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This site is designed to be a useful resource for people new to advocacy and for experienced practitioners. Each section details simple and effective strategies and provides links to more detailed or challenging material.
The Toolkit covers both advocacy in the developed and developing world and was developed by ACFID’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee with the assistance of other experienced workers in the development sector.
Please select a topic from the navigation bar for more information about advocacy principles, case studies and a range of other specific topics. A number of general guides to advocacy are listed below.
For the purposes of the Toolkit: Advocacy is organised action designed to achieve changes in policy, practice and attitudes and structural change for greater justice and/or poverty relief. Under this definition Development Education could be considered a particular type of long-range and broad advocacy.
Campaigning is the action of working for advocacy outcomes and a campaign is a set of activities connected to strategic goals intended to achieve these outcomes. In some cases the term campaign is used in a more restricted way to refer to that part of advocacy activities intended to mobilise public support for an issue.
Advocacy has the potential to bring significant and sustainable change for the better. It can empower individuals and communities and generate many more resources for the poor than charitable approaches alone. It can also bring diverse organisations together to work on common issues.
However, if it is poorly managed it can also backfire and hurt the people it was intended to assist by hardening oppression or opposition rather than loosening it, putting individuals at risk or by diverting attention from more effective solutions. Effective advocacy takes specific skills and efforts, commitment, resources, perseverance, wisdom and collaboration.
Further discussion: | | Member Login Login here | | | What is my login/password? These have been distributed through one central contact person at each agency. Contact your agency contact person, or Andrew Gould. |
| Other member-only websites: Development Effectiveness Forum
Member Section
Use the SAME login and password to separately access all three password protected websites. |
| ACFID Advocacy Training Seminar, March 2008 Presentation slides and documents from this seminar are now available on the Development Effectiveness Forum. |
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