BPL – ACCESS – Staff learning support session – 20 July 2001

Advocacy and Lobbying (influencing skills)

Present: Barnett, Donna; Bremner, Melissa; Clark, George; Peden, Bob;  Leece, Duncan; McKenzie, Alison; Simpson, Alison.

Apologies:  Rennie, Joan.

Advocacy and lobbying involve influencing what other people believe, think and do so that change happens the way you want it to.

The process can be applied in your family and community, within your Council ward and local government area, within your nation, and internationally. And it can be about any topic however humble or grand.

It could be argued that ‘advocacy’ is as natural as breathing because man is a social animal and as such we ‘influence’ each other all the time. But although some people are better influencers than others it involves a set of skills that can be developed and honed to perfection by any individual or group with sufficient will, energy, discipline and time.

Advocacy and Lobbying

It is difficult to draw a clear line between the concepts of advocacy and lobbying. As a verb they involve seeking to influence by recommending, favouring, supporting, upholding, championing, promoting. As a noun we have a person who supports a particular cause or policy ie a backer, campaigner, proponent or apostle.

Advocacy and lobbying intend to influence policy and are therefore, in essence, political activities. This can be a more or less noble profession.

• Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. [Paul Valery]
• No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. [Benjamin Disraeli]
• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. [John F Kennedy]
• The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. [Jawaharlal Nehru]
• Democracy … is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a kind of quality to equals and unequals alike. [Plato]
• Be reasonable, do it my way [Sussex Man]

Objectives:

By the end of this session participants will:

• be clearer in their minds about what the process of advocacy is coming to mean
• be familiar with different approaches to advocacy and the need for careful targeting
• be aware of the need for research and careful planning as part of effective influencing
• have some ideas about how the effectiveness of advocacy might be monitored

Handouts:

The handouts are based loosely on materials found at www.bond.org.uk/advocacy  . They were first prepared in April 2001 by George Clark of the Caledonia Centre for Social Development ( www.caledonia.org.uk  ) for use at a workshop of the Kilimanjaro Education Network (KEN/MEKI) in the Arusha District of Tanzania and were used again, after some tweaking by Emmanuel Kallonga of Hakikazi Catalyst, at a national workshop organised by the Tanzania Coalition for Debt and Development (TCDD) in Dar es Salaam. A version of the handouts suited to the needs of Civil Society Organisations in Tanzania is available online at www.hakikazi.org/advocacy.htm

Mount Kilimanjaro, near Arusha