The City of Rochester is the home for Community Co-Design in southeast Minnesota. We host the guide, train local leaders, and invest in co-design across city work. ByDesign and community partners developed the guide to improve policies, programs, and investments for everyone.
What is Community Co-Design?
Community Co-Design treats lived experience as expertise. It creates meaningful opportunities for community members to share power and influence decisions, not simply provide feedback.
This approach recognizes that equitable co-design is about more than bringing community members into a single project. It requires organizations to examine how decisions are made, understand the systems that shape people's experiences, build relationships and trust, and create conditions for community knowledge to influence both decisions and implementation.
Co-design is not a one-size-fits-all approach, nor is it another box to check. It requires preparation, commitment, honesty about what can be changed, and a willingness to learn, adapt, and share decision-making power.
Guide
The Community Co-Design Guide, Second Edition builds on the first edition, reflects what we have learned through practice, and moves beyond co-design as a project methodology toward a broader practice of building trust, sharing power, cultivating belonging, and changing how decisions are made.
The guide offers practical guidance for organizations and community members interested in using co-design to support equitable and sustainable change. It includes tools to help assess organizational readiness, build relationships, navigate power, integrate systems thinking with community-led insight, and support implementation and follow-through.
Whether you are new to co-design or building on existing practice, we invite you to use this guide as a resource for deeper conversations and, more importantly, meaningful action!
Written by Jess Roberts (ByDesign), Wafa Elkhalifa (Destination Medical Center), and Chao Mwatela (City of Rochester). Hosted by the City of Rochester, MN.
How to Cite: Roberts, J., Elkhalifa, W., & Mwatela, C. (2026). Equitable community co-design: An approach to equitable community engagement and action (2nd ed.) https://media-002-us.cdn.govstack.com/rochestermn-us/media/zs4nvb32/co-design-playbook-2-2026.pdf
Community Co-Design Leadership Training
This free leadership training provides a hands-on introduction to equitable community co-design. Two in-person sessions give participants the experience of being part of a co-design process, including exploring the purpose and principles of co-design and applying them to real projects and opportunities.
Between sessions, participants practice as community researchers and designers, explore potential co-design opportunities with colleagues and community partners, and reflect on what they've learned.
The training is designed for organizational and community leaders, municipal and department leaders, community developers, project and communications professionals, and others working to advance equitable community engagement and decision-making.
Format: Two in-person sessions, 5-hour investment.
Cost: Free
Offered: Annually
Led by: Jess Roberts
Participants will:
- Understand the purpose, principles, and process of community co-design.
- Identify when co-design is, and is not, the right approach for a project.
- Assess the conditions needed to support effective and equitable co-design.
- Build shared language and understanding around co-design.
- Identify potential projects and collaborations where co-design could be applied.
- Develop relationships with others who can provide ongoing learning, support, and coaching.
If you are interested in Community Co-Design Leadership Training, please contact Chao Mwatela at cmwatela@rochestermn.gov.
Community Co-Design Facilitators
Co-design facilitators are trained community members who bring lived experience, community knowledge, relationships, and trust to the co-design process. Their role is not to speak for the community, but to help create the conditions for community members to share their own experiences, questions, insights, and ideas.
Co-design facilitation is grounded in collaboration, curiosity, and shared power. Facilitators ask thoughtful questions at the right time and in ways that encourage participants to feel safe, heard, and valued. They listen deeply, help surface and capture lived experiences, and ensure those experiences meaningfully inform the co-design process and its outcomes.
Effective facilitation honors the expertise that comes from lived experience and recognizes the relationships and trust that community members bring to the work. Facilitators help create a process where community knowledge can shape not only what is designed, but how decisions are made.
In Rochester, MN, we have 19 trained Community Co-Design facilitators from diverse cultural, linguistic and professional backgrounds. If you would like to retain the expertise of a trained facilitator, please contact Chao Mwatela at cmwatela@rochestermn.gov.
Frequently Asked Questions
· How is Community Co-Design different from community Engagement?
Community co-design is a form of community engagement, but it goes further and requires more intentional leadership. Many engagement efforts ask people for input. Co-design shares the decision: the people most affected by an issue, especially those whose voices have often been left out, help understand the problem, shape decisions, and create solutions.
What makes Community Co-Design equitable?
It intentionally addresses power imbalances and creates meaningful opportunities for community members to influence decisions that affect them. This means recognizing lived experience as expertise, removing barriers to participation, compensating community members for their time and contributions, and building relationships grounded in trust and respect. It also means being honest about what can and cannot change, and committing to use what community members share.
How do we know if our organization is ready for Community Co-Design?
Please reference the ‘System & Organizational Readiness’, Chapter 4, of the Community Co-Design Guide.
What if we cannot implement everything the community recommends?
Shared power does not mean every idea can or will be implemented. It means community members and decision-makers work through hard choices together. When community priorities run into real limits, like budgets, rules, or timelines, that tension is a place to start, not a dead end. Working through it together often leads to better solutions than either side would find alone.
Is Co-Design right for every project?
No. Co-design needs time, organizational readiness, openness to shared decision-making, and a real chance for the community to influence the outcome. If those are not in place, another form of engagement may be a better fit. See “When co-design is the right fit” in Chapter 2 of the guide.
Are Co-Designers paid?
Yes. Equitable co-design pays community members for their time and expertise. Chapter 7 of the guide includes guidance on fair, living-wage pay.
