Pamela Bourke, a researcher at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland, led a workshop on community dialogue and engagement, which was attended by Chilean alumni of the University of Queensland (UQ) and also some members of the SMI-ICE-Chile team.
With over thirty years of experience working locally and globally in diverse development and community engagement sectors as a consultant, manager, educator and trainer, Pamela Bourke is an authority on how to approach community dialogue and engagement, a central aspect of sustainability in any industry.
She is currently a researcher at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at The University of Queensland, and has extensive experience in community engagement in mining projects in Australia, Africa and Latin America. She has also transmitted her knowledge in Chile, as a professor of the Certificate on Dialogue and Community Engagement at PUC.
Challenges in communities are often complex and require multiple sectors to work together to achieve sustainable results. Pamela Bourke has excelled in her ability to deliver innovative solutions that facilitate collaborative relationships between communities, government and business for the benefit of all parties involved.
In the workshop at SMI-ICE-Chile, Pam spoke about the importance for professionals working in community dialogue to learn to place themselves in new engagement frameworks, with active, genuine and respectful listening. «Dialogue is a professional discipline that is learned and developed, first and foremost, by setting aside one’s own perspective and seeing through the eyes of others,» she explained. «You need to build bonds and relationships that focus on each other, actively listening and using each other’s language.»
After her presentation, some attendees asked her how to apply this learning in competitive and polarized environments, where time pressures and outcomes do not always fit the needs of such community dialogue. Her response was her full confidence in the benefits of professional dialogue.
Jennifer Garcia spoke on behalf of the Chilean UQ alumni, expressing appreciation for this meeting. «As alumni of The University of Queensland, we are committed to furthering and bringing to life the university’s motto: ‘Create change’, she said. «After completing graduate studies at UQ and coming from a country with huge inequalities, we are challenged to ask ourselves how we can use what we learned to build a better society… For this very reason, it is a privilege to listen to Pamela Bourke.»
