2018 Skills Symposium: Engaging Strong Champions

Building partner capacity to carry your message

Engaging a team or a network of partners to carry your message not only expands your audience, it also strengthens the message itself by adapting it to the context, by the people who know it best. FCM works with Canadian municipalities on international development issues, and has 30 years’ of experience of working together with local champions on programs both overseas and here in Canada: This course will provide you a suite of engagement ideas, tools and evaluative resources that draw on best practices for busy engagement practitioners. Find out how you too can reach out to community partners to create a team of “champions,” and begin to build your own strategy for effective partner engagement.

PLEASE NOTE: International IAP2 members require a code to register. Please contact info@iap2canada.ca to obtain it.

— Cancellation and Substitution policy —

Learning Objectives

During this one-day course, participants will...

• Expand their awareness and reflect on the tangible benefits of working with community partners, using best practices from municipal international engagement;
• Initiate a stakeholder mapping of potential local partners, including recognition of “natural” champions already working on their behalf;
• Incorporate priorities for partner capacity building to the goals and strategies of their own public engagement plans, and
• Develop evaluative measures, milestones and opportunities to improve your own capacity in developing effective working relationships with partners.

Course Overview

Trainer: Carilynn Siemens & Mélanie Amyotte

Carilynn Siemens is an innovative leader in public engagement at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. For the past 10 years, she has managed international programs, and recently seized the opportunity to grow and strengthen the organization’s strategy for engaging Canadians internationally. Her work balances recruitment and program training for Canadians and their communities, as well as monitoring and evaluation for the program overall. Carilynn admits that her first experience delivering training in citizen engagement to government staff in China was “terrifying,” but says now that one of her work’s greatest rewards is to leverage networks and resources to meet shared objectives.

Mélanie Amyotte is a communications professional with more than 20 years’ experience in planning, developing and implementing communications and engagement strategies for a wide range of public- and private-sector clients. As a Communications Advisor for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Mélanie manages communications for five international programs operating in 27 countries and valued at over 100M$. She cut her communications teeth on Parliament Hill, providing communications, strategic engagement and policy support to Members of Parliament, Ministers and the Prime Minister’s Office.

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