Discovering Community Priorities Through Digital Communication

MLA Gordon Hogg and the Surrey-White Rock Constituency Association wanted to learn which high-impact initiatives could make the community more “caring, resilient and connected.” They chose the Ethelo team to help them facilitate a focus group with residents and community leaders to enable meaningful collaboration and identify projects that would get broad support.

The Ethelo team facilitated a focus group of nearly 50 people from the community with the goal of identifying a range of issues they felt were essential to the health of Surrey-White Rock. After gathering together in small groups for a discussion on the topic, participants agreed on several issues and options they could collaborate on as a group.

Community-driven priority setting

After the meeting, the Ethelo team consolidated the results and worked with the Constituency Association to draft background information and organize the 21 proposed initiatives into eight different focus areas. They entered the data into the Ethelo platform, and the original participants weighed in again on the initiatives by using Ethelo to score them. The team then opened the engagement to public participation and promoted it for two months to encourage residents to participate. 

More than 40 people participated in the engagement and shared over 100 comments. The Ethelo algorithm automatically created a shortlist of the top five proposals participants submitted. The constituency association used the data when setting priorities for their efforts in government on behalf of the community.