Homeground: When Data Finds You
August 6, 2025
The first step in meaningful community engagement
Having worked at the intersection of community and technology for nearly 16 years across Eastern Africa and beyond, we can say there are few things more important than good community relations. Considering this connection between community and technology, we like to think that building and deploying tech is only 10% of the effort; the other 90% is everything else. Recruiting the right people can make or break a project, and we’d like to share a few lessons below based on my own observations throughout the years.
Why is recruiting the right people for the job so important? We know this is self-evident to everyone reading right now (it’s like saying the grass is green), but in community development, establishing the right connections and good relations really is everything.
Recruiting participants for community-based projects is not just a logistical task; it is the foundation for success. This is the moment when trust and ownership are either established or lost. Recruitment of local participants determines whether the community embraces the initiative or rejects it.
It all starts with community engagement; there’s no way around it. Before doing anything else, it is important to sit down with local leaders, community-based groups, and residents to listen, explain, debate, and align expectations. These initial conversations build trust, help clarify goals, and identify local realities that aren’t always understood by outsiders. If done well, community engagement ensures that the project’s parameters and people working on it are not seen as an external imposition but as a process that is co-created with the beneficiaries themselves.
Depending on the project’s goals, participant selection may focus on those with local knowledge and connections that strengthen the work, or it may open more broadly to the wider community. Whatever the approach, the process must be based on clear and transparent guidelines. Being open and honest about how and why people are chosen to work on the project helps reduce perceptions of favoritism or exclusion. This principle applies when working with government officials and local leaders, as it does with community members. That said, there are times when your hands are tied and you have to follow your partners’ recommendations just to keep the peace.
If recruitment targets the wider community, it should, wherever possible, make space for groups that are often underrepresented, such as youth, women, persons with disabilities, and others. In today’s world, jobs are hard to come by, and people on the margins are too often excluded from participation altogether. That’s why it’s important to create opportunities for those who usually don’t have them. Using well-established communication channels, such as local leaders, youth groups, churches, community organizations, WhatsApp groups, and family networks, the message reaches everyone with a chance to participate. Broad representation strengthens the project’s legitimacy in the eyes of the community.
Once participants are on board, it’s important to assess their skills, interests, and comfort levels so they can be matched to roles where they’re most likely to succeed. Some may be better suited for fieldwork, others for dealing with technology, some for community engagement, others for providing security, and so on. Taking the time to understand these strengths ensures people are put in situations where they can contribute meaningfully while building confidence and new skills. At the same time, the project benefits from having the right people in the right place.
During recruitment and when work begins, it’s important to create feedback loops by listening to the community, hearing from many diverse voices, and taking their perspectives seriously. Not every suggestion can be implemented (the project also has its needs and goals), but the initiative should acknowledge what matters most to the community and find compromises. What’s important is that people are heard and respected.
Finally, the privacy of individuals and communities has to be protected at all costs. If we ask people to share data and information about their lives and neighborhoods, it is our responsibility to handle it with care. That means collecting only what is necessary, anonymizing data wherever possible, and making sure communities understand how their information will be used.
In the end, recruitment is more than just filling roles. It’s about building trust, creating opportunity, and setting the stage for meaningful collaboration. Get this first step right, and the rest of the project has a much stronger chance of succeeding.
