Advocacy process

Important steps in the advocacy process include the following:

1. Identify an issue - Identify important gender in education issues around which a policy needs to be developed or changed. This issue should be focused and easily understood.

2. Identify a goal - Identify an advocacy goal (medium- or long-term) and an objective (short-term, specific, measurable) based on the issue. For instance, the goal may be “to ensure that all children have access to learning materials that are free of gender bias.” An objective would be “to review and revise new textbooks that are considered for use in the classroom in the coming school year so that they are free of gender bias.”

3. Relate to policy - Identify and relate the importance of your gender in education issue to the existing policy or programme climate;

4. Audience - Find the key audience to which you need to communicate in order to achieve your objective and goal;

5. Highlight - Decide how to highlight your gender issue and its policy implications in a meaningful, interesting, and non-threatening manner for this audience;

6. Be clear - Create a message or messages that clearly address the needs and interests of both women and men in your target audience (decision makers and the general public);

7. Reach all - Design gender-sensitive communication strategies that reach both women and men (decision makers as well as the general public) with the message(s) and include aspects of appropriate timing, media selection and coverage, as well as language;

8. Involve - Decide how to involve organizations, which share similar equality-seeking goals, in the advocacy, communication, and policy development processes (“broaden your support base”);

9. Create participation - Decide how the participation and contributions of both women and men in these processes will be acknowledged and communicated, so that everyone feels part ownership in achieving the objective and goal above;

10. Resources - If necessary, raise funds and mobilize other resources to support your advocacy campaign;

11. Implement, monitor, evaluate - Implement your advocacy campaign and its community strategy or strategies, then monitor and evaluate it. It is important for you to determine how the campaign will be monitored before it is implemented, as well as how to evaluate or measure results.

Sources: 

“Steps in the Advocacy Process” in Advocacy Building Skills for NGO Leaders. The Centre for Development and Population Activities, Washington D.C., USA, 1999, pp 4-5.

“Exploring and Understanding Gender in Education:  A Qualitative Research Manual for Education Practitioners and Gender Focal Points.”  UNESCO Bangkok, 2005, p.14.