ESSENTIAL STEPS FOR ADVOCACY

1
ESSENTIAL STEPS FOR ADVOCACY

• Based on presentations by Renu Khanna
• And Abhijit Das at the Workshop Advocating for
  sexual and reproductive health and rights,
  Surajkund, India, Coalition for
  maternal-neonatal health and safe abortion-India,
  Sept. 22, 2006

2
Situational Analysis (Factors)

• What is the political, economical and social
  context?
• What is the programme and policy context?

3
A framework for situation analysis for making
change happen
4
Examine the available evidence

• What is the available evidence?
• Do we need to build more evidence?

5
Identification of Advocacy Issues

• What are the issues that need advocacy?
• What is the change you seek to bring about?

6
Issue Identification
Maternal Death
Near Death
Neonatal Mortality
Bleeding
Infections
Obstruction
Toxemia
Poverty, lack of resources
Anaemia
Lack of Services
Delayed danger sign recognition
Informal Providers
Early marriage, pregnancy
Low respect for community
RCH 1 failures
Low community Awareness
Women poor health seeking
Poor Access
Men Family not supportive
Some community practices are unhealthy
Management systems poor
Women low self esteem
Poor capacity
TBA de-legitimised
Womens empowerment efforts not linked to
maternal health
Poor Quality
Poor status of women
Service provider needs not met
Low Accountability
7
 
 
Framework for identifying Advocacy Issues
 
 
8
Stakeholder Analysis (Actors)

• Who will support the advocacy effort?
• Who will oppose?
• What are the skills, resources available among
  advocates?
• What more is required? Who should we ally with?

9
Decide on the actors to be involved

• Based on issues chosen and stake-holder analysis,
  decide on the target audience
• Advocacy -To whom? By whom? For whom?

10
Planning strategies and activities

• Following principles of rights based advocacy
• Refine information base
• Develop communications
• Balance consensus building, negotiation and
  confrontation
• Make linkages across issues and groups

11
Mobilization, Networking, Alliance building

• Who can be the allies? And for what?
• Who can be potential allies?
• What is required to bring them in?

12
Indicators for progress

• Input indicators
• Process indicators
• Output indicators
• Impact indicators (??)

13
Evaluating Advocacy Efforts
14
Constituency (Affected People)

• Who was the constituency?
• Was it part of the advocacy effort?
• Where was it at various phases?

15
Rights based Advocacy

• Did the advocacy effort address specific rights
  violations?
• Was the advocacy initiative rights based in its
  approach?
• Did the power relations change as a result of the
  advocacy effort?

16
Gender Aspects

• How did the content and process of the advocacy
  effort see women and men?
• In stereotypical roles?
• What did it do to address gender equations within
  the advocacy effort and in the larger society
  with respect to the issue?

17
Context Research and Analysis

• Was adequate research and analysis built into the
  advocacy?
• Was the campaign sufficiently fine tuned and
  proactive with respect to larger macro changes?
• Was new ground broken, new knowledge created? Was
  the analysis of the original issue reformulated?
• Were advocates able to project themselves as
  informed, authentic and authoritative?

18
Longer term Sustainability

• Was the advocacy effort able to create long term
  processes for continuing the work initiated?
• Were upward, downward and horizontal linkages
  created and sustained?
• Was the advocacy able to bring new consciousness
  among all the actors you sought to influence?