About

The Global Hive

The Global Hive Toolkit is designed to assist the efforts of public engagement practitioners working in Canada: NGO staff, volunteers, international development workers, teachers, youth, campaigners, activists, artists, policy makers – in short, everyone who works to engage others on global issues.

Public engagement practices evolve over time, and public engagement practitioners are always facing new and different challenges. Global Hive looks to the future of public engagement, and offers tools to help us move forward together in our shared goal of engaging Canadians as we work together to create a more equitable and sustainable world.

Global Hive brings together good practices from public engagement practitioner-experts in seven thematic areas. The material is presented in a few different content formats – from powerful case studies to comprehensive tools to checklists, this toolkit offers a range of practical and reflective tools for public engagement practitioners.

Canadians are hungry to become informed, engaged and active global citizens. Global Hive will help us be more effective as public engagement practitioners as we inspire, support and challenge ourselves and others.

The Knowledge Hubs

The content found within the Global Hive walls was the culmination of months of collaboration and idea generation be dedicated groups of public engagement practitioners and other experts in thematic Knowledge Hubs. The Knowledge Hub processes were carried out in a participatory way and each was facilitated by a provincial or regional council, and each included hand-picked experts from across Canada. The seven thematic Knowledge Hubs included:

• How Change Happens (MCIC)
• Global Education (ACGC)
• Integrating Gender Equality into Public Engagement (AQOCI)
• Monitoring and Evaluation (BCCIC)
• Partnerships and Collaboration for Public Engagement (ACIC)
• Public Engagement Policy (OCIC)
• Youth-Based Public Engagement (SCIC)

Practitioners and experts gathered face-to-face, on the phone or through collaborative web platforms over a period of eight months to analyze past research and resources, to discuss challenges and opportunities for public engagement in their area and to identify good practices for implementing public engagement in the future.

The Inter-Council Network

The Inter-Council Network (ICN) is a dynamic network of provincial and regional member-based Councils for International Cooperation committed to social justice and social change. Rooted in communities across Canada and representing over 400 international cooperation organizations, we are leaders in public engagement at a local and regional level, and are recognized for bringing regional knowledge and priorities to the national level.

Between 2011 and 2014 the ICN implemented a three year research program, Exploring Public Engagement Effectiveness in Canada, with the following objectives:

1. to develop a comprehensive understanding of public engagement for active global citizenship in Canada;
2. to learn and develop capacity about good practices for public engagement;
3. to demonstrate that public engagement is a meaningful and necessary endeavour; and
4. to build relationships and foster collaboration among different actors in the public engagement community.

This research program was made up of three phases. The first phase was intended to gather a holistic understanding of the current state of public engagement by considering the perspectives of the public (national public opinion poll), practitioners (context analysis process) and academics (bibliography). The second phase, which was elaborated above, convened expert practitioners in seven thematic areas through Knowledge Hubs, where existing and emerging knowledge was considered in order to identify and document good practice. Finally, the third phase aims to disseminate our findings to practitioners, supporters and other interested parties through the Global Hive toolkit website, a series of webinars in the month of September on each content area, and national virtual conference, which took place on October 9th 2013.

Read the following documents to better understand the steps that led to the Global Hive:

• ICN Public Engagement Position Paper
• Canadian Engagement on Global Poverty Issues – National Poll
• Context Analysis Summary Report
• Context Analysis Summary Presentation
• ICN Bibliography of Public Engagement Resources on International Development

The ICN is the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation (ACGC), l’Association quebecoise des organismes de cooperation internationale (AQOCI), the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation (ACIC), the British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC), the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation (MCIC), the Northern Council for Global Cooperation (NCGC), the Ontario Council for International Cooperation (OCIC) and the Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation (SCIC).

Acknowledgements

The ICN would like to acknowledge the support and generous contributions of many dedicated individuals and organizations. First for the rich content contained within this website, which was created by a diversity of experts through Knowledge Hubs on the seven thematic areas. Many, many thanks to all of you who contributed your time and ideas. Your dedication to public engagement is truly an inspiration to us all.

There were also countless others who worked at different stages of the project to make the Global Hive website possible. Our amazing Content Manager, Dave Mitchell, took an immense amount of content from multiple sources and envisioned a way to make it fluid, organized and elegant while fostering collaboration throughout this process. We could not have found a better person to lead us through this project and we are immensely grateful.

We would also like to thank Sarah Power, the former ICN National Coordinator, who applied her leadership skills and passion for public engagement to carry this project from beginning to end. Sarah effectively created opportunities for collaboration and idea sharing among the countless individuals who were involved in this process, the result of which is the Global Hive.

To the ICN team of regional coordinators, thank you for using collaboration and innovation to make this project way more successful than we could have even imagined: Annick Des Granges, Bequie Lake, Janelle Frail, Jennifer Muldoon, Diana Coumantarakis, Jennifer Braun, Kirsten Earl McCorrister, Lynn Slobogian and Steffany Salloum.

Thank you to the executive directors of the Provincial and Regional Councils for International Cooperation, who not only participated in the Knowledge Hubs, but whose vision, leadership and constant support were the foundation of this project.

Bilingualism is a huge part of what we do and we have to thank Albert Beaudry and Lauren Ravon for translated the content, as well as Juliette Nicko, Michel Coté and Michael Carty for providing interpretation throughout our process. Thank you also to Sonia Stanger (SCIC) for her behind the scenes work of uploading content and searching for images.

Finally, thank you to Dwayne Hodgson, our learning consultant, who helped us translate the wealth of knowledge contained on this website into a series of webinars and a conference where practitioners gathered to understand, analyse and share their experiences with public engagement.

Program undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canad provided through Global Affairs Canada.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This initiative was undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the development side of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (DFATD)