Over the last year of establishing my own consultancy I have been giving a lot of thought to my values, my objectives, and more importantly my mission. What is it that I want to achieve? What is my overall goal? What is the mission of Becky Hirst Consulting?

I’m still debating this in my mind but as time goes on I am becoming more and more aware that I have a real passion for finding ways to promote opportunities for the community to be involved in decision making – not just the actively involved community members – but the typically ‘silent majority’, the people in the street who aren’t perhaps actively ‘involved’ in decision making but who actually might have some really valuable contributions to make.

Part of my realization of this mission was driving through Unley, just south of Adelaide yesterday and seeing a fabulously huge banner across 4 lanes of traffic promoting their online community panel. Fab. A far cry from a tiny advert in the back of a newspaper inviting people to a public meeting on a cold dark night in the middle of nowhere…

I’d like to see this more and more. I’d like to think that in 5-10 years time members of the ‘general public’ will be well aware of easy, accessible ways for them to have their say in decision making or problem solving. I’d like to think that in 5-10 years decision makers are receptive and willing to provide transparent, easily accessible ways for the public to get involved.

Academics may disagree with me and would prefer me to take a more conservative, theoretical model of work but in my opinion I think the world of community engagement needs some glitz, glamour and razzmatazz! We need to be thinking big, bold, courageous, exciting, motivating, enticing… We need to make people WANT to be involved!

Better get to work.