MISSION
The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice.
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More sophisticated websites will need to be updated regularly and sustained, which will require different skills and capacities. AP has found that sites that are not sustained can damage a group’s profile and credibility.
AP’s first aim is to help partners design a website from scratch. This means that the organization owns the site from the start, understands how the site can be used in advocacy, and what sort of investment will be required. The Home for Human Rights in Sri Lanka is one AP partner that developed a site as part of a joint project with AP in 2005 through 2006.
The next-best option is for AP to design a website, and for the partner to take it on and adapt it. This will mean creating new content, translating old content and re-designing the site. This can take well over a year to complete. But investing in the sites has given these partners an incentive to sustain them, and use them in their advocacy.
In the third category are those sites that were made by AP for partners, but then fell into disuse because the partner was unable to sustain the site or because the organization itself collapsed. Clearly, if a site is conceived and designed by an international group, hosted abroad and maintained by international experts, the chances of the group investing in its site and using it as a campaigning tool will be diminished.
Another important lesson is that a website is only one tool in a larger advocacy and information strategy. This can easily be overlooked in the satisfaction of designing an attractive site. But if AP is to really assist its partners in developing and using websites, it must also help them to make strategic use of their websites. This will be a priority in the future. It is another reason to view website development as one element in an integrated package of information capacity-building.
AP has helped the following partner organizations to develop or upgrade websites:
Website Support
In this day and age, few campaigning organizations can afford to be without a website. AP has helped to design, or designed, websites for 19 partners. Taken together, they illustrate the richness and variety of AP's partners and also of the issues AP worked on.
There are important lessons to be learned from this work.
- First, while websites are important advocacy tools, a community-based association may not need a website to be an effective advocate.
- Second, the type of site should be tailored to the needs of the organization. If an association wishes to post basic information about its work, it may chose to use a “brochure” site that does not need to be updated regularly.
More sophisticated websites will need to be updated regularly and sustained, which will require different skills and capacities. AP has found that sites that are not sustained can damage a group’s profile and credibility.
AP’s first aim is to help partners design a website from scratch. This means that the organization owns the site from the start, understands how the site can be used in advocacy, and what sort of investment will be required. The Home for Human Rights in Sri Lanka is one AP partner that developed a site as part of a joint project with AP in 2005 through 2006.
The next-best option is for AP to design a website, and for the partner to take it on and adapt it. This will mean creating new content, translating old content and re-designing the site. This can take well over a year to complete. But investing in the sites has given these partners an incentive to sustain them, and use them in their advocacy.
In the third category are those sites that were made by AP for partners, but then fell into disuse because the partner was unable to sustain the site or because the organization itself collapsed. Clearly, if a site is conceived and designed by an international group, hosted abroad and maintained by international experts, the chances of the group investing in its site and using it as a campaigning tool will be diminished.
Another important lesson is that a website is only one tool in a larger advocacy and information strategy. This can easily be overlooked in the satisfaction of designing an attractive site. But if AP is to really assist its partners in developing and using websites, it must also help them to make strategic use of their websites. This will be a priority in the future. It is another reason to view website development as one element in an integrated package of information capacity-building.
AP has helped the following partner organizations to develop or upgrade websites:
- The Afghan Women’s Network (AWN)
- Kosova Women’s Network (KWN)
- The Women’s Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON)
- The Transnational AIDS Prevention among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project (TAMPEP), Turin Italy
- The Bosnian Family (BOSFAM)
- The Kosovo Young Ecologists
- The Roma Womens’ Network, Romania
- The International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), Geneva
- The Coalition for Work with Psychotrauma and Peace, Vukovar, Croatia
- The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CDES), Ecuador
- The Center for Humanitarian Cooperation, New York
- Grassroots International – Palestine
- The NGO Committee on UNICEF, New York
- The Indigenous Media Network, New Zealand
- Youth Against AIDS (YAA), London
- The Global Movement for Children, India
- The Forum of Srebrenica NGOs, Bosnia
- The Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achi (ADIVIMA), Guatemala
- The Roma Information Project
- The Jagaran Media Center, Nepal
- The Home for Human Rights, Sri Lanka
- eHomemakers (Salaam Wanita), Malaysia
- The Women’s Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah and Gaza
- The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Jerusalem
- The Blind Education and Rehabilitation Development Organization (BERDO), Bangladesh
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