Community Engagement Training
- When? Next date: 20 Nov 2025
- Where? Online
- Places available from just £199 per person
- Book online now or, book bespoke
Our community engagement training empowers you to bring communities together, build bridges & forge great relationships. Our professional courses are perfect for charities, public sector & social enterprises.
"'Interactive and positive session'"
Rajani Adam (Shelter)
This new & exciting community engagement training course will give you all the expertise to enthuse, motivate and empower your community into action.
A jam-packed day of radical new ideas, best practice, and experience learning, that will bring your community development to life. You’ll get the chance to look at real-life examples of amazing ways to work and start to develop your own action plan.
Attend our Community Engagement Training and learn:
- Community development & engagement
- Theories behind engagement
- Asset based and co-production approaches
- Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)
- Power, participation and communication within your communities
- Your role – exploring place and power in your work
What you will do
- Experience dynamic exercises and group discussions
- Learn from each other and from the trainer’s experience
- Talk through your own experiences and get feedback
- Explore the current hot topics
- Begin to develop your own community engagement plan
- Come away feeling energised and ready to empower the world.
This is a fast-paced day full of group work and lively debate – you most definitely won’t be staring at PowerPoint all day!
"'Fantastic facilitation and inspiring content'"
Heather Ashworth (Keep Scotland Beautiful)
Who is this course for?
Whether new to community capacity building or wanting some fresh ideas, this is the course for you. The training is relevant for anyone hoping to work closer with communities and improve their stakeholder engagement. It is specifically designed for staff from charities, the public sector, community groups & social enterprises. If you need any more help deciding if this is the course for you, our trainers are happy to speak to you directly – just call!
Subsidised places are available if you are unwaged. Please contact us for more information.
"'A good mix of theory and real experience proved to be very insightful and inspiring'"
Joanna Hemery (Seaton Town Council)
Course resources
Meet the trainer
Maria Franchi
Maria has worked as a community development worker and as a consultant to NGOs, public bodies, co-operatives and activist groups specialising in change-making through non-hierarchical, inclusive, liberatory and participatory approaches for the last 30 years. Maria also has over 25 years of experience as a facilitator and trainer in facilitation, conflict resolution and community development. She is a practitioner of various participatory and conflict resolution approaches including Participatory Learning Appraisal and Reflect-Action. Maria is completing a PhD looking at the specific relational impacts of a universal basic income alongside community organising, in particular the impacts on collective agency of women in the communities.
Maria has worked with campaigning and activist organisations, pioneers in housing and intentional communities, urban communities and with a range of small, medium and large organisations to enable facilitation, participation and collaborative leadership to support people in meeting their needs and goals. Maria uses a range of experiential tools and methods to bring clarity and consensus to live issues.
She is a member of the international Association of Facilitators, Rhizome Cooperative- a coop specialising in conflict resolution, consensus building and facilitation of contentious issues and ICA:UK.
Maria has a Bed (Hons), Masters in Sociology focused on ‘Political Activism and New Social Movements'. She is currently studying at UBI and participatory methods for her PhD.
Book your place today
Places are available on these public courses. You can book your place immediately with a secure payment by credit or debit card. Alternatively, we can send you an invoice.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch before booking.
20 November 2025 - 10:00am to 3:00pm • Zoom webinar, Online
Any questions? Want to know more?
We’re always happy to answer any questions about our course. Drop us a line on training@talkaction.org or call us on 0203 488 7010.