Leading Through Listening

Shaughnessy Daniels, Great Rivers Greenway Director of Civic Engagement

As an agency dedicated to making the St. Louis region a better place to live, work, and play for all its residents, Great Rivers Greenway is built upon a foundation of civic engagement. Every greenway we build, program we coordinate, and project we undertake is rooted in input and feedback we’ve received from our St. Louis regional community. As Director of Civic Engagement, my responsibility is to provide every member of the community with an opportunity to speak and to be heard at all stages of our process, not just the planning stage. Engaging with our community is embedded in every other step for GRG projects. It is a cyclical process which begins with community input before we develop a plan of what’s possible and then bring it back to the community for feedback. From there it all begins again; engage, plan, present, and revise until we can deliver a finished project that represents the needs and wants of the community balanced with what is possible.

The Importance of Engagement

Just like how any business conducts product research before introducing a new product to consumers, we engage constantly with our community before action is taken to be sure that the spaces we create and services we provide serve the community in a way which delivers a sustainable, tangible, and positive impact. Despite us here at GRG being residents of the region ourselves, the perspectives of community members outside of our day-to-day operations give critical insight into how greenways are being used by the community and the dynamic everyday purposes they serve.

Meeting The Community Where They Are

Civic engagement today is not the same static process it may have once been. Hosting community meetings and sending surveys both continue to play a part in today’s engagement landscape, but a key responsibility of our role is to dynamically engage the community where they are, and in ways that are easy and most meaningful for them. What this means is that in conjunction with those traditional methods mentioned above, our team is out meeting people on the greenways, at pavilions, festival gatherings, or anywhere else our community is congregating to ensure voices are heard. Equitable civic engagement means being accessible to the entire community in ways that make it easy for them to have their voices heard. We are consistently introducing new methods of outreach and forums for feedback.

The COVID pandemic ignited a revolution in how we gather and many of those digital tools it brought forth remain utilized, but they can’t be the only means we rely upon. Methods which are convenient for some can prove preventative for others.

Communities as vibrant and as culturally rich as ours are constantly evolving in how its members gather and communicate both as a whole and as smaller groups within. The GRG engagement team always challenges itself to ensure that its role goes beyond simply listening to the community but also being accessible and actively creating opportunities for the community to share opinions and be heard. We must come to the community so that they in turn can come to us.

Every Voice Deserves a Listening Ear

Our community is an amalgamation of so many different voices with unique experiences, points of view, and ways in which they interact with the greenways. For some, the network provides a safe way to get to their destination without using a car or catching the bus, for others it’s a means to access nature and exercise or decompress. No matter how we use the greenways, we should all be voices and advocates for what happens in our common spaces. Our hope is that the community knows that our engagement opportunities are places for their voices to be heard and their input considered. Too often people feel like a project is happening to them or to a community rather than with them. We hope that people understand that true engagement means your voice matters and that you do have opportunities to share, to be heard, and to be a part of a process; that you don’t have to let processes happen to you.

How Far We’ve Come

When I joined Great Rivers Greenway in early 2018, the agency knew engagement had to drive the work being done, but the team to support that vision hadn’t yet been formalized. I joined as the first dedicated member of an engagement team that has since grown into a dynamic group of devoted specialists. Beyond the engagement team, every part of this agency recognizes engagement as a core value, the ever-growing network of greenways we’re building across the region is meant for the singular purpose of making the St. Louis region a better place to live, work, and play for its residents.

As many of our neighbors know, my door and inbox (sdaniels@grgstl.org) are always open, and I welcome a call or text on my cell at 314-537-7423 to hear how our community interacts with the greenways and how they can be made better.