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Steps To Achieve Peace: A Center For Global Peace Toolkit

The 5-step process to effective advocacy outlined in the document is: 1) Define the issue and why it matters to you personally in 1-2 sentences. 2) Identify your target audiences in order of importance and why they should care. 3) Frame your key messages as a problem statement, relevance, policy proposal, and call to action. 4) Develop a plan to communicate your messages through various tools and link them to current events. 5) Evaluate your efforts and identify lessons learned to improve future advocacy work.

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67 views

Steps To Achieve Peace: A Center For Global Peace Toolkit

The 5-step process to effective advocacy outlined in the document is: 1) Define the issue and why it matters to you personally in 1-2 sentences. 2) Identify your target audiences in order of importance and why they should care. 3) Frame your key messages as a problem statement, relevance, policy proposal, and call to action. 4) Develop a plan to communicate your messages through various tools and link them to current events. 5) Evaluate your efforts and identify lessons learned to improve future advocacy work.

Uploaded by

Kandarp Desai
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Steps to achieve peace : A Center for Global Peace Toolkit

5 STEPS TO ADVOCACY
The toolkit provides a clear and succinct explanation of how to conduct public advocacy. Advocacy is a process to bring about change in the policies, laws and practices of influential individuals, groups and institutions. It involves many people and/or organizations working together toward a shared vision of change. Advocacy work takes many shapes and serves many purposes. It is possible to advocate for ourselves or for other people. The timeline for advocacy varies, but most advocacy strategies involve both long-term and short-term thinking.. Some of the most powerful advocacy methods are led by the people affected by the problem or issue, or directly involve them. It is very important to receive the permission of the people affected by the problem if we use methods that do not directly involve them in the advocacy work. Sometimes advocacy work is forced upon us the problem or issue is already there, and we use advocacy to reduce the problem. This is reactive advocacy. At other times it is possible to plan for the future, to set the agenda and use advocacy to create a positive environment or prevent a problem before it happens. This is proactive advocacy. The purpose of advocacy is to: Educate ourselves and others about an issue or problem that needs to be addressed. Change attitudes: address specific misconceptions about a problem, including that it is intractable. Influence law-makers so that their new laws and changes to existing laws reflect greater awareness of the issues you raise. Support legal and social change advocates who are campaigning for new laws and enforcement of existing laws that address your concerns. Address policy-makers so that their agenda includes your issues. Influence the media so that it draws more attention to your concerns. Pressure public officials for enforcement of laws and policies addressing your concerns. Develop coalitions and networks to work together to achieve shared goals. VI. DEFINE ISSUE, PLUS DELINEATE YOUR INTEREST IN IT Start by isolating and defining the issue you wish to address most. Questions to Ask: What is the problem? Ask yourself: who does what to whom? How are you affected? For how long and with what impact? What are the possible causes of the situation you wish to change? Consider as many perspectives as you can. For example: Laws? Attitudes? Social traditions? Religion?

Government? What can be done to improve the situation? What kind of change would YOU want to make? What differentiates you from others with respect to this problem, and your initial proposed solution? Desired output: A one sentence description of the problem you wish to address. A one sentence explanation as to why this problem matters to you. II. IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE Your advocacy strategy depends on who you want to reach. Questions to Ask: Who do you wish to reach with your message about the problem you have identified? What are your initial impressions? 4 Who is the person, group or organization that has the power to make the change being requested? Who is the person, group or organization that has the power to influence the person, group or organization that has the power to change being requested? To what extent do you wish to address the media? [See Appendix A, Using the Media). Coalitions? [See Appendix B, Guidelines for Successful Coalition Building] and/or Legislators and policymakers? [See Appendix C, Analyzing Legislation and Public Policy]. Desired output: A list of up to three audiences, with a one sentence description of each arranged in declining order of importance. A discussion as to why each potential audience member should care about the problem you identify.

FRAME YOUR MESSAGE Framing your message requires you to think about what you want to say. Questions to Ask: What are 2-3 of the most important messages that you need to communicate to your audience? How do you want your audience to think about the issue? What frames of reference should they use? Can you tell your audience why they should care about the problem? Desired output: A message with four components: 1. Problem Statement: A description in plain language of the problem. 2. Relevance: Why and how are the problems relevant for the policy makers and the wider society. 3. Policy proposal: This is the suggested solution. 5

4. Proposed action: What your audience should do and how and with whom they should do it.

IV. DEVELOP YOUR PLAN Developing your plan requires you to think about how you want to deliver and use your message. Questions to Ask: In what way should these messages be communicated; what tools are you going to use? Newsletters? Special events? Publicity campaigns? Internet Blogging? Other Internet forms of Communication? To what extent do you want to use your message for AgendaSetting, that is for bringing a new or neglected issue to the attention of the media and to policy makers? Can you link your message to a major news story and/or trigger event? Desired output: The outline and timetable for developing and using your message. V. EVALUATE YOUR PLAN It is important to monitor and keep track of your actions. Record your progress on the action planning forms and celebrate your successes! Questions to Ask: Did your audience act in the manner you had anticipated? If you met your goal: What factors contributed to your success? How can you build on this success? Should you repeat this strategy? If your goal was not met: How could your advocacy be improved? Is your message clear? Did you identify the right audience to which to deliver it? Did your audience receive the message? What are your next steps for action? Desired output: A constructive critique addressing the questions listed above.

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