The information in this section is based on previous work by Chavis, Lee, and Buchanan (2001). This work was supported, in part, by grants from the Ford Foundation, Mott Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and American Psychological Association.
Communities are continually changing. Migration, demographic shifts, economic change, development, displacement, public policy, natural disasters, and other forces can bring people with different racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, socioeconomic, disability, and other experiences into closer relationship.
Diversity is not new to most communities, nor does demographic change itself create exclusion. The more important question is whether community institutions, organizations, services, public spaces, and decision-making processes allow people with different backgrounds and experiences to participate fully and equitably.
What is an inclusive community?
An inclusive community:
- Respects the dignity, identities, experiences, and contributions of all community members and works to ensure equitable access to resources, opportunities, services, and participation.
- Works to prevent and address discrimination, exclusion, harassment, and other forms of inequity.
- Engages people meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives and communities.
- Values diversity while also recognizing differences in history, access, power, and experience.
- Responds promptly and appropriately to racist and other discriminatory incidents.
- Examines whether policies, programs, institutions, and decision-making practices create unnecessary barriers for particular communities.
- Makes participation accessible through appropriate language access, disability access, transportation, scheduling, childcare, technology, and other supports.
Why is building an inclusive community important?
- Exclusion and injustice based on identity or circumstance can cause harm and limit people's opportunities, participation, safety, and well-being.
- People affected by community decisions should have meaningful opportunities to help shape those decisions.
- Diversity can strengthen community life by bringing together different experiences, relationships, histories, skills, knowledge, cultures, and ideas.
- Inclusive institutions are better able to understand and respond to the people they serve.
- Communities are stronger when residents can participate without being expected to hide, minimize, or abandon important parts of their identities.
Acts of discrimination or hate can reveal problems that communities had not adequately addressed, but inclusion should not begin only after a crisis. Communities can build relationships, equitable systems, and responsive institutions before harm occurs.
When should you build an inclusive community?
An inclusive community can and should be built at any time. Inclusion is an ongoing responsibility rather than a project that begins only after a discriminatory incident.
The need may become especially visible when:
- A discriminatory or hateful incident occurs.
- Residents report exclusion, unequal treatment, or barriers to participation.
- Community demographics are changing.
- Leadership or decision-making bodies do not reflect the communities affected by their decisions.
- Some populations experience poorer access to services, resources, or opportunities.
- Conflict exists among communities or between residents and institutions.
- A new policy, development, institution, or economic change may affect communities differently.
It is useful to understand what is motivating the effort because that motivation may affect:
- The strategies and sequence of activities selected. A community responding to an immediate discriminatory incident may need safety, accountability, communication, or conflict-transformation strategies first. A community beginning proactively may start with assessment, relationship-building, policy review, or public education.
- The resources available. Institutions, foundations, governments, community organizations, businesses, and residents may contribute different kinds of funding, expertise, relationships, space, or staff time.
- The level of support and resistance. Groups and institutions with greater formal power may support, resist, or remain neutral toward proposed changes. Understanding those positions can help communities plan realistically.
- The pace of progress. Progress may occur more quickly when people with decision-making authority and communities directly affected both support the effort.
- The outcomes expected. Raising awareness, changing relationships, improving accessibility, changing policy, redistributing resources, expanding leadership, and reducing disparities are different goals and require different measures of success.
Do your homework and gather information about the community.
Learn who lives, works, studies, owns businesses, uses services, and participates in community life. Consider racial and ethnic identity, language, disability, age, socioeconomic circumstances, religion, migration history, housing status, geography, and other factors relevant to the issue you are addressing.
Also learn about the community's history. How have migration, development, displacement, discrimination, public investment, economic change, housing, transportation, schools, and other institutions shaped present-day conditions?
Sources may include local government and planning agencies, Census data, community assessments, public records, schools, libraries, local media, universities, community organizations, neighborhood groups, businesses, and residents themselves.
Walking, rolling, biking, or traveling through the community can also provide useful information, but observation should not replace conversations with people who live there.
Keep in mind: Community members may associate you with the organization, funder, institution, government agency, or identity group they believe you represent.
Be transparent about who you are, why information is being collected, who is funding the effort, what decisions have already been made, and how community input will be used.
Work with people from different parts of the community, but do not expect a few individuals to represent everyone who shares their identity.
Ask about the characteristics, histories, institutions, and experiences that shape different parts of the community. Avoid treating racial or ethnic identity as the only meaningful difference.
Learn about the social organization of different communities, including formal organizations, informal networks, gathering places, communication channels, mutual-aid systems, institutions, and leaders.
Identify major events and decisions that have affected the community. These might include elections, development projects, closures of major employers, changes in housing costs, natural disasters, public-health emergencies, changes in transportation, school policies, immigration enforcement, environmental hazards, or other events.
Pay attention to whether those events affected different communities in different ways.
Tip: Equitable participation does not necessarily mean collecting the exact same number of interviews from every racial, ethnic, or cultural group.
Instead, develop a sampling and outreach approach that reflects the purpose of the assessment, the size and diversity of different communities, who is most affected by the issue, and whose perspectives have historically been missing.
Use multiple methods – such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, listening sessions, community meetings, observation, and existing data – so that conclusions are not based on one type of participant or one highly visible leader.
Participate respectfully in community events and activities when attendance is welcomed. These events may provide opportunities to learn about community priorities, organizations, histories, and networks.
Do not treat cultural events primarily as opportunities to collect information or recruit people. Be clear about your purpose and respect the event's focus and organizers.
Engage residents, community organizations, and leaders from the beginning.
Do not wait until a plan has already been developed to invite communities that will be affected by it.
Consider establishing a community advisory group, planning committee, resident council, or another structure that brings together people with different experiences and perspectives.
Formal leaders can be valuable participants, but include people without formal titles as well. Young people, renters, people with disabilities, workers, parents and caregivers, residents with lived experience of the issue, small-business owners, multilingual residents, and others may hold knowledge that formal institutions do not.
Be especially attentive to communities that have historically had less access to formal decision-making.
Identify community strengths and assets as well as needs and barriers.
Work with participants to identify entry points and strategies for building an inclusive community.
Ask how different people describe the issue and what they believe is causing it.
When discrimination or exclusion is involved, distinguish among:
- People and communities experiencing harm
- People, organizations, policies, or institutions responsible for the harmful action or condition
- People or institutions with the ability to intervene
- People who may not yet recognize how the issue affects them
Avoid reducing complex situations to fixed categories of “perpetrators,” “victims,” or “bystanders” without examining the actual circumstances.
Some people may be ready to support change immediately, while others may need more information, relationship-building, evidence, accountability, or institutional pressure.
Create equitable opportunities to participate and influence decisions.
Inclusion does not simply mean inviting everyone into the same room.
Consider who has:
- Decision-making authority
- Access to information
- Funding or staff resources
- Time to participate
- Transportation
- Language access
- Disability access
- Childcare
- Technology
- Confidence that their participation will matter
Processes and procedures should help participants contribute meaningfully even when they enter the process with different levels of institutional power.
Provide qualified interpreters, translated materials, captioning, sign-language interpretation, accessible electronic formats, plain-language information, and other communication supports when needed.
Tip: When several concerns have been identified, consider:
- How serious or urgent each concern is
- Who is most affected and how
- What may happen if the concern is not addressed
- Whether the community has the authority, partnerships, resources, and capacity needed to address it
- Whether addressing the concern could reduce significant inequities or remove barriers for people who have been underserved
- What residents and relevant data identify as priorities
A shared goal can help people work together, but a concern should not be prioritized only because it affects the largest number of people. An issue affecting a smaller group may still involve serious harm or inequity.
Create opportunities for people from different communities to identify similarities and differences.
Relationships across differences can help people see one another as individuals rather than as stereotypes or representatives of an entire group.
At the same time, focusing only on shared experiences can hide meaningful differences in history, discrimination, economic conditions, power, language, disability, immigration experience, or access to resources.
Use broad ideas such as “quality of life,” “belonging,” “opportunity,” “healthy community,” or “safe and accessible neighborhoods” as starting points for discussion, and ask participants what those ideas mean to them.
Build in voluntary opportunities for informal conversation, shared meals, community projects, recreation, arts, or other activities that allow relationships to develop naturally.
Community festivals, public art, heritage events, cultural programs, storytelling, and other activities can help residents learn about one another when the communities represented help determine how their traditions and histories are presented.
Help participants understand the conditions that shape different community experiences.
Learning about one another's traditions is valuable, but inclusion also requires attention to structural conditions.
Depending on the issue, those conditions may include:
- Racism and other forms of discrimination
- Housing and land-use policy
- Employment and wages
- Education
- Transportation
- Health care
- Environmental conditions
- Public safety
- Immigration policy
- Disability access
- Political representation
- Access to financial resources
Without attention to these conditions, an inclusion effort may improve relationships while leaving important barriers unchanged.
Identify and build on community assets.
Assets are not limited to cultural traditions or identity.
They may include:
- Residents' knowledge and lived experience
- Community organizations
- Businesses
- Cultural and faith institutions
- Languages
- Artists and cultural workers
- Professional expertise
- Youth leadership
- Older adults' knowledge and relationships
- Mutual-aid networks
- Parks, libraries, schools, and community spaces
- Advocacy and organizing experience
- Community history
- Relationships with public institutions and other communities
Create opportunities for communities to share these assets with one another without reducing people to cultural exhibits or expecting them to provide unpaid education.
Community media, local journalism, podcasts, radio, exhibits, public programs, websites, and other communication channels can help highlight community assets and challenge misinformation.
Identify, address, and transform conflict.
Conflict may arise because people have different priorities, because stereotypes or misinformation shape perceptions, because past harm remains unresolved, or because groups and institutions have unequal access to resources or power.
Cultural difference itself should not be treated as the cause of conflict.
People vary in how they express disagreement for many reasons, including personality, organizational role, previous experiences, language, culture, and power.
Avoid assigning particular conflict styles to whole racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural groups.
The goal is not to eliminate disagreement. It is to create fair processes for discussing disagreement, addressing harm, resolving issues where possible, and working together where shared interests exist.
A skilled facilitator may be useful when conflict is significant.
Select facilitators based on relevant skill, trust, experience, accessibility, language capacity, understanding of the issue, and potential conflicts of interest. Do not assume that a facilitator is more or less neutral simply because of their identity.
Ensure institutional support for inclusion, equity, and justice.
Institutions such as local government, schools, health systems, businesses, media organizations, community organizations, and faith communities can strongly influence whether inclusion efforts succeed.
Their policies, funding, services, facilities, hiring practices, public communication, and decision-making authority can either reduce or reinforce barriers.
Equity involves creating fair access, opportunities, resources, and conditions while recognizing that different people may face different barriers.
Justice involves fair treatment, rights, accountability, and changing conditions or systems that produce or maintain inequity.
Engage institutional leaders where their authority or resources are relevant, but also identify the staff, residents, workers, students, customers, or community members who experience the institution's practices directly.
Ask institutions to identify concrete actions rather than relying only on statements of support.
These might include:
- Policy changes
- Budget commitments
- Accessibility improvements
- Language access
- Changes in hiring or contracting
- Community representation in decision-making
- Improvements to complaint and accountability processes
- Data collection and public reporting
Acknowledge and celebrate successful collective action.
Shared accomplishments can strengthen relationships and show that cooperation produces meaningful results.
Take time to recognize progress, including smaller milestones.
Celebrations may include a shared meal, community event, public recognition, storytelling, an open house, arts activities, or another form chosen by participants.
Make sure recognition reflects the range of people and organizations that contributed, including community members whose work may have been less visible.
Celebration should not replace evaluation. Participants should also examine what remains unfinished and whether some communities experienced the effort differently from others.
Sustain relationships, strategies, and changes at multiple levels.
Building an inclusive community is not a one-time event. Communities, institutions, relationships, and challenges continue to change.
Progress may be uneven. An initiative may succeed in one area while encountering resistance or unintended effects in another.
Sustain the relationships, policies, programs, communication systems, and accountability structures that have been useful.
Create continuing opportunities for cooperation among residents and organizations.
When a successful program or partnership should continue, identify sustainable staffing, funding, leadership, and institutional responsibility rather than relying indefinitely on temporary grants or volunteer labor.
Keep in mind: Inclusive-community efforts are sometimes framed as either/or choices: dialogue or action; assets or needs; race or class; individuals or institutions; relationships or neighborhood improvement.
These approaches often work best together. A comprehensive effort may address relationships, individual behavior, organizational practice, policy, access, resources, and community conditions at the same time.
Establish an accountability group, committee, resident council, or other mechanism to monitor commitments and changes related to inclusion.
Accountability might include:
- Regular public progress reports
- Resident feedback
- Review of participation and leadership
- Evaluation of disparities or barriers
- Tracking institutional commitments
- Public meetings or hearings
- Transparent complaint and response systems
Encourage people who demonstrate commitment to inclusion, equity, accountability, and community participation to take on leadership roles in public institutions, community organizations, businesses, schools, and other settings.
In Summary
Building an inclusive community means creating conditions in which people from different backgrounds and experiences can participate meaningfully, access community resources and opportunities, influence decisions, and be treated with dignity and fairness.
Inclusion requires more than celebrating diversity or inviting people into existing structures. Communities should examine whether those structures themselves create barriers through language, disability access, transportation, scheduling, cost, representation, institutional history, discriminatory practices, or unequal decision-making power.
Effective efforts begin with learning about the community. Gather information from several sources, understand local history, identify formal and informal networks, and include people directly affected by the issues being addressed.
No single leader or organization should be expected to represent an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, disability, socioeconomic, or other community.
Strong inclusion efforts recognize both shared goals and meaningful differences. They build on community assets while also addressing discrimination, institutional barriers, unequal access to resources, and other structural conditions.
Conflict should be expected at times, but cultural difference itself should not be treated as the source of conflict. Fair processes, skilled facilitation, accountability, and attention to power can help communities work through disagreement constructively.
Institutions also have important responsibilities. Statements of support should be connected with concrete policies, resources, accessibility, language access, representation, evaluation, and accountability.
Finally, building an inclusive community is an ongoing process. Relationships, programs, leadership, policies, and community conditions need continued attention and evaluation.
The goal is not simply to create a community in which different groups coexist. It is to create a community in which people can participate fully, maintain meaningful identities, influence the decisions that affect them, and work together to create more equitable conditions.