Glossary, Definitions, and Sources for More Information

Collaboration: The process of working hand-in-hand with equal partners, cooperatively, to develop a product that is not owned by any single individual. 

Collaborators: People who participate in the process of collaboration. While collaborators' involvement in a process may wax and wane, they must be treated as equals among all collaborators. Making sure collaborators have the same amount of power as the others is crucial to practicing a just form of community engagement.  

Community: The people who live in and are invested in a shared, specific, culturally-designated locality; the people themselves, not just their elected, appointed, or self-appointed leaders. The boundaries of a community are often unclear and change over time and from person to person. For example, when working to increase the funding of local schools, the community may include students, school district employees, and parents but it may also include everyone who lives in the school district since changes to the quality of local education will have rippling effects, from the health of people to the health of the economy and beyond. In the case of a water system, everyone who uses a shared water system may be considered to be in community with one another, even if they would not consider themselves to be members of the same cultural or religious community.

Engagement: Involving those people who would be affected by a project in every step of that project; opening the opportunity for collaboration to the community. Being engaged in your community means taking part in decisions, showing up for meetings, paying attention to other people's situations and doing your part to improve life. When community leaders engage their constituents and neighbors, they can find strong partners and supporters. 

Leverage: To use existing assets to receive something new. There are several different ways that this term can be applied. For example, having grant money from one source can be leveraged to receive another grant from a different source since the second grant provider may be more willing to give money to a project if they know it will enhance an existing project (rather than be the initiating funds for a start-up project). For another example, imagine that instead of grant money, the "asset" is people motivated to make a change. If a sizeable enough group of people were mobilized to attend a city council meeting in support of a certain measure, they may leverage their combined voting power to convince a majority of city council members to vote in favor of the measure.   

Mobilize: To organize people into a group unified by their desire to achieve a goal. This is most effectively done when community members educate and activate one another, creating an exponential growth rate.  

Regional collaboration or partnership, sometimes called regionalization: The collaboration of two or more communities or utilities in the same geographic area, by forming formal or informal partnerships. There is a wide range of regional collaboration types, ranging from informal cooperation, and contractual assistance or contract services, to shared governance and full managerial and/or physical consolidation.

Water burden: The percentage of household income that goes towards drinking water bills and sewage disposal services. A recent study on household water affordability in Kentucky showed that there is large variation in water bills across Kentucky, with the largest bills primarily located in Eastern and Western Kentucky. It also showed that areas with higher water burdens tend to have higher than the average water bills, and that repairing and replacing failing infrastructure - in the short-term at least - drives up water bills.

Sources to help with community engagement:

Community Toolbox - SO much good information! Toolkits on everything from encouraging community involvement to creating communications plans; very detailed and practical how-tos.

Nonprofit Tech for Good has certificate programs, reports, and other information on digital marketing including fundraising and gaining support. 

Sources on how water and wastewater systems work:

These two books are mentioned earlier in this guide in the section What Do You Need to Know About Water and Wastewater Systems? and are excellent sources for learning how water and wastewater systems work.

A Drop of Knowledge: the Non-Operator's Guide to Drinking Water Systems

A Drop of Knowledge: the Non-Operator's Guide to Wastewater Systems

Sources on effects of extreme weather and climate change:

Climate Change and Flooding in Central Appalachia

Tools for climate change, water, and environmental justice: Risk assessment tools for water utilities and communities

Climate Change and Rural Water for Frontline Communities in the Southwest United States

Long-Term Community Resilience Exercise Resource Guide

Here are some other useful sources:

Revitalizing Appalachia: A toolkit for cleanup & community development 

Drinking Water Affordability in Kentucky by Rebecca Shelton, Ricki Draper, and Mary Cromer 

Regional Collaboration for Water + Wastewater Utilities: RCAP Guide to Regionalization

More good sources from Rural Communities Assistance Partnership (RCAP)

To learn more about Participatory Action Research:

Participatory Action Research by Alice McIntyre 

Participatory Action Research (PAR) introduces a set of methods that are ideal for researchers who are committed to co-developing research programs with people rather than for people. The book provides a history of this technique, its various strands, and the underlying tenets that guide most projects. It then draws on two PAR projects that highlight three integral dimensions: the meaning of participation; the way action manifests itself; and the strategies for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information.

Author Alice McIntyre describes the various ways in which PAR is carried out depending on, for example, the issue under investigation, the site of the project, the project participants, people's access to resources, and other related issues. This book is quite scholarly but was very important in understanding the value and method of this type of research.