Community Engagement: Guidelines for Excellence
Download The Community Engagement: Guidelines for Excellence (2026 update)
Would you like to work with your community more to design and implement quality programs? This set of guidelines, first published in 2017, focuses on community wellness and is designed to help environmental educators create inclusive environments that support effective partnerships and collaborations.
The guidelines were developed using a process of critique and consensus, similar to the process used to develop all of the other Guidelines for Excellence publications. The public review process involved gathering input from hundreds of educators, including focused feedback collected from content experts representing a variety of fields (e.g., diversity, community partnership building), a 16-person National Advisory Team, a wide range of stakeholders, and a Professional Learning Community (PLC). Many of the case studies were researched and drafted by members of the Professional Learning Community. Finally, a 25-item toolkit augments the guidelines. Toolkit resources help users dive more deeply into aspects of environmental education and community engagement that may be unfamiliar to some practitioners. The downloadable version was updated in 2026.
Workshop Resources
Are you interested in teaching other educators (preservice and in-service) about working more effectively with communities? We've created a workshop module with step-by-step outlines for designing a virtual and an in-person workshop.
Community Engagement Virtual Workshop Resources
Community Engagement In-Person Workshop Resources
Introductory Video: Community Engagement
Working with Communities
Environmental education strengthens communities. As an educator—whether you work with youth or adults, for an organization or independently—this user-friendly guide will help you create programs that connect environmental learning with community well-being. Working with Communities (2026) was written as a companion, introductory guide to Community Engagement: Guidelines for Excellence (NAAEE 2026).