ADVOCACY : BEYOND MERE INTEREST REPRESENTATION

Advocacy can be defined as the practical use of knowledge for purposes of social changes. These changes can be directed to government policies, laws, procedures or sometimes to ourselves. Advocacy is therefore an act of supporting an issue and persuading the decision makers on how to act in order to support that issue. Advocacy is a process aimed at achieving some specific results, it is not a one way activity.

Advocacy is about motivating and mobilizing the community. It starts with a small group of people who share concerns about a specific problem and are willing to devote time, their expertise and resources available to reach the desired changes.

Advocacy means

• Drawing attention to an important issue and direct decision makers to a solution
• Influencing the decision making at all levels
• Mobilizing members of the community
• Developing accountability and transparency of governments and public services/institutions

Advocacy can be divided in three types of activities including:

1. Representation: to speak on their own or others’ name in public
2. Mobilization: to encourage others to speak in public with you
3. Empowerment: to let others know that they have the right to speak in public and have the right to be heard.

Policy Advocacy

Policy advocacy can be characterized as follows

• a strategy to affect policy change or action - an advocacy effort or campaign is a structured and sequenced plan of action with the purpose to start, direct, or prevent a specific policy change.
• a primary audience of decision makers - the ultimate target of any advocacy effort is to influence those who hold decision-making power. In some cases, advocates can speak directly to these people in their advocacy efforts; in other cases, they need to put pressure on these people by addressing secondary audiences (for example, their advisors, the media, the public).
• a deliberate process of persuasive communication- in all activities and communication tools, advocates are trying to get the target audiences to understand, be convinced, and take ownership of the ideas presented. Ultimately, they should feel the urgency to take action based on the arguments presented.
• a process that normally requires the building of momentum and support behind the proposed policy idea or recommendation. Trying to make a change in public policy is usually a relatively slow process as changing attitudes and positions requires ongoing engagement, discussion, argument, and negotiation.
• conducted by groups of organised citizens- normally advocacy efforts are carried out by organizations, associations, or coalitions represent the interests or positions of certain populations, but an individual may, of course, spearhead the effort.

In short, Policy Advocacy is the process of negotiating and mediating a dialogue through which influential networks, opinion leaders, and ultimately, decision-makers take ownership of your ideas, evidence, and proposals, and subsequently act upon them. In essence, this implies preparing decision makers and opinion leaders for the next policy window or even pushing them to open one in order to take action. If advocates do their job well, decision makers will take the ideas that have been put forward and make changes to the current policy approach in line with that thinking.

Your policy advocacy campaign has been successful when politicians present your ideas, analysis, and proposals as their own and do not mention you! All those in the policy network close to the decision will know where the idea came from and you will, in fact, be engaged to do further work as your reputation is enhanced. From the practical political position, decision makers have to present policy changes as their own, as they are the ones taking a risk on actually delivering the policy change, have to sell the ideas to build the needed support for their proposal, and ultimately will pay the price if it fails.