Advance Family Planning Advocacy Portfolio

"How do you identify the right moment to advance a critical policy? Or build a coalition of supporters? What is the best way to craft compelling arguments for decisionmakers and deliver them at the most opportune time?"

This compendium of best practices and tools in advocacy for family planning (FP) is designed to help advocates identify, plan, carry out, and evaluate activities that focus on the decisionmaker and policy change that have the highest potential for impact in the near term through the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) framework. It outlines steps for refining a strategic vision, identifying and motivating key players, taking action, managing and overcoming setbacks, and monitoring and evaluating success. The simple tools contained in the portfolio are designed to be easily accessible, adaptable for any context (whether at the national, state, or district level), and responsive to the need to measure impact.

This resource is informed by the work of from Advance Family Planning (AFP), an advocacy initiative comprising 20 partner organisations working with civil society leaders, government officials, service providers, and individual FP champions striving to achieve the goal of the FP2020 partnership: to expand FP access and choice to an additional 120 million women and girls by 2020.

The AFP Advocacy Portfolio includes several related documents:

• Advocate for Family Planning, an introduction to AFP's approach.
• Develop a Strategy
  • Part 1: Landscape Assessment: Understand Your Context
  • Part 2: AFP SMART: A Guide to Quick Wins, a 9-step approach to developing a focused, collaborative advocacy strategy
• Implement a Plan
  • Part 1: Monitor for Impact - The Decision Tree
  • Part 2: Evidence-Based Briefs - Make Your Case
• Capture Results, with the AFP Results Cascade: A User's Guide, a monitoring and evaluation tool that provides instructions to track a quick win or series of quick wins to long-term impact, and case study writing guidance
• The AFP SMART Facilitator's Guide, which is intended to help advocates plan, execute, and evaluate an advocacy strategy session.

Also available for a variety of worksheets, such as group exercise worksheets, and PowerPoint presentations that can be modified (in terms of photos, images, and quotes) to fit the country context. Click here and access the right-hand navigation bar.