The Drum Beat 291 - Advocacy

***

What is advocacy, and how might this strategy play a role in communication-centred development initiatives and analysis around the world? This issue of The Drum Beat focuses on development through advocacy as well as the building of advocacy capacity. It examines just a few of the ways advocacy can be used strategically to foster social change.

***

MEANINGS OF ADVOCACY

1. Understanding Advocacy, Social Mobilisation and Communication
by Dick de Jong
"Advocacy is the action of delivering an argument to gain commitment from political and social leaders and to prepare a society for a particular issue. Advocacy involves the selection and organisation of information to create a convincing argument, and its delivery through various interpersonal and media channels. Advocacy includes organising and building alliances across various stakeholders...Increasingly, advocacy is people-based and people-driven." Approaches discussed here include interpersonal meetings, lobbying to influence the policy process, negotiation, and project visits.

2. Call for People-Centered Advocacy
by John Samuel
"Advocacy, at its best, gives a voice to the voiceless. It seeks to empower the marginalised and works to better the world in fundamental ways. However, many think of advocacy only in terms of influence. While gaining access to politicians, or changing the mind of a business leader can be important, this is not the essence of advocacy. To be effective and true, an advocate must...establish a meaningful relationship with the issues and interact with people on a grass-roots level." The author characterises people-centered advocacy as "action which leads to social transformation and increased human rights, not simply a change in policy." He indicates that this action involves resisting, bridging, engaging, strategising, and creating.

3. Refugees: Communication as a Tool for Advocating the Rights of Refugees
by Jean-Marie Vianney Kavumbagu
"Communication can be seen...as a useful advocacy tool through its dual function in the defence and promotion of a person's rights. It is, in fact, by means of mass communication, such as the media and reports by organisations defending human rights, that the cry of alarm can be raised in order to prevent or combat serious violations of refugees' rights. It is also by means of information in those same media and by means of the educational work of organisations in civil society that refugees can learn about their rights, duties and obligations, so that they can make legitimate claims in conformity with the internal laws and regulations of the countries that give them shelter."

4. Global Advocacy for Microbicides: A Call to Action
"Advocacy creates the political will and momentum necessary to propel the scientific enterprise forward - whether through highlighting the urgency of the task at hand, educating those in a position to make a difference, or fomenting political pressure for change. In the case of microbicides, advocacy must extend beyond merely ensuring that a product is produced. It must include research, policy work, and political activism to ensure that the products developed are widely available and correctly and consistently used by individuals at risk of HIV and STDs [sexually transmitted diseases], especially women. This requires focusing advocacy on issues of pricing, accessibility, stigma, gender bias, and women's empowerment..."

5. Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy in the Making of U.S. Communication-Information Policy, 1960-2002
by Milton Mueller, Brenden Kuerbis & Christiane Pagé
A key concept informing this report, which shares the results of research conducted by Syracuse University's Convergence Center project and supported by the Ford Foundation's Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program, is that of citizen collective action: "In a free and democratic society, citizens influence the political process not just by passively voting....They also organize to continuously shape policy and legal outcomes, and to express their opinions to public officials so that the officials will make decisions that reflect their own needs, problems and interests. Most of this lobbying is driven by economic interests....But there are also citizens who organize to promote some concept of the public interest. These groups promote ideas, ideologies, values, policies, laws or regulations that they believe will benefit society as a whole." In short, these groups seek to support and sustain the common good.

6. Strategic Advocacy and Maternal Mortality
by Lynn Freedman
This paper examines the place of women's health concerns in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The author proposes a communication strategy based on human rights and the recognition that health care professions should be held accountable - in a constructive rather than accusatory way - when things do not go well with regard to maternal mortality. What this involves is "developing an effective dynamic of obligation and entitlement between people and their government, and within the complex system of relationships that form the wider health system, both public and private". She also urges women's health advocates to partner with or link to those working in the fields of child health, HIV, and tuberculosis.

BUILDING ADVOCACY CAPACITY

7. Advocacy Tools and Guidelines: Promoting Policy Change
by Sofia Sprechmann & Emily Pelton
"Several advocacy strategies can be used to influence the decisions of policy makers, such as discussing problems directly with them, delivering messages through the media, or strengthening the ability of local organizations to advocate." These guidelines are designed to teach programme managers about the concept of advocacy and to explore how it can help strengthen capacity in programming. Available in 3 languages, this book provides step-by-step instructions for planning advocacy initiatives, as well as advice for successful implementation.

8. Certificate in Advocacy and Networking
Organised by the Coady International Institute, this 3-week certificate training programme intends to explore advocacy as a political act. Held from Sept. 12-30 2005 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, it is designed to enhance the capacity of civil society to influence decision makers and policy makers by building the constituency for change and mobilising public opinion around issues of common concern. The programme aims to explore the theoretical foundations of advocacy, key elements of advocacy planning, strategies for action, and critical issues in advocacy work today.

9. Advocating for Adolescent Reproductive Health in Sub-Saharan Africa
This publication explores steps for advocating for adolescent reproductive health issues in sub-saharan Africa. It provides examples of advocacy efforts, looking at the strategies and activities of reproductive health advocates in sub-Saharan Africa. These examples aim to provide guidance to new campaigns, stimulate ideas, and generate new contacts among reproductive health advocates from around the region.

10. SAMARPAN - Nepal
Four organisations and their partners are engaged in a 3-year project in Nepal with the aim of strengthening governance at the local level through increased women's participation and increased advocacy skills and capacity of civil society groups. Literacy and gender-awareness training are tools to support the aim of giving marginalised persons a voice to advocate for their own rights and needs in the political sphere. Training on advocacy initiatives focusses on issues such as forestry management policies, social equity, and justice. Male members of village and district development committees participate in awareness-raising sessions on self-governance, which emphasise participatory planning. To launch this process, 210 facilitators were trained in basic advocacy skills; they then trained a further 10,000 people; 8 specialised trainings were conducted for trainees who displayed the skills and capacity to lead community advocacy efforts and to monitor and ensure government accountability.
Contact Popular Gentle popular@carenepal.org OR Rabin Bogati rabin@carenepal.org

***

Pulse Opinions

At the centre of the international development community's response to the Tsunami should have been the direct provision of USD 500 equivalent in local currency straight to each affected person.

***

HOW AND WHY HAS ADVOCACY BEEN USED?

11. Amakhosi's Theatre for Community Action - Zimbabwe

12. Big Lobby - Global

13. Asian People's Charter for HIV/AIDS - Global

14. Minority Community Media Campaign - Western Europe

15. Muslim Alliance for Immunisation Advocacy - Bihar, India

16. MoveOn - United States

For more examples, click here and select the keyword "advocacy".

EVALUATING ADVOCACY AS A COMMUNICATION APPROACH

17. Advocacy for Water, Environmental Sanitation and Hygiene
by Dick de Jong
The report states that a shift is needed so that civil society gets involved and people play a role in water management that helps prevent conflicts among communities and between countries. One problem is that "advocacy for prioritising water, sanitation and hygiene has never reached the grassroots level and has not involved wider civil society. Insufficient links have been made with social movement groups like women's groups, organisations of the urban poor, farmers cooperatives and local NGOs working on environment, against poverty, etc. Advocacy has been mainly directed at the professional and global bureaucracy levels."

18. Using Stories to Prompt Attitude and Behavior Change
by Michael D. Slater
According to Slater, stories can be persuasive in terms of behaviour in ways that other advocacy methods cannot. Research shows that people who are engaged in stories are less resistant to persuasion, i.e., they are less likely to counter-argue claims meant to convince them to adopt a certain belief or behaviour.

19. Reaching, Motivating and Retaining Advocates
by Vinay Bhagat
This article examines trends in Internet-based advocacy. In 2001, 42 million people in the USA used the Internet to research public policy issues; 23 million sent comments to public officials about policy choices; and 13 million participated in an online lobbying campaign. "Advocacy campaigns are 'viral' by nature - advocates generally forward messages to friends."

20. Looking Behind the Internet: Empowering Women for Public Policy Advocacy in Central America
by Juliana Martínez & Katherine Reilly
Research in Costa Rica and Nicaragua has shown that the dominant approach to gender and information and communications technologies (ICTs) mirrors the approach to e-government in which women are viewed as individual recipients and users rather than organised actors. The authors argue that lack of meaningful, relevant, public information makes it hard for women to promote policy changes, as this type of information is required to even make the argument that a policy change is needed. If ICTs are to empower women, they claim, policy formation needs to be considered, as do the interests and agendas of those participating in policymaking.

21. Value of Advocacy in Promoting Social Change: Implementing the New Domestic Violence Act in South Africa
by Shereen Usdin, Nicola Christofides, Lebo Malepe & Aadielah Maker
"This paper describes an advocacy campaign conducted by the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication in partnership with the National Network on Violence against Women, to ensure the effective implementation of...[South Africa's Domestic Violence Act, or] DVA. Lessons from the campaign stress the importance of coalition building to draw on diverse strengths, and the use of a combination of advocacy tools, including lobbying, media advocacy and social mobilisation to achieve campaign goals....Our experience highlights the important role of policy advocates in connecting the multiple streams at play in the policy and legislative arena."

22. Lessons in Leadership: How Young People Change Their Communities and Themselves: An Evaluation of the Youth Leadership for Development Initiative
Conducted by the USA-based Social Policy Research Associates for the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development and funded by the Ford Foundation, this research concerns an effort to explore how young people benefit from involvement in civic activism and to identify new strategies and practices upon which youth development organisations can draw. One finding is that several civic activism practices offer new models for working with young people, including popular education and the identification of personal and civic challenges; hands-on immersion and exposure to history; exploring oppression through "political" and "critical" education; popular youth culture as a medium for political analysis, expression, and identity; and direct community engagement.

***

This issue was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.

***

The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, see our policy.

To subscribe, click here.