By Abbas Yushau Yusuf
Report on CSO Advocacy and Communication Workshop 29th – 30th October 2020 @ Royal Hotel, Jigawa State.
Kano State Social Protection Platform (KaSSoPP) Introduction “Advocacy is a process aiming at bringing change in the policies, practices, and attitudes of individuals, influential people, institutions, and groups.
Through advocacy we put a problem on the political agenda, providing a solution to that problem, and building support for applying the solution in order to change the situation.
It is about achieving specific outcomes -a measurable change in policies and practices. Advocacy happens at all levels – local, national, regional, and international.” DEEP Advocacy Toolkit As agents of social change, it is CSOs and Media responsibility to address the various challenges experienced by our people.
Monitoring: CSO Media Training On Palliative Disbursement organized by Action Against Hunger and CGDP
Also, to be effective change-makers, we must learn how to address problems strategically and systematically by developing detailed and concrete advocacy strategies, programs, and projects.
An effective advocacy strategy relies on the accuracy of knowledge about the situation of the vulnerable populace at national, state, and local levels, along with a comprehensive analysis of how the effects of existing political, economic, legal, social, technological, and environmental strategy on them.
This advocacy preparation and communication helps participants think critically about current political, economic, legal, social, technological, and environmental contexts surrounding social protections.
It provides the foundation for thinking about which advocacy approach might be most strategic to improve the lives of vulnerable. Therefore, Action Against Hunger (AAH) organizes CSO advocacy and communication workshop for the Kano State Social Protection Platform (KaSSoPP) which comprises CSOs and Media representatives.
The workshop is aimed to build the capacity of CSOs and the Media on how to advocate for social protection issues to relevant stakeholders in the state; and, to build their capacity on the use of appropriate communication and advocacy tools to engage with relevant stakeholders.
DAY 1 Moderator: Mrs. Stella, Program Manager AAH Jigawa/Kano. Time: 9:16 am with opening prayer by Ibraheem Amosa, AHIP Kano.
At the start, there was a pre-test on terms and issues related to advocacy to prepare the participants for the sessions and to evaluate the message passed to the participants at the end of the workshop.
This was facilitated by Mr. Umar Advocacy officer, AAH Jigawa followed by core advocacy foundations facilitated by Mr.Mr. Garba Advocacy officer, AAH Kano State.
Mr. Garba introduces participants to the essential elements that contribute to a successful advocacy strategy as well as the 7 steps involved;
- Understanding the problems, choose the goal 2. Know the people and institutions 3. Shape your message 4. Choose your strategy 5. Identify risks, challenges, and opportunities 6. Plan and implement your strategy 7. Follow through 1 In this session, the participants have found specific elements often conflate advocacy with, that are involved in an advocacy strategy.
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- So, understanding the 7 steps of the advocacy cycle is important to take the time to ensure that all participants share a common understanding of what advocacy is and what it is not, how is it done, and how it is not…
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- Stella facilitated another session tagged ‘Understand the Problems and Choose the Goal’ where issue identification, finding root causes, and prioritization were systematically analyzed using PESTLE – Context Analysis and Power Analysis.
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- PESTLE context analysis is about a comprehensive analysis of political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental issues to understand the context, develop an effective strategy, and have more impact through advocacy.
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- Also, Power Analysis helps to understand to identify stakeholders and the most effective ways to influence them using power mapping, stakeholder analysis, and policy mapping. High Influence of Power; High Interest – Work Together High Influence of Power; Low Interest – Keep Satisfied Low Influence of Power; Low Interest – Minimal Effort Low Influence of Power; High Interest – Show Consideration 2 Also, Mr. Garba AAH supported in clarifying goals to speak to the change desired through advocacy activity.
Another session was facilitated by Mrs. Stella on knowing the people and the institution. This helps in understanding different stakeholders, their roles in advocacy, and strategies for reaching decisionmakers. The stakeholder analysis is classified as • Primary Stakeholders- The directly affected people • Secondary Stakeholders- people /intermediaries who are being used to reach • Key Stakeholders- People who can influence the success of the intervention Also, at the end of this session, the stakeholder spectrum was illustrated to identify active allies, passive allies, neutral, passive opponents, and active opponents.
At the end of day 1, Mrs. Kauna, Sector Manager, AAH Jigawa facilitated a session tagged Shape Your Message (Messaging and Communication). The session started with entertainment (drama) in which the importance of Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? were identified; a complete message is expected to answer these questions.
The communication process is the steps to take in order to achieve a successful communication. The communication process consists of several components. These are The sender; the message (the information to be conveyed); encoding the message; a channel of communication which is the manner in which the message is sent.
Channels of communication include speaking, writing, video transmission, audio transmission, electronic transmission through emails, text messages and faxes, and even nonverbal communication, such as body language; the receiver; decoding the message by the receiver; and, feedback from the receiver. Also, the followings are very important in developing an advocacy message: • Content and Ideas- What ideas do you want to convey? What arguments will you use to persuade the audience • Language-What words will you use to convey your message • Source- Who will deliver the message- Credible personality • Time –When is the best time to deliver the message 3 • Place-Where is the best place to deliver the message • Consistency-Always convey a simple consistent message even when using multiple channels
DAY 2 Moderator: Mrs. Stella, Program Manager AAH Jigawa/Kano. Time: 8:26 am with opening prayer by Ibraheem Amosa, AHIP Kano.
Day 2 Sessions started with a recap of day 1 by Mr. Umar AAH, Jigawa. Followed by “Developing core message” facilitated by Mrs. Stella, Program Manager, AAH Jigawa/Kano. Here, participants were made to understand that advocacy message describes the problem, offers compelling or new evidence, and presents why advocates think people and policymakers should care. • Good messages are short, clear, and persuasive. • Advocacy proposal should be a clear, tailored request or recommendation. •
To state what needs to happen to address the issue • To indicate the change, you wish to see Also, advocacy proposal must be tailored to suit different decision-makers: To specifically target the policies and practices that they have influence over. Mr. Garba set in with another topic on advocacy called “Choose your strategy – methods”. Strategies are specific methods or actions designed to achieve goals and objectives.
Participants were made to understand the importance of the ‘broad’ approach or ‘way’ in which advocacy is being done. And there are three lenses used for assessing the advocacy approach: How are you doing it? Being Confrontational, Transactional, Constructive and /or Collaborative) Who is doing it? And Who is being targeted? And there are 12 different methods of advocacy: issue and policy research and analysis, networking and coalition building, joint problem solving, organizing, lobbying, constructive programs, education, and public awareness-raising, activism, creative arts, mobilizing, media engagement, and court actions or legal measures.
This session was supported by a presentation ‘Social accountability’ by Mr. Umar AAH Jigawa aimed at identifying the channels and mediums available; traditional and modern medium. And how to carefully choose medium and methods through which messages will be passed to the targeted audience. Plan and implement your strategy, follow-through is another session facilitated by Mr. Garba AAH Kano.
Planning is the systematic process of establishing a need and then working out the best way to meet the need. Planning means thinking about the future so that one can do something about it now. Plan for and implement an advocacy strategy by specifying who will do what, when, and how is stressed in this session as well as building its learning, monitoring, and reflection into and after each step to continuously improve and adapt your campaign. 4 Also, follow-through means continual engagement with key stakeholders and those involved to ensure ‘agreements’, ‘decisions’, and ‘support’ are actually implemented in practice. The last session of the workshop is monitoring tracking advocacy facilitated by Mr. Umar and Mrs. Stella.
Participants were made to understand that monitoring is “the systematic and continuous assessment of the progress of a piece of work overtime, which checks that things are ‘going to plan’ and enables adjustments to be made in a methodical way” and Evaluation is “the periodic assessment of the relevance, performance, efficiency, and impact of a piece of work with respect to its stated objectives. Also, the difference between monitoring and evaluation, aspects of advocacy work that can be monitored and evaluated, and expected challenges were explained.
Monitoring is important to: ensure accountability; follow progress towards your stated objectives; make sure that the achievements against the plan are reported regularly to all stakeholders; and recognize when you may need to adjust your initial strategy for better results using indicators i.e. Indicators for progress for policy change, Indicators for the impact of the policy change All the sessions are supported with group works.
Lessons from Group Works: As an advocate or agent of change working on advocacy, there is a need to think about many things, which will need to be linked across the different elements of the plan i.e. Stakeholders – who are they? Who are the decision-makers? What are the objectives, strategies, activities? How might the strategies vary across stakeholders? Risks – what are they and how they might be managed? Budget – what will it cost? Who will be responsible for the actions? What are the timelines? How will we communicate with stakeholders? How will we evaluate the outcomes? Day 2 sessions ended with post-test then closing prayer by Mall. Ashiru Kachako, Vision FM by 3:56 pm
