A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change.
We are currently recruiting graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
The Impact of Service
|
Translate this page:
Telling the Story
This service will be offered to all AP partners in 2009. It will help disempowered communities to tell their story through photos, video and the written word. This is the first essential step towards successful advocacy.
This service is particularly valued by advocates that are prevented from putting out a message, because of institutional limitations or discrimination. AP has also found that profiling partners gives them encouragement to campaign for social change and connects them to their friends on the other side of the world. Telling the story is also the most effective way to attract donors.
This service breaks down into five components. Each is expected to produce an output/outcome within a few months, and can be provided by a Peace Fellow.
1. Create demand for information, build a partnership, define campaign goals
Goals: AP will help partners to understand the benefits from information, explain the different services and timeframe offered by AP, and help them to think through the outlines of a social justice campaign. This process will start as soon as a Fellow arrives.
2. Profile the partner organization
Goals: Put a face to disempowerment and define the challenge by producing the following:
- Blogs: Each Fellow will produce a minimum of 15 blogs during the summer. A blog digest will be published regularly through the summer through AP’s news service.
- Profiles of Stakeholders: Each Fellow will produce 10 profiles (photo/video/text) for the partner’s website or Google Site (Gwiki).
- Photos: Fellows will post their 50 best photos to the partner Gwiki website or the AP Flickr library.
- Video films (10 to 30 minutes): These will be produced by AP under a special arrangement
- Written content: for press releases, AP bulletins etc
3. Post material online
Goals: Provide partners with a presence on the World Wide Web where they can post their material and reach the fullest possible readership, while taking advantage of ICT tools; help partners acquire basic ICT skills.
- Build ICT skills: Identify and train an in-house techie (“accidental techie”) from within the organization who will build in-house ICT skills and post content.
- A wiki page or Google site: Provide partners with a virtual clearing house for material that can develop into a website and in the process build practical ICT skills. All partners that do not have their own website will be offered a Google wiki, where they can post the material and content produced during the summer.
- The AP website – partner pages: Every AP partner will given a partner page where material can be posted and available to visitors to the AP site. All partner pages will be updated in the summer of 2009 and contain content that can be updated but is not time-sensitive, and in the partner’s language.
- The AP website – partner campaign pages: For priority partners that have undertaken a campaign with AP.
- The Internet: Where relevant, partners will be helped to use ICT tools such as Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook to collect and store photos; post video; and connect to other activists using social networks.
4. Dissemination by The Advocacy Project
Goals: Provide news reports on the advocacy of partners which are written to a high professional standard; introduce the work of partners to a new and expanded online readership; and provide partners with a tool that they can use in their own advocacy.
- AdvocacyNet news service: Will produces between 3 and 5 news bulletins on each partner during the year. These are disseminated by email to subscribers (5,500) and posted online. These bulletins are intended to be re-used by other online services, and used by partners in their advocacy. (This is tracked by AP).
- The AP website: Material from partners is posted in three places on the AP site – Partner Pages; Partner Campaign pages; and the AP Newswire (posted several times a week on the AP site, and published online every month).
5. Advocacy profile
Goals: Help AP partners to explain the challenge of disempowerment and the partner’s response and needs; identify future campaign goals; provide information for donors; identify possible areas for intervention by friends, including AP. This profile will be available for posting on the partner’s website, Gwiki or AP partner page and he shared with potential donors and allies.
Back