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Appendix D. Best Practices for Community Collaboration and Sustainability Planning Community engagement is an invaluable resource to climate action planning, building the social cohesion and resilience needed to adapt and mitigate to climate change impacts. San Mateo County Health Policy and Planning (HPP) supports meaningful, transparent, and inclusive public participation of residents that are most impacted by the decisions at stake in planning and policy processes. Community is central to the process to: • Learn about the issues we are trying to address • Share power and resources • Build community ownership of the issues • Do "with" versus doing "for" • Honor community residents' knowledge and experience • Inform solutions, implementation, and evaluation • Meet the community where they are The most effective plans are those that create a transparent process and collaborate with community from the beginning, thus providing residents with the opportunity to create ownership of and interest in the plans and issues at hand. There is a spectrum of community engagement processes with increasing levels of public influence on decision-making processes, beginning with informing the public of decisions and issues on one end of the spectrum and collaborating and empowering community members to co -design and decide for themselves at the other end.72 Some California cities have engaged in effective public collaboration and empowerment practices in their planning process by sharing their decision-making power. The table below highlights jurisdictions with model planning practices that went beyond informing the public and collaborated with and empowered the public. Building strong sustainability planning comes down to building strong narratives internally and externally, while establishing transformative collaboration processes .71, 74 D.1 Health Policy and Planning Recommended Best Practices for Community Engagement The following recommendations incorporate best practices for inclusive and intentional engagement, transparency and clear communication, community empowerment, and program measurement. Inclusive & Intentional Engagement • Work through existing networks of community-based and faith -based organizations that serve and organize in diverse cultural communities to identify community leaders to work with. • Host a "meet and greet" with community organizations and advocacy groups to build connections across sectors and develop partnerships. • Engage community members with humility and by meeting people where they are: do not expect all community members to engage at the same level, acknowledge the many forms of community member knowledge, and use accessible and non-technical language (not planning jargon). • Attend community meetings and cultural events as a participant. Listen to what issues are discussed and how they are talked about. Be sensitive to and aware of potential power dynamics due to race, ethnicity, citizenship, class, or gender differences. City of Redwood City Climate Action Plan 87