Zimbabwe now has a powerful new tool for community engagement and transformation. Aptly titled “Promoting Successful and Sustainable Community Dialogue Outcomes,” this toolkit was developed as a practical, user-friendly guide that focuses on producing successful community dialogue outcomes.
Drawing on two years of research conducted across all ten provinces in partnership with leading community organizations, it offers tested strategies for strengthening community dialogues that are tailored to Zimbabwe’s unique context.
What’s Inside: A Roadmap for Transformation
The toolkit’s strength lays in its practical specificity. It begins with raising foundational questions that many dialogue initiatives ordinarily skip i.e. How do you truly understand a community before convening dialogue? How do you identify the real issues that matter to people, not just the ones that seem obvious from the outside?
The guide breaks down dialogue into digestible components. It explains three main types of dialogue that include consultation, mediation, and negotiation and specifies when to use each type of dialogue. It goes on to outline different discussion formats, such as round table discussions that ensure equal participation; and town hall meetings that enable broader community engagement; to open discussions that allow new issues to emerge organically.
The toolkit provides a detailed mapping of Zimbabwe’s governance structures, offering a clear guide for engaging all stakeholders from village heads to members of parliament. It serves as a practical roadmap that identifies who should be involved and outlines how to effectively bring them to the table. The mapping of governance structures also enables dialogue practitioners to identify dialogue enablers or spoilers, whilst identifying potential solution bearers to a specific dialogue issue.
The toolkit also offers a comprehensive framework which can be used to convene a community dialogue. The framework covers the entire dialogue process from planning and execution to post-dialogue activities.
Addressing Real Challenges
An important feature of the toolkit is its focus on confronting barriers to effective dialogue that often derail dialogue initiatives. It provides a risk matrix approach for identifying potential challenges such as from low attendance, logistical problems and conflicts among participants. Moreover, it offers specific mitigation strategies and identifies which stakeholder should be responsible for addressing each risk.
The toolkit recognizes that dialogue success isn’t measured by how well a single meeting goes, but by whether communities develop the capacity for ongoing conversation and collaborative problem-solving. It highlights “dialogue champions” i.e. community members who become catalysts for sustained engagement beyond any single convening within the community.
Building Sustainable Impact
The most innovative aspect of the toolkit is its focus on long-term sustainability of community engagement. It provides clear guidance on transferring responsibility from convenors to implementers, on maintaining momentum between dialogues, and on building the accountability mechanisms that ensure agreed-upon actions actually take place or are implemented.
The toolkit emphasises that communities must own and drive their own agendas, instead of simply participating in processes designed by others for their benefit. This isn’t just about ownership, it’s about building the local capacity that makes dialogue a resource for addressing future challenges within that community.
The economic implications are significant. Communities with strong dialogue traditions are better positioned to identify development opportunities, manage resources sustainably, and build the social cohesion that attracts investment and support long-term growth.
A Call to Action
The toolkit is now available, but its impact depends entirely on the commitment and actions of dialogue practitioners who use it. Accordingly, a call to action is extended to all key stakeholders to embrace their roles in fostering meaningful and inclusive dialogue, within communities across Zimbabwe.
Traditional leaders are called to embrace their role as conveners of meaningful dialogue and use their influence to effect meaningful change on community issues. Government representatives at all levels from ward councillors to parliamentarians to line ministries are called upon, not only to create enabling environments, but to actively lead truly inclusive dialogue across social, political, and economic spheres.
Both local and national government representatives should embrace the voice of the people in shaping the Zimbabwe that all aspire to build using a bottom-up approach that harnesses the wisdom and energy of all Zimbabweans. The bottom up approach to dialogue ensures that community voices bringing solutions are amplified at national level.
Civil society organizations and community based organisations are encouraged to invest in building their dialogue facilitation skills and to support long-term dialogue processes that bridge gaps between communities and national institutions and stakeholders.
Most importantly, ordinary Zimbabweans are reminded of the power of dialogue, which is deeply rooted and inherent in their culture. This is not a foreign concept imported from elsewhere, dialogue is a part of the Zimbabwean national identity. Citizens are called to reclaim and lead the dialogue space, shaping a transformative national narrative that reflects their voices, aspirations, and agency.
Dialogue at its very core should be inclusive, comprehensive and progressive. It is not an activity for the elite, but must be used as a shared tool anchored in community experience. Every community holds the power to lead transformative conversations
Evidence from years of research is clear: when communities have the right tools and support, dialogue not only resolves immediate issues but also builds the social foundation for sustained development and peace. The toolkit provides the roadmap; the next step depends on all stakeholders.
The toolkit was created in partnership with organisations deeply embedded in community work across the country, including the Institute for Local Governance, Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust, Youth in Peacebuilding Initiative Trust, Community Youth In Development Trust, Zimbabwe Alliance for Community Radio Stations and Zimbabwe Women Against Corruption Trust. It is based on findings from the IFIT report : Promoting Bottom Up Dialogue: A Study of Community- Level Dialogue Experiences in Zimbabwe