22

Chapter

Advocacy

Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you will be able to—
zz explain the concept of Advocacy, Behaviour Change Communication
(BCC) and Social mobilisation
zz describe the types and purposes of Advocacy
zz distinguish between Advocacy and Behaviour Change Communication
BCC (IEC)
zz understand knowledge and skills required for careers in Advocacy.

Introduction
You must have seen different types of appeals for help by individuals or groups,
for example financial help for a child’s cancer treatment; rehabilitation of
tsunami affected families or a cause such as ensuring that every child goes
to school, or preventing malnutrition among children and child labour.
You may have also seen the advertisements on television showing persons
suffering from cancer caused by the use of tobaco. There are appeals being
made by famous personalities about immunising children against polio.
Also, most organisations need finances in order to carry out these activities.
This is generally done by appealing and persuading individuals/corporate
394
bodies/ the public in general to donate in cash or kind. Such activities
could be termed ‘advocacy’.

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 For advocacy to be effective, the key is to sensitise people or to influence
people for desired change in behaviour. This is best done by professionals
who apply their persuasion skills in writing and action. Advocacy skills

Unit VI - Communication and Extension

can work wonders in persuading people. Key decision makers are
generally busy and/or may not have complete information on a particular
issue. Advocacy can influence how they think and act on behalf of their
constituents. Let us briefly take a glimpse into the world of advocacy and
communication for behavioural change.

Basic Concepts
What is advocacy? Advocacy is one of the methods of communication
for social change. It consists of planned activity or activities undertaken
by individuals or organisations with a common goal/vision and common
frame of reference to influence policy related to specific cause(s) or issue(s).
The purpose is to create a supportive environment and build consensus
towards realising or actualising the vision. Advocacy can be undertaken at
global, regional and local levels, depending on the issue and the laws which
influence people’s lives and actions. For example, you know that in many
communities in India, a girl is less valued than a boy and some parents
decide to get rid of the female foetus before it is even born. In some areas,
the female newborn is killed by gruesome methods. This must be stopped.
Advocacy is required to build consensus of people about not getting rid of
female foetus and create an environment to discourage such a practice at
local and national levels. Advocacy can be planned to sensitise people to
the issue of not aborting female foetus.

The Purposes of Advocacy can be summed up as—

zz To promote or reinforce a change in policy, legislation,
programme, resource allocation or socio-cultural norms.
zz To win support from influential people and pressure groups for
one’s agenda.

Advocacy is the act of ‘explaining and persuading’ on behalf of a

particular issue, idea, person or animal. An advocate is someone who does
this. Both the terms advocate and advocacy have specialist meanings but
in this field they are different from advocates for legal court procedures.
The advocacy in this context is to argue for social purposes to highlight 395

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 an issue or a problem and generate awareness among all the concerned
people. The people to be persuaded or convinced may vary in each situation
Human Ecology and Family Sciences – Part 2

or context. These may be political leaders, administrators, policy makers

and general public or fellow citizens.

What are the methods used for advocacy?

Method used will depend on the issue, the intensity desired, who is to be
addressed or targetted and the financial resources available for advocacy.
Common methods used are holding rallies, demonstrations, campaigns
through interpersonal and mass media to exert pressure for positive
social change. The need for such advocacy is growing as society becomes
more and more complex and as people from socially and economically
disadvantaged groups increasingly feel the need for someone to support
them to interact with other individuals, organisations and agencies. This
obviously creates a need for professionals who can develop the strategies
for advocacy.
Polio immunisation campaign is conducted by using various methods
such as putting up posters, famous persons making an appeal on TV,
and conducting discussions by experts. A few days before the day of
vaccination, the corporation or government may send people in a vehicle
announcing the date and venue. Health workers may go door to door to
advise mothers to take their young child for polio immunisation, if they
have not already done so.
What are the different types of advocacy generally used? Let us deal with
them briefly.

Types of advocacy are:

zz Issues advocacy aims at creating awareness on selected issues,

creating policy where they are needed and do not exist, reforming
ineffective and harmful policies, as well as improving policy
implementation.
zz Programme advocacy aims at fostering a favourable environment for
implementing programmes.
zz Organisational advocacy aims to enhance the image of the organisation
and publicise/promote its mandate and also to mobilise resources for
the organisation for implementing programmes.
Given below is a success story of ‘Advocacy initiative’.
‘The Right to Information Act’ (RTI) came into being in 2005 as a result
396 of consistent advocacy efforts by social activists and NGO who worked

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 closely at the grass root level. Why did they advocate for RTI? They felt the
dire need for the right of citizens of this country to access information that
they require and pertains to them. They had witnessed the high handed

Unit VI - Communication and Extension

attitude of the administrators while dealing with people in villages and
slums. Daily wage labourers were asked to sign or give thumb impressions
on the amount which was much higher than what they were actually paid
for working on construction sites for some Government programmes.
Similarly, ration shops were closed without informing people about the
reason and they were supplied lesser quantities of ration than were due to
them and that too of substandard quality.
What is RTI? The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) is a law enacted
by the Parliament of India “to provide for setting out the practical regime
of right to information for citizens.” The Act applies to all States and
Union Territories of India. Under the provisions of the Act, any citizen
may request information from a ‘public authority’ (a body of Government
or ‘instrumentality of State’) which is
required to reply expeditiously or within Activity 1
thirty days. The Act also requires every
public authority to computerise their Discuss with examples
records for wide dissemination and to any one type of advocacy
proactively publish certain categories initiatives.
of information so that the citizens need
minimum recourse to request for information formally.
Besides advocacy, there are other ways of changing human behaviour.
One such way is: Behaviour Change Communication (BCC). This is
a comparatively new concept, which has evolved from an earlier term
‘Information, Education and Communication’ or ‘IEC’. Behaviour Change
Communication or BCC is used to bring about change in human practices
and behaviour, generally through communication interventions.
What does it involve? It involves the process of understanding people’s
situations and responding to the concerns by developing appropriate
strategies. Communication processes and media channels are used
to persuade people through increasing their knowledge, changing
their attitudes, perceptions and thereby changing their practices and
behaviour. An example is use of BCC by health experts nationally for
changing practices and using preventive measures to safeguard against
tuberculosis and HIV infection. Messages about safeguarding against
these two deadly diseases are widely propagated through mass media and
reinforced through personal interactions such as counselling, training
or workshops etc. to influence the masses and facilitate change in their
behaviour/practices which increase risk of contracting HIV infection, or
spreading tuberculosis. 397

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 You may think that advocacy and IEC/BCC are essentially the same. If
you look closely at Table 22.1 you will find the important points which can
Human Ecology and Family Sciences – Part 2

help you distinguish between the two.

Table 22.1: Differences between IEC/BCC and Advocacy

Criteria IEC/BCC Advocacy

Objectives Seeks to change individual Seeks to change laws and

knowledge, attitudes and behaviour policies to improve the enabling
leading to change in beliefs, values environment
and socio-cultural norms of a
community

Output Change in behaviour of individual Change in a specific law, policy

community members or programme

Target groups Individual, community and family Policy makers/officials, opinion

members leaders/ influential members of
society, legislators

Orientation Individual change, leading to Public policy-oriented

community action

Risk taking Individuals can opt out at any Greater degree of risk taking
stage, hence risk is not high when controversial issues are
undertaken

Focus Focus on individual(s) internalising Emphasis on networking and

the concepts for better coalition building to broaden
understanding and change the base of support

Social Mobilisation

Social Mobilisation is a process to engage people’s participation in

achieving a specific development goal through self-reliant efforts by
mobilising necessary resources and disseminating information to targeted
audiences. To put in simple words, organising resources and people
for betterment of society is social mobilisation. Social mobilisation and
effective communication are essential for achieving the objectives for which
advocacy is undertaken. Advocacy helps the process of Social Mobilisation.
Let us briefly take a look at what is social mobilisation.
zz Social mobilisation is an approach and tool that enables people
to organise for collective action by pooling resources and building
solidarity required to resolve common problems and work towards
398 community advancement.

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 zz It is an empowering process enabling people to organise their own
democratically self-governing groups or community organisations
that help them initiate and control their personal and community

Unit VI - Communication and Extension

development, as opposed to mere participation in an initiative
designed by the government or external organisation.
zz Effective social mobilisation goes beyond community organisations,
harnessing the potential and efforts of government, non-governmental
sector and citizens to work towards sustainable social, economic and
political development.

Case study
A diagrammatic presentation of an Advocacy attempt in the field
of sanitation in Bangladesh is presented here. The links between
advocacy, social mobilisation and communication are shown with
the example from an eight-year sanitation programme in Bangladesh.
Communication planning for advocacy was used for the sanitation
programme that the Government of Bangladesh implemented from
1993 to 1998 with UNICEF and Danish and Swiss support.

Programme
Communication-
behaviour change
th M Tub
al rs ec ew
ha e
He rke Social ni ll
o cs
W Mobilisation
s -Alliance
ol building De Civ
ho Fo fen il
Sc rc se
es
Advocacy
Folk M
ield

(political/
Religio
Staff

social)
NGO F

Leade
NGO

edia
Leaders
Don N

us
rs
U
ors/

ip h
Co

pp ial
Pr ctor ons

Su ister -
Se rati

r
iva /

ort
rpo

Mi Inte

Administration
te

ion
Su etin
Me

vis
pp gs

A s/
Ent rtists/ vice
le
ort

Ser ubs
Te

erta
iner C l
s

P
Aw ublic io
are Rad
nes
s

(Source: Dick de Jong. 2003. Advocacy for Water, Environmental Sanitation and
Hygiene. Thematic Overview Paper. IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre) 399
http://www.irc.nl/themes/communication/cases/bangladesh.html

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 Knowledge and Skills required
Human Ecology and Family Sciences – Part 2

Professional qualifications for advocacy require education, an understanding

of advocacy and experience of writing reports. The professionals should
be able to research, assimilate information and should be sensitive to
people’s needs. Besides this an ability to form public opinion in favour
of the issue about which they are taking a stand, would be an important
asset. The advocates for RTI created a large group of informed citizens,
brought this issue to limelight through mass media and exerted pressure
on political leadership and policy makers. Other examples are campaigns
to save animals from cruelty, save tigers, donating eyes and organs, that
are strongly and effectively advocated ideas. Persons intending to work in
this field should develop the following skills:
Persuasive techniques are the arguments and attempts to influence the
target audience to support the issue. Most often the following two methods
are employed.
Lobbying is the process of achieving public policy goals through the
selected application of political pressure. It is most effective when there is
need for something specific from the legislative system, such as a law to
legalise abortion.
Media relations include use of mass media like radio, television,
newspaper, magazines, journals, community newsletters. Suggested
formats for media include, press releases, press conferences, fact sheets,
press kits, guest editorials, letter to the editor, appearing on radio and
television, pictures or graphic illustrations, buying space or time on radio,
newspaper.

Activity 2
zz Select any two issues for which you would like to design an
Advocacy campaign.
zz What methods and media will you use for your campaign?
Describe briefly.

Scope
The scope of advocacy has grown tremendously with time. Today, people
with these skills are required in all sectors. Government departments need
them for promoting various programmes and projects. International and
400 National Agencies working in the development sector need people with

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 such expertise to implement their projects and generate mass awareness.
Corporate social responsibility initiatives have become successful only
because the right set of networks and persuasive groups are mobilised

Unit VI - Communication and Extension

by people with expertise in advocacy. Non-government organisations
generally require them for fund raising and project writing to seek support
network. These days advertising agencies and marketing management for
companies also hire their services to create goodwill and to build more of
the grassroots perspective(s) into campaigns, for example, Dettol’s ‘Banega
Swachh Aur Swasth India’.

Key Terms
Advocacy, behaviour change communication, social mobilisation, lobbying,
information, education and communication or IEC.

Review Questions
1. What is Advocacy? What are the types of advocacies?
2. Describe the skills required for advocacy.
3. How does Advocacy differ from IEC/BCC?

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