Resource

National advocacy toolkit

Our national advocacy toolkit is a practical resource that will guide you through all the stages of identifying, planning and implementing a national level advocacy initiative.

Advocacy is more than just raising awareness of an issue, problem or situation. It is about trying to seek a positive change – in attitudes, behaviour, policies, or systems – by influencing. In the resilience sector, it seeks to ensure that people, particularly those who are marginalised, are able to have their voices heard.

The advocacy process in this toolkit is broken down into nine chapters, each with group exercises and real-life examples from organisations in developing countries.

The easy-to-follow stage-by-stage process covers:

  1. Using data and doing policy analysis to identify a problem
  2. Developing your advocacy objective and theory of change
  3. Assessing who your target audience is, as well as allies and opponents
  4. How to gather and present quantitative and qualitative evidence
  5. Writing policy papers and key messages
  6. Identifying and building advocacy partnerships
  7. Implementing your national advocacy initiative
  8. Monitoring impact using indicators and outcome mapping
  9. Presenting the impact of your campaign and capturing stories of change

The national advocacy process is supplemented with sections that explain cross-cutting principles of advocacy initiatives including: credibility, collaboration, focus, context, and strategy.

The advocacy process explains how to engage those people who are affected by the problems identified, increase cooperation between NGOs and other civil groups, and expand the space for open discussion between citizens, governments and institutions.

This toolkit is available in PDF format in three languages:

This advocacy toolkit was produced by GNDR as part of our flagship Views from the Frontline programme that ensures that development decisions are informed by people most at risk.

Read more about this project.

As a global network we advocate for risk-informed development and localisation. And we give our local and national member organisations a voice in policy processes at both regional and global levels.

Read more about advocacy work.

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