Building Authentic Community Partnerships: Practical How-Tos from the Camden Coalition

It is vital for people with lived experience to play an active role in shaping the systems that impact their communities. Increasingly, organizations are recognizing the value of partnering with consumers and community members, but often face uncertainties on how to operationalize authentic community engagement in their work. Based on the Camden Coalition's experience engaging with consumers through initiatives like the Community Advisory Committee, COVID Community Ambassadors, National Consumer Scholars, and Amplify: A consumer voices bureau, members of the Camden Coalition's Community Engagement team will share practical strategies around the "how to" questions of building authentic and mutually beneficial partnerships with consumer. This will include discussions of how to identify and recruit consumers, caregivers, and community members as partners; practices of empowering story sharing; how to prepare consumers AND organizational staff for meaningful work together; how to avoid tokenization of consumer partners; and considerations for equitable compensation of consumer partners.