This is one of three toolkits commissioned by the Danish Refugee Council’s Diaspora Programme to UNU-MERIT/Maastricht University as part of its Diaspora Dialogue in Europe programming. The Diaspora Programme is implemented by DRC’s Civil Society Engagement Unit. DRC engages civil society actors rooted in and/or with direct ties to the Global South, and therefore considers diaspora transnational civil society actors an integral part of the civil society they work with.

The toolkit series intends to offer practical guidance to diaspora actors in three main areas: (1) Diaspora Fundraising, (2) Community Outreach and (3) Networking and Alliances Building. The aim of this toolkit is to outline the fundamentals of community outreach, which can hopefully be tailored and applied by different diaspora organizations operating in diverse contexts. There is no onesize-fits-all approach to community outreach, as the specific tools need to be consistent with the goal and character of a specific diaspora organization as well as the specific country/regional context that it operates in. The focus of this toolkit is, therefore, on universal principles, demonstrating how community outreach can be approached from a perspective of relationship building with more and diverse members, and introducing methods and tools that can be used by diaspora organizations to achieve this goal. Community outreach takes place on different levels. It is possible to engage people in your actions by reaching out to members of the targeted communities individually or target (formal or informal) networks or organizations to maximize impact.

This Toolkit exclusively focuses on community outreach methods that target individuals while networking and outreach on the organizational level is the main focus of the Toolkit on Networking and Alliances Building. Additionally, although community outreach can be potentially combined with fundraising efforts, as it may indeed increase the resources available to the community in the long run, it does not replace the fundraising strategies (De Vita & Fleming, 2001).

Community outreach activities that aim to raise funds are elaborated upon the  Toolkit on Diaspora Fundraising, therefore not the subject of this piece. Following this introduction, the first section of this toolkit provides a brief discussion of why community outreach matters for diaspora organizations. Section 2  then reviews the key elements to take into consideration while planning and implementing community outreach processes. Section 3  introduces selected methods and tools that can be used by diaspora organizations in their community outreach efforts. Section 4  provides insights on how to evaluate the impact of community outreach activities.

The toolkit is informed by lessons learnt and good practices of diaspora networking and alliances building arising from the discussions within trainings for diaspora actors. The trainings were part of the Danish Refugee Council’s Civil Society and Engagement Unit which aims to support civil society actors in European countries to engage more broadly with the diaspora community in a dialogue on various aspects of what it means to be or become part of a diaspora, its role in the country of residence and towards its country of origin.