Ten Lessons helpful for Public Advocacy

Here are ten lessons that I have learned, learning, doing, training , writing and leading civic advocacy initiatives in India and elsewhere for three decades. These are lessons learned from the depth of experience. Lessons learned from mistakes. Lessons learned by doing - and being a participant observer.

Public Advocacy is a collective set of social actions and initiative to influence seek, change, formulate, or implement public policies or to achieve a specific public interest objectives or goals around an issue or issues that affect people . Advocacy is political as it seeks to address and change power-relations in a given context and around a set of issues or public policies. Advocacy involves resisting unequal and unjust power, engaging with multiple perspectives and also decision makers, persuading people and decision makers to act.

1) It will be helpful to be aware about two pitfalls of social/civic activists : Extreme form 'self-righteousness " and high amount of 'individualism/individuation) - those with a very high doze of individuation /individualism and too much of 'self-righetous' certainities cant make people to come together for a broader cause.
2) The cultivated notions and then delusions of 'savior syndrome' followed by 'victim syndrome' do not help any advocacy as it will eventually may not help to build a broad alliance.
3) It is not merely the 'correctness' of one position or polemics around the validity of something over the other matters, it is the clarity of purpose, and broader set of values and basic clarity of roles that help to make such efforts more effective. Advocacy is also a process of listening, learning and then moving together to make change happen.

4)Any effective and fruitful advocacy requires a lots of patience, ability to tolerate differences in perspectives, approaches and locations and ability to create spaces for dialogues rather than burning bridges and also ability not to jump in to conclusion or judge others too fast

5) In advocacy around an issue, there could be unusual alliances and issue based coalition with whom you may disagree on so many things. It is possible that beyond a particular issue, you may move out of such an alliances. There are so many of such examples.

6) Advocacy process is not a solo music or solo play - it is an orchestra- and this requires an ability to bring in people with different skills, capacities and talents around a music that people will listen . Effective practitioners of advocacy will look for points of agreement and convergence rather than points of disagreement and divergence. It is an art of alignment of different strands of music. Guitar or guitarist cant say I don't like violin- and violin cants say that I don't like key board. And each of the instruments play its own music- it will be more noise than music.
Advocacy is the art of creating music through orchestration effect so that everyone stops and listens- and eventually appreciate. It is a that creativity that makes the aesthetics and politics of advocacy.

7) Advocacy is not about making more 'Noises' but about creating more and more voices . Noises are relatively easier. Organizing multiple voices - those who speak in a convincing way with conviction and evidences - and also ability to listen and learn from other voices. Voices are sustained and often more powerful as it requires courage of conviction as well as the patience to listen and learn from other voices. Dialogue is at the centre of creating voices and learning from voices.

8) Advocacy efforts are not sprint but marathon. It requires lots of homework, information and staying power. The fast one runs, more the chances of getting burned out. Gandhi did it so well. He did a lots preparation before each of the campaign and did well- co opted even the opponents. So did Martin Luther King Junior. or Nelson Mandela.

9) In any advocacy process : Timing. Framing and targeting matters : when to speak, when not to speak, who to speak, who not to speak, how much to speak ; to whom to speak and to whom not to speak- and what information you require to stress and what not to stress. All these matter. What matters is often not only how sincere you are or committed you are. What matters is also how convincing you are and how communicative you are to different audiences- as there is not merely one set of audience.
Preaching to the converts does not help- not arguing the fine points among the converts help. What matters is how to reach out to different constituencies who may not speak your 'language' or be away from your knowledge locations. There are people who can make simple thing complex. In advocacy, it is also important to make complex things simple ( not simplistic) so that different kinds of audience can listen, learn and become your allies rather than your opponents. In most of the advocacy issues, most of the people are fence-sitters. It is possible to make 'Fence-sitters' - your enemies or friends. A good advocacy strategist will make friends sitters friends and then transform them in to active proponents for the larger cause.

10) Advocacy is also standing up for a cause beyond our own self- or our images or own pet perspectives. Because what matters in advocacy is the focus on an issue and get everyone together to make a specific change happen. An effective advocate will always be learning from every opportunity. That requires an element of humility to know that none of us have all answers or knowledge- and learning is doing and doing is learning- and in the process we get transformed. Every good advocacy help revitalize us and make us more optimist than bitter or pessimistic.

It took fifteen years of effort to bring in a Right to Information Law. It took ten years of demand and work to get NREGA on place. And the advocacy for women's political participation in Parliament and Assembly are still on.

For those who want to know more on the topic : http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G01974.pdf