Last winter Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, brought a snowball to the Senate floor.
Turning Ideas into Action
Some challenges are too big to tackle on your own.
That’s why more than 30 front-line health professionals from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities came together to identify regional health and social well-being challenges and opportunities in the context of advancing resource development.
Building on the work of an expert researcher who measures the health benefits and impacts of mine projects and using a self-directed Unconference format, Regional Health Forum participants examined community health through the lens of increased jobs, shift work, skills training, health and social services, volunteerism, camp life, policing and families.
Held in the band gymnasium, the forum represented a groundbreaking demonstration of cross-community collaboration and information sharing. Learning from each other’s challenges and building on successes is an important step in collaborative regional planning around resource development.
“Through this session we learned we all share a common goal. We all want a happy and healthy community."
- Regional Health Forum participant
Debbie Cox facilitating the Regional Health Forum, where 30 front-line health professionals addressed the challenges and opportunities created by large-scale resource projects.
Working with a resource development company, James Laurence Group designed and facilitated the Regional Health Forum as part of a community consultation and engagement strategy. If you have questions or thoughts about this story, send us a note @ info@jameslaurence.com
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Let's talk about Communications and Engagement Consulting
Here's the short version of the long version of what we do. If you have any questions just send us a note...
With a focus on corporate social responsibility, we bring specialized expertise in:
Stakeholder engagement and consultation
Communications and creative services
Social risk and issues management
Regulatory environments
Local participation and development
1. Stakeholder engagement and consultation
Strategy and Design
- Designing and developing strategic, trust-based consultation and engagement programs
- Proactive issues identification and management
- Integrating new technologies and new approaches
Planning and Reporting
- Developing engagement plans and reports for regulators and the public
- Facilitating stakeholder mapping and issues identification
- Designing and producing consultation and engagement events and materials
Implementation
- Producing and facilitating engagement events such as public meetings, open houses, community committees, focus groups, surveys, forums, online engagement
- Managing consultation and engagement through the regulatory process
- Managing engagement for complex and controversial projects
- Developing and maintaining stakeholder data collection and management systems
- Engagement support
We provide comprehensive support services including:
- Communications, media relations, materials design and production and event staffing
- Corporate training/coaching and capacity building
2. Communications and creative services
Strategy
- Developing and managing communications strategies, actions, messages and positioning
- Creating communications plans
Production
- Designing and producing collateral materials including videos, web sites, advertisements, newsletters, diagrams, storyboards, social media posts, and original photographs, fact sheets, newsletters, briefing documents and media releases
Media and Issues Management
- Building professional and productive relationships with reporters
- Designing and producing digital and print media content
- Monitoring and analysing social and traditional media
- Identifying, preparing for and managing challenging issues
Implementation
- Providing timely and accurate information to the public, stakeholders and the media
- Communicating change
- Building organizational capacity and alignment
- Building internal capacity through training and coaching
3. Social risk and issues management
- Providing counsel to senior staff and executive
- Facilitated issues identification and message development workshops with project teams
- Managing media requests and queries
- Supporting critical incidents and crises
- Media training and executive coaching
- Monitoring and analyzing breaking news stories (traditional and social media)
4. Regulatory environments
- Developing communications and consultation plans and reports for regulators
- Coordinating community notifications and public comment periods
- Designing, producing and facilitating public meetings and open houses
- Managing stakeholder databases, public comments, issues tracking and response
- Drafting consultation and communications sections of regulatory documents and applications
- Stakeholder outreach (non-governmental, property holders, social agencies)
- Creating public communication materials
- Supporting socio-economic and community health assessments
5. Local participation and development
- Training, employment and businesses
- Social and economic development
- Housing
WE hope this helps explain what we do. If you've found an area where we could be of service please don't hesitate to contact us.
The folks responsible for communications and engagement are Debbie, Candace, Tony and Blair.
Thank you for your time.
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If you've been involved in a major infrastructure project in the last ten years, chances are you've been asked to consider its social impact. For engineers and technical specialists, this can be a daunting task since many of the rules and the tools you've been trained to rely on simply don't apply.