

Metrics details

A Learning Health Care Community (LHCC) is a framework to enhance health care through mutual accountability between the health care system and the community. LHCC components include infrastructure for health-related data capture, care improvement targets, a supportive policy environment, and community engagement. The LHCC involves health care providers, researchers, decision-makers, and community members who work to identify health care needs and address them with evidence-based solutions. The objective of this study was to summarize the barriers and enablers to building an LHCC in rural areas.

A systematic review was conducted by searching electronic databases. Eligibility criteria was determined by the research team. Published literature on LHCCs in rural areas was systematically collected and organized. Screening was completed independently by two authors. Detailed information about rural health care, activities, and barriers and enablers to building an LHCC in rural areas was extracted. Qualitative analysis was used to identify core themes.

Among 8169 identified articles, 25 were eligible. LHCCs aimed to increase collaboration and co-learning between community members and health care providers, integrate community feedback in health care services, and to share information. Main barriers included obtaining adequate funding and participant recruitment. Enablers included meaningful engagement of stakeholders and stakeholder collaboration.

Conclusions

The LHCC is built on a foundation of meaningful use of health data and empowers health care practitioners and community members in informed decision-making. By reducing the gap between knowledge generation and its application to practice, the LHCC has the potential to transform health care delivery in rural areas.

Peer Review reports

Community participation  is known as the collective involvement of people in assessing their needs [ 1 ]. Prior research suggests that community participation in community services and programming is integral to the health of the community and its sustainability, and such participation can yield positive long-term health outcomes [ 2 ]. Community participation in primary and rural health care services has promoted more accessible and relevant services [ 2 , 3 ], and it can result in higher community-member satisfaction with health services [ 4 ]. There is a long tradition of community-member contributions to various health services and preventative health programs [ 5 , 6 , 7 ].

A Learning Health care System (LHS) is a model that ‘draws from the best scientific evidence while tailoring optimal care to a local health care setting to each patient’ [ 8 , 9 ]. As technology advances, so does access to clinical and person-specific data that can inform health care decision making [ 8 ]. An LHS has three core components: (1) foundational elements; (2) care improvement targets; and (3) a supportive policy environment [ 9 ]. Foundational elements include upgrading digital technology to collect data and facilitate data sharing within the health care system. Care improvement targets assist learning and health through clinical decision support tools, patient-centered care, and clinician-community links. A supportive policy environment includes financial incentives that reward high-value care, encourages transparency within the health care system and commitment from leaders. An LHS can lead to many optimal health care characteristics, including engaged patients, appropriate decision supports, aligned governance, and sharing of necessary data; however, adopting an LHS approach has come with an obstacle, to effectively engaging community members to achieve optimum health outcomes.

A Learning Health Care Community (LHCC) model expands on the LHS model by combining the core elements of an LHS with a fourth component: active and continuous stakeholder and community engagement to improve the quality and value of health care within a community [ 9 ]. An LHCC focuses on health care beyond a health care system and extends beyond an LHS, which focuses on collaboration in health care. The LHCC uses the best practices of the LHS model with evidence-based approaches to engage community members.

The aims of an LHCC include increasing collaboration between public health and traditional health care providers and intending to address all areas required to achieve optimal impact on health for the community. Collaboration from multiple community sectors and effort from the community is vital to the success of the LHCC. Previous literature has found that engaging community members in meaningful conversations regarding their health care is associated with improved health outcomes, quality of time, and better health care experiences [ 9 ].

The LHCC should be trusted and valued by all stakeholders and consist of an economically governable system while being responsive to community needs. Past involvement in discriminatory practices committed against vulnerable and minority populations has impacted community-institution relationships [ 10 ]. However, ongoing commitment of investigators and research teams, treating community members as partners, working collaboratively, increasing skills in relationship building, and listening to diverse voices can overcome mistrust by health care providers and researchers [ 10 , 11 ]. Co-development with communities can assure trustworthy and targeted implementation to address community needs [ 9 ].

An LHS model lacks community involvement and fails to consider community-based health care problems [ 9 ]. As a result, these communities lack control and power over their health care. An LHCC places the voices of communities at the center of their health care, empowers community members, and increases opportunities for health-related learning [ 8 , 9 ]. The LHCC framework is relatively new, and, there is limited research on the impact of LHCCs in rural areas. The majority of existing research on LHCCs is completed in urban areas, or it is outcome-focused with less emphasis on the enablers and barriers that enhanced or hindered the implementation process. We sought to address this gap in existing knowledge by summarizing the barriers and enablers across all LHCCs implemented in rural areas. The current review can be used as a guide to develop more targeted and seamless approaches to develop an LHCC and achieve community health outcomes.

Research aim

The current paper aimed to summarize evidence on the facilitators and barriers that are involved in the LHCC implementation process for rural health care providers, researchers, decision-makers, and community members who wish to implement an LHCC.

Question of interest

What are the barriers and enablers to building a learning health care community in rural areas?

Research design and information sources

We conducted a mixed-methods systematic review. The JBI methodology for mixed-methods systematic reviews was used to inform the entire systematic review. Thematic coding was completed according to the  JBI convergent-integrated approach [ 12 ].

Eligibility criteria

A search of English peer-reviewed published articles that were rural-based, health-related, and involved the implementation of an LHCC was undertaken. Inclusion criteria included the following:

Studies must have been conducted in rural areas. For the purpose of this study, areas were considered rural if they were outside cities [ 1 ]. The research team also checked the author’s definition of a rural area used in the included studies.

Community participation took place and it was related to improving the health services, health knowledge, or well-being of community members.

Studies must have included at least one of the following stakeholders (researcher, health care providers, health system leaders, etc.), as well as a community or patient population.

Co-learning took place by community members and stakeholders. Co-learning refers to a bi-directional learning process, where knowledge exchange occurs between those involved [ 13 ]. Health care providers, leaders, researchers or investigators learned from the community (e.g., their feedback) and community members learned about a health-related topic or health service from health care providers, leaders, researchers or investigators.

Articles were excluded if they were the format of a letter to the editor, a systematic review, an audit, or an editorial. Studies focused on an urban area or simply on an LHS rather than an LHCC were also excluded. All included studies in the review and articles deemed eligible were assessed and included in the review.

Search strategy

Rural and primary health care experts were consulted to identify keywords and studies on LHCCs, community engagement and health care practitioners. Then, in consultation with a librarian, the search terms were tested and refined. Next, a Public Services Librarian from Memorial University of Newfoundland searched databases including Medline (Ovid), Embase (Embase.com) and The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL; Ebsco) to identify potentially relevant articles up until May 2, 2023. See Additional File 1 for the search history for Ovid Medline. Results were imported into Endnote X9 for deduplication and then into Covidence for screening.

Study selection and data collection process

Relevant titles and abstracts by database searches resulted in the identification of 8169 articles. After duplicates were removed, 8096 articles remained. Articles were screened independently by two trained authors using Covidence, an online software that streamlines the production of systematic reviews. If an abstract was deemed relevant, a vote of ‘Yes’ was assigned to the article, and if an abstract was deemed irrelevant a vote of ‘No’ was assigned to the article. If both reviewers assigned a vote of ‘Yes’ the article moved into the full-text phase, and if both reviewers voted ‘No’, the article was excluded. Any abstracts that received conflicting votes or were assigned a vote of ‘Maybe’ were discussed and resolved between authors. After a consensus was reached, full texts of the remaining articles were obtained and this process was repeated. A calibration exercise was administered to portray the validity of the research on 10% of the articles in each stage and our approach was adjusted if it was required. For the abstract, 816 articles (10%) were randomly selected, and a third reviewer examined these abstracts. Reference lists and citations within full text articles were checked for eligibility. No additional articles were added using this approach. The same process was used for screening and data extraction. Next, the research team confirmed the included articles following review and conflict resolution. Weekly meetings were executed to discuss the articles. If there were any conflicts in article decisions, a third reviewer was involved in the resolution.

Data synthesis methods

Included articles were moved to data extraction by both independent reviewers. A data extraction tool was developed using Microsoft Excel and pilot tested on 5 articles. Both reviewers independently entered the data to the tool. Columns were included that summarized key information pertaining to the article (i.e. Geographical Setting, Study Objectives, Community Group, Enablers and Barriers, etc.).

Data from each article was compiled into the Microsoft Excel sheet and reviewed by the research team. The compiled articles ( n  = 25) were reviewed by several team members and discussed during meetings until we reached consensus. Similar text fragments were grouped and categories were identified. Consistent with the JBI mixed-methods systematic review convergent-integrated approach [ 12 ], categories were identified based on assembled data from both qualitative and quantitative studies. Next, categories were aggregated to form themes relating to the barriers and enablers to building an LHCC. A consensus on the final list of themes was reached through group discussions to reduce bias and ensure consensus was reached.

Enablers and barriers were discussed in relation to the four main components of the LHCC. The Stakeholder and Community Engagement component highlights studies that identified effectively engaging community members to be pivotal to an LHCC success. Infrastructure for health related data-capture was relevant to studies that found harnessing contemporary technology, information sharing through in-person and online interventions, development of educational materials, and health-related data sharing to be vital to patient health. Care Improvement Targets were included as various stakeholders aimed to improve health, disease management, and increase awareness and uptake of prevention interventions within the community. Care Improvement Targets were organized according to the Institute of Medicine’s report: “Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century” six aims for success (1) safe; (2) effective; (3) timely; (4) patient-centered; (5) efficient; and (6) equitable [ 14 ]. A Supportive Policy Environment was included as acquiring proper funding, resources and support was deemed essential to the LHCC.

Quality appraisal

The quality of each study was assessed independently by two authors using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) scoring system [ 15 ]. The average of each reviewer's assigned score determined the quality of each article. Studies of 75% and above were considered good quality, 50–74% were considered fair, and 50% and below were considered low quality. All studies that met inclusion criteria were included, despite the quality appraisal score.

A literature search identified 8169 articles to screen and assess for eligibility. Following screening and the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, 25 articles were included (Fig.  1 ).

Prisma flow diagram

Studies were conducted in the following countries: the United States ( n  = 15), India ( n  = 3), Canada ( n  = 2), Australia ( n  = 2), Guatemala ( n  = 1), Thailand ( n  = 1), and the Republic of Congo ( n  = 1). The characteristics of included studies are summarized in Table 1 . All studies included stakeholder populations (as defined above) that experienced a form of learning health outcome in their community. There were no age-specific studies, and children were not exclusively excluded. Six articles (24% of all articles) were deemed fair, and 19 studies (76% of all articles) were deemed good quality. The studies were a mix of qualitative ( n  = 14), quantitative ( n  = 3), quality improvement ( n  = 2), and mixed methods ( n  = 6).

Defining a learning health care community

Descriptions and definitions of LHCCs were extracted from all included articles (Table  2 ). Most articles did not directly use ‘learning health care community’ terminology; however, all included key LHCC components.

All LHCC projects aimed to improve health outcomes, such as disease monitoring, management and prevention, and knowledge sharing with community members. All involved collaboration between stakeholders, co-learning, integration of community feedback, and discussed the community participation process. Additionally, most articles discussed developing rural health services such as online learning or research health networks, community-based intervention workshops, learning health systems, and evidence-synthesis programs.

Enablers and barriers to building an LHCC

Common themes emerged across articles. Theme descriptions were created based on the content of included articles and were reviewed by the research team. A consensus on theme names was reached at team meetings. Meaningfully Engaging Stakeholders referred to the use of tools, activities, or community-specific or creative strategies to grasp the interest of diverse stakeholders to be involved in the LHCC implementation process or to be active members within the LHCC. Stakeholder Collaboration referred to bringing together diverse stakeholders to work together to implement the LHCC or to achieve a common goal as members of the LHCC. Using a Participatory Approach was used to describe recruitment and participation of people who are impacted by the LHCC. Strong Stakeholder Relationships referred to the creation of strong interpersonal and mutually beneficial partnerships between stakeholders. Knowledge Sharing referred to learning about a health topic from in-person or online interventions, through the use or creation of knowledge-translation tools, health-related activities or training sessions, or through the use of technology. A Multidisciplinary Team referred to teams that included at least two different stakeholders with different levels of expertise, skills or experience. For example, certain teams included community members, clinicians, nurses, specific patient groups, or community health workers.

The barrier Obtaining Adequate Funding or Research Support referred to challenges to obtain sufficient funding, technology, or personnel to support the development of the LHCC or to sustain the LHCC. Participant Recruitment was used to describe challenges to recruit community members, family members, patients, or other stakeholders that could assist with the development of the LHCC or who serve as active members within the LHCC. A Lack of Knowledge referred to challenges regarding a lack of knowledge about a health topic or illiteracy within the community. This barrier also described a lack of knowledge of how to effectively engage or recruit stakeholders. Maintaining Stakeholder Commitment was used to describe challenges relating to sustaining involvement of LHCC stakeholders, or underestimating the ongoing effort required to promote long-term commitment from stakeholders.

Competing Demands of Stakeholders was used to describe situations when stakeholders within the LHCC had conflicting priorities and therefore, hindered the progress of the LHCC. This barrier was also used to describe when stakeholders struggled to determine a shared mission of the LHCC. Time Constraints were identified by stakeholders that were either unable to or struggled to meet specific deadlines during the LHCC development process, or those who underestimated the time required to build relationships and effectively engage stakeholders.

See Table  3 for the most frequently noted enablers and barriers and the corresponding number of articles. See Table  2 for more detailed information on the enablers and barriers reported in each article.

The most frequently noted enabler that facilitated LHCC implementation included meaningfully engaging stakeholders ( n  = 15). This finding ‘Stakeholder and Community Engagement’ is one of the four main components of the LHCC framework. One LHCC described by Curtis et al. [ 26 ] integrated patient engagement at all stages of their program by ensuring participant voices were heard and incorporated into strategy development. They developed a multidisciplinary team of specialists, Indigenous care providers, patient partners, and policymakers who collectively contributed in the development and implementation process of the LHCC. The LHCC involved shared decision making at all stages and community-member knowledge was leveraged to enhance culturally-safe care.

Other enablers mentioned in four or less articles included having a shared mission, incorporating incremental improvements, demonstrating the value of stakeholder involvement, having strong leadership, prolonging engagement throughout the project, using culturally appropriate research methods, conducting a needs assessment, getting continuous feedback from the community, and providing stakeholders access to their health data.

Allowing patients to engage with their own health data to facilitate participation relates to the ‘Infrastructure for Health-Related Data Capture and Knowledge Sharing’ component of the LHCC model. For example, Arcia et al. [ 16 ] used a participatory-design approach where participants completed health surveys on their self-reported health outcomes and anthropometric measures. Data was returned to participants through clinical infographics and all participants effectively provided helpful feedback during design sessions. As a result, the LHCC led to tailored infographic designs that were more engaging, informative, and comprehensible according to participants. See Fig. 2  for quotes from included articles mapped to each enabler.

Mapping article quotes to LHCC enablers

The most frequently mentioned barrier that hindered the success of LHCC implementation included obtaining adequate funding and resources ( n  = 12). This barrier relates to the ‘Supportive Policy Environment’ component of the LHCC framework. Having adequate funding (i.e. compensation for participants or stakeholders), or needed resources (i.e. technology, supplies, tools, or personnel) to meet LHCC deadlines was deemed essential for specific LHCCs.

Other barriers mentioned in one or two articles included mistrust from the community, achieving effective stakeholder collaboration, a need for flexibility in the research plan, resistance to change, stakeholder burnout, maintaining stakeholder connections, knowledge, and resource dissemination, having limited staff, and time commitment. See Fig.  3  for quotes from included articles mapped to each barrier.

Mapping article quotes to LHCC barriers

Care Improvement Targets involve increased learning through clinician-community links, the use of clinical decision support, patient-centered care and optimizing delivery of health care and community-based resources [ 9 ]. Twenty studies ( n  = 20) reported on care improvement targets. Murray et al. [ 24 ] reported on the ‘Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network’. This network leveraged community-partnerships to transition to an LHCC. The LHCC incorporated a model of co-production of knowledge between families and clinicians that promoted learning of each other’s expertise and values. They provided opportunities to take part in remote and in-person meetings, and participation in workgroups and monthly webinars. The LHCC resulted in growth of enrollment by almost 700 members. Among these studies ( n = 20), enablers and barriers were described in alignment with the Institute of Medicine’s six aims of quality care [ 14 ].

Patient-centered care: Seventeen studies ( n  = 17) involved the patient or family member involvement to improve patient health or patient-centered care (i.e. by consulting patients and implementing their feedback).

Safety: Five studies ( n = 5) reported safety of health care or research practices (i.e. the Kidney Check LHCC could increase the use of culturally safe practices in Indigenous communities) [ 26 ].

Timely: Five studies ( n  = 5) reported that the LHCC has potential to led to more timely access to interventions, services, and resulted in faster decision-making by health care providers, and decreased wait times for patients.

Efficient: It was reported in eleven studies ( n = 11) that the LHCC could lead to greater efficiency (i.e. one study connected individuals who frequently use emergency services for non-urgent conditions to more appropriate care, resulting in fewer 911 calls) [ 18 ].

Effective: Twenty studies ( n = 20) reported on the effectiveness of the LHCC (i.e. one study developed a program that led to increased health knowledge and disease management strategies amongst affected populations) [ 34 ].

Equitable: Seventeen studies ( n = 17) reported on the equity of the LHCC. For example, one LHCC offered free health knowledge or exercise classes to vulnerable populations [ 33 ].

The current review aimed to summarize available evidence on the enablers and barriers of rural LHCC implementation. The review of LHCC studies suggests that LHCC implementation can increase community participation in planning health services and health-related activities. Health-related organizations implemented the LHCC to increase collaboration between community members and stakeholders, integrate community feedback in planning, and increase co-learning to expand knowledge sharing and improve health and services within the community.

Stakeholder engagement and collaboration were crucial enablers to LHCC success. It is unsurprising that stakeholder engagement was identified by multiple authors as active and continuous stakeholder and community engagement is a core component of an LHCC. Osborn & Squires [ 40 ] investigated perspectives on patient engagement using a survey in 11 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. They found that across countries patients who were more engaged with their health services, received greater quality care, and reported more positive views on the health care system. When stakeholders understand the value of the project, their involvement are provided with clear direction, and can interact with their data, they are more likely to be engaged. Also, the importance of stakeholder collaboration in health care is reiterated by Mullins et al [ 9 ] and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Culture Health Framework [ 41 ]. According to this framework, achieving healthy equitable communities involves collaboration from multiple sectors to have the greatest impact on public and community health [ 9 , 41 ]. Methods noted to facilitate collaboration include staying connected through various platforms (i.e. online networks, email or text-message), maintaining this contact on a regular basis, and meeting regularly as a group.

Although funding agencies have recognized the value of the LHS and LHCC models, obtaining adequate funding and resources was the greatest barrier identified in included studies [ 9 ]. Authors emphasized the challenge to receive robust investments from partner organizations and funding agencies to meet project staffing requirements, compensate participants for their time, and to purchase equipment and materials needed for the LHCC. In order to attract investors, it is important to document the benefits of the LHCC and present this information to organizational leaders and stakeholders. Furthermore, developing a feasible plan and demonstrating how you can sustain innovation can be influential for investors. Participant recruitment was also commonly documented as an obstacle. Particular solutions to address this issue have been noted in the included studies, such as participants being invited by a trusted and recognized expert in the field, putting effort into building relationships with participants, collaborating with them to determine clear goals, determine meeting frequency in advance, and have a clear decision-making process.

LHCCs aimed to either increase learning by community members about health topics (i.e. increase health literacy, interest in preventative health care) from experts within the field, researchers or health care providers, or they aimed to increase learning by stakeholders from the community or a particular community group (i.e. consulting midwives on how to retain them).

The current review outlines some overlap in enablers and barriers to urban or larger scale LHCCs. Similar to rural LHCCs, urban LHCCs also identify stakeholder collaboration, inclusion of multi-disciplinary teams, and knowledge sharing as enablers [ 42 , 43 , 44 ]. A lack of knowledge, and competing demands of stakeholders were also identified as barriers to implementation of urban LHCC implementation [ 42 , 43 ]. Enablers specific to urban LHCCs include having access to population health data, access to technology that can analyze large-scale data, and conducting research to make comparisons and pinpoint trends in data [ 42 , 44 , 45 ].

Barriers identified in urban LHCCs included concerns around legal, ethical and policy challenges regarding patient health information and challenges relating to developing technological safeguards to protect the safety and security of patient health information. In addition, language barriers were also identified as a barriers to urban LHCCs [ 43 ]. Differences in enablers and barriers between urban–rural areas are related to the differences between rural–urban communities. For example, urban communities consist of much larger more diverse populations with greater access to patient health data and advanced technology.

Additionally, although having a multidisciplinary team is identified in both rural and urban LHCCs as an enabler, this term is defined differently between the communities. Rural LHCCs face challenges to recruit and retain their workforce. For example, only 8% of physicians in Canada work in rural areas [ 46 , 47 ]. Therefore, rural ‘multidisciplinary teams’ are less likely to include specialists, epidemiologists, data-analysts, health-system leaders or policy-makers compared to urban LHCCs. Further, urban LHCCs place less importance on sustained community engagement. One reason for this may be due to challenges relating to the effort and time required to effectively engage larger populations. The small population size of rural communities may be more practical to engage for longer-periods of time.

Rural populations experience unique challenges compared to their urban counterparts. Rural-areas differ in terms of their geographic location, population size, weather, size of their workforce, and access to financial resources and health care services [ 48 , 49 ]. Rural communities often have a greater proportion of elderly residents with chronic conditions [ 50 ], have limited access to health-information [ 51 ], and health care providers [ 52 ]. Despite these challenges, rural LHCCs provide an opportunity to address rural health needs. Driven by evidence, rural LHCCs place considerable effort into engaging the community in the LHCC implementation process. Shared-decision-making and co-production of knowledge are priorities of rural LHCCs. Due to workforce shortages, health-related education and training for community members appear to be pivotal in LHCC success. As evidenced by the current review, acquiring adequate funding to support LHCC implementation, meaningfully engaging stakeholders, and fostering collaboration are key components of successful rural LHCCs. Furthermore, LHCCs strive to increase health system transparency and accountability of participating entities to make improvements to health care [ 9 ]. By increasing awareness of community health problems, and clinical and financial support, the LHCC has potential to have a positive impact on community health.

The role of the LHCC is to improve the quality and efficiency of health care, therefore the LHCC must not overlook the impact of the social determinants of health (SDOH). Extensive research has emphasized the role of the SDOH on patient and community wellness, despite the quality of health care available [ 53 ]. For example, the United States spends an extensive amount of money on health care but is ranked last compared to other developed nations for a multitude of health outcomes, likely due to a lack of public health and social programs [ 54 ]. Despite the significance of the SDOH on patient health outcomes, the majority of included articles did not report on the SDOH. Future research should investigate the role an LHCC can play in addressing community and patient social risk factors. In addition, there was a lack of studies that focused on specific patient outcomes following LHCC implementation, and the impact of patient outcomes on the success of the LHCC. There is a need for greater research on LHCCs related to patient groups facing certain health diseases and evaluation of the impact of the LHCC on these health outcomes. Also, included studies did not report on the use of pragmatic clinical trials. Future research should investigate the role of clinical trials on LHCCs in rural areas.

Overall, there was repetition of several enablers and barriers mentioned in the included studies (i.e. effectively engaging stakeholders was mentioned in 15 studies and acquiring adequate funding was mentioned in 12 studies). However, there was also variability in barriers and enablers noted by authors mentioned in only one or two articles. For example, having strong leadership was mentioned as an enabler in two articles, and having limited staff was mentioned as a barrier in one article. One explanation for this could be that certain enablers and barriers were very specific to the LHCC being implemented. Therefore, enablers and barriers can vary based on the approach that is taken by implementers. Further, certain LHCCs may not have had one strong leader helping with implementation, and instead used a committee that struggled to make decisions. In this case, a strong leader would not be noted as an enabler. Nevertheless, this variation indicates that there is a lack of knowledge on the enablers and barriers that facilitate LHCC implementation in rural areas and this is an area for future research.

There were several strengths to the current study. First, this study expands on prior research by collecting the most common enablers and barriers that result from LHCC development and informs implementers of the most common obstacles that may be faced. Second, the approach taken to conduct the current review was closely aligned with recommendations [ 55 ]. Third, given the current circumstances of rural medicine and patient engagement, our research team deemed it imperative to conduct a deeper review of how to encourage stakeholders and patients to be involved in a collaborative partnership. This study is the fundamental step to a more thorough environmental scan.

The present study must be considered with limitations in mind. Although a minimum of two researchers and a librarian completed an exhaustive search for articles that met the inclusion criteria, there is a chance that some studies were missed or potentially miscategorized. Additionally, included studies differed across cultural, geographic, sociological, and geo-political boundaries across countries and this may impact the generalizability of our findings in different settings. Searches were limited to those in the English language and published articles. Articles published following the completion of the literature search were not included in this review. Therefore, this review may be subject to publication bias. Further, two studies noted that their findings may have been impacted by selection bias, as despite participation being encouraged in their respective LHCC, some participants did not choose to attend [ 23 , 28 ]. Additionally, Golden et al. [ 28 ] recruited participants based on convenience, subjecting their findings to sampling bias and Gierisch et al. [ 23 ] opted to not record their interviews, acknowledging the potential for introducing social desirability bias and confirmatory bias. Although some articles assessed the effect of the LHCC following using pre- and post-implementation assessments, the chosen metrics varied across the studies and approximately half of included studies did not evaluate the impact of the LHCC. Therefore, the current study lacked a systemic approach and analysis of LHCC outcomes.

Ample evidence has shown that rural areas face poorer health outcomes than urban areas, due to a lack of infrastructure, health care providers, screening and medical equipments, and accessibility. The current study can be particularly useful to health care providers, researchers, health-related organizations, policymakers and leaders living in rural areas who want to reduce this health outcome gap, improve health-knowledge, patient engagement in health services planning, and research in their community. The current review summarizes the available evidence on the enablers and barriers to implementing an LHCC in rural communities and it is useful for anyone looking to implement an LHCC. Our findings highlight a clear lack of studies on rural LHCC implementation, as well as a lack of studies that evaluate the effect of the LHCC post-implementation, preventing the opportunity to conduct a meta-analysis. The LHCC model is relatively new, therefore, this review can increase awareness of the many benefits of this model and help to inform approaches to transition to this model.

The LHCC is built collaboratively on a foundation of meaningful use of health data and empowers health care practitioners and patients in informed decision-making. Despite the number of barriers to implementing an LHCC, all studies that did implement LHCCs reported potential for positive outcomes. Although there are a variety of commentary, and perspective papers on LHCC development, this study adds to existing literature by summarizing the essential enablers and experienced barriers to facilitate LHCC implementation. Taken as a whole, an LHCC can be a potential solution to increase community engagement and collaboration between health care providers, researchers, decision makers and community members, and to mobilize resources in rural areas, and thereby lead to improved health services, health-knowledge, and health outcomes in these regions. Further research is needed on evidence-based approaches to effectively engage communities to be involved with their health care as well as the long-term outcomes of LHCC implementation in rural areas.

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Abbreviations

• Learning health system
• Learning health care community

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The Rural360 team is supported by the use of Memorial University of Newfoundland facilities.

The Rural360 team is funded by the International Grenfell Association and the Mitacs Accelerate Program.

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S.A. helped to determine the research question, objectives, and inclusion and exclusion criteria, provided guidance on article screening, the study design, and data analysis, and contributed to article development and the quality appraisal. J.B. and A.M. completed abstract, and article screening, the quality appraisal, data analysis and interpretation, article writing and table and figure development. J.B. implemented all feedback from the research team to the article. A.M. helped develop the research question and objectives, assisted with the development of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, abstract and article screening, and table, and figure development. A.M. and S.A. provided feedback throughout the course of the project. A.F. conducted the literature search and provided feedback on article screening. C.B. and W.G. provided constructive feedback to the research team, assisted in the development of the research question, provided guidance on the research methods, and feedback on the article and supporting documentation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Asghari, S., Bent, J., Modir, A. et al. Building a learning health care community in rural and remote areas: a systematic review. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 1013 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11194-7

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