What you need to do

For ongoing forms of participation, you may consider setting up your organisation’s own refugee advisory groups, or forums. These will typically be more formal and permanent groups who can be consulted regularly on various issues. They would hold or attend both regular and ad hoc meetings and form a sustainable structure for participation that is suited to larger organisations, or services that are accessed by a large number of refugees. Formal structures and processes are also needed if co-production of services is a key objective of participation. In co-production approaches, refugees are fully empowered as partners in service provision, whether as staff, volunteers, or in bespoke participation roles.

By and large, it is best to consider more than one method of participation as needs and opportunities change over time. The ability to use different methods, depending on the circumstances, will make sure that you always get the best outcomes from participation.

Suggested actions

• Speak to your colleagues or delivery partners and ask them what participation or engagement methods they have used. Try to find out how useful they were and what outcomes they delivered. There is nothing better than learning from the experiences of others, while giving proper consideration to your own needs and circumstances. 
• After reviewing the variety of participation methods or tools that you can choose from, design a specific refugee participation activity that would suit your current service needs: think about the different resources that you will need, including human resources, space, and time. What can that or those methods achieve? How different would outcomes be if you chose a very different participation method?