NavigationGave us your email before? |
is advocacy is sustainable or notSubmitted by fazli on November 2, 2007 - 11:46pm.
hi all my concerned is that wether advocacy is sustainable or not . as we know that Advocacy is about speaking up for oneself or on behalf of some one else according to their needs and wishes. Advocacy is all about having time for some one and being there at the right time. It is about relationship built on trust, where people are valued, respected and treated as equal. Tags: Advocacy
Indeed, great question. In my experience, sustaining advocacy efforts has had more to do with battling fatigue and competing priorities among volunteers/community members than it's had to do with efforts to silence or obstruct those engaged in advocacy, though the latter does happen. I've noticed that for some issues, success actually leads to advocacy efforts starting to slack -- people seem to get comfortable and think things are going to continue to go their way, or that their work is done, and stop contributing time and energy to the advocacy. Sustaining advocacy takes a delicate balance of encouragement, education, support and communication that doesn't leave people feeling overwhelmed, feeling like their efforts aren't getting anywhere, or feeling unsupported. <><><><> ya i really happy about the comments, but as working with internatioanl rescue coomittee pak\afgh i have personally seen the people who really appriates the programs, but is advocacy only for men? if we gona talk about the men and leaving the women will there be any sustainblitiy of advocacy even if you have good policy , intelligent and committed people . Advocacy efforts should NOT be focused on men, unless they are specifically the target audience. I used to get very perturbed in Afghanistan when a report would talk about a meeting with community members, a program that worked with community members, etc., and when I would ask, "How many were women?", not only would it turn out that "community members" meant "men only", but the defenses would start coming out about why "women just *cannot* be involved!" The arguments always came from non-Afghans, I should note -- Afghans themselves that I worked with were more open to the idea of involving women. Hmmmmmmm. <><><><> |
Interesting question, Fazli. And related also to much of the discussion in this forum on freedom of expression as well. A similar question is being asked by members of the Evidence Based Policy Development Network. The question they ask is how not to lose credibility in policy advocacy. Can civil society organisations engage with government and still be able to raise a voice against government's policy failures? When and how do they lose their credibility as unbiased voices? Is criticism viewed by governments as a breach of trust?