1.advocacy and lobbying A Lecture By Mr.Allah dad Khan

3. Advocacy and Lobbying
 Advocacy can be defined as the practical use of
knowledge for purposes of social changes. These
changes can be directed to government policies,
laws, procedures, or sometimes to ourselves.
Advocacy is therefore an act of supporting an issue
and persuading the decision makers on how to act in
order to support that issue. This definition tells, in
fact, that advocacy is a process, not an one-way
activity. By this definition it is clear that advocacy is
an effective process aimed at achieving some
specific results.

4. Advocacy
 Advocacy is about motivating and mobilizing the
community. It starts with a small group of people who
share concerns about a specific problem and are
willing to devote time, their expertise and resources
available to reach the desired change.

5. Importance
 Advocacy can help your organization achieve its political goals
whatever they may be, including:
• improving public services such as transportation, information, etc.
• education
• accessibility
• development of community based services
• public health
• greater accountability of elected representatives of local and national
authorities,
• decentralization of government decision-making process and public
services,
• new laws that better protect the civil rights associations, including the
legal recognition and other civil society organizations.

6. Advocacy means:
 Drawing attention to an important issue and direct
decision-makers to a solution.
Influencing the decision-making at all levels.
Mobilizing members of the community, to include the
wider community.
Developing accountability and transparency of local
governments and public services/institutions.


7. Types
 Advocacy can be divided in three types of activities,
including:
1.Representation: to speak on their own or in other’s
name in public
2.Mobilization: to encourage others to speak in public
with you
3.Empowerment: to let others know they have the right
to speak in public and have the right to be heard.

8. Representation
 Well-planned advocacy is especially important when users
will not be able to represent themselves or when one person is
in charge of representing the whole group of people. The
person chosen to do so must be capable of properly
expressing interests of those on whose behalf it advocates. In
this regard it is important to ensure that the basic principles
of advocacy (ethics and legitimacy) are satisfied.
 When representing some group of people, it is important that
users/beneficiaries are sharing information with advocates.
Advocates are presenting the information received, and the
advocates are contacting those persons who are in the focus
of advocacy efforts. Motto of the worldwide movement of
people with disabilities “Nothing about us without us” in this
case must be fully implemented. The best person to advocate
for the rights of persons with disabilities is person with
disabilities themselves.

9. Mobilization
 Mobilization in fact means nothing more than the inclusion of
others in your activities in a way that they are encouraged to
support your struggle, and then take actions towards fulfillment
of common goals. The mobilization is actually: expanding the
base of support, extending from those which are directly
affected by the problems to convincing others that this issue is
important for them as well.
 To mobilize others is important for several reasons:
• The number of people who advocate is important, especially if
all the people are advocating for a common thing
• Work with others or other groups reduces the risk that the
issue they advocate for is controversial.
• You can achieve social change by raising public awareness
which changes public opinion even if the same change does
not occur within the government and state system.

10. Process of mobilization
 In this process it is expected that users will share
information with advocates. Advocates / will mobilize
other people and / or support organizations.
Advocates are ones who are mobilizing other
individuals and/organizations to join the advocacy
action. Motto of the worldwide movement of people
with disabilities “Nothing about us without us” in this
case would have to be fully implemented as wall,
because the best person to advocate for the rights of
persons with disabilities is person with disabilities.

11. Empowerment
 Representation and mobilization allow people to discover how they can be active as
political figures. Advocacy helps people to find simple ways that can influence the
policy and practice at the same time. Also, in the process advocates are collecting
information on current positions of the government, local government and other
stakeholders. This process is also very liberating because in some way it relies on
personal energy and the strength of each person who is involved in the process. This
particularly applies to members of groups that have traditionally been marginalized, in
our case, people with disabilities. Another important result of this process is that by
encouraging individuals to participate and play an important role in the development of
policy and practice, allows for the sense of ownership over changes achieved. People
who are encouraged through this process, experience radical change about their
place in the community and recognize that they have rights that can be actively used.
Finally, these processes encourage people to challenge the traditional roles of
government and society, and to convince them that they have both responsibility and
rights in the society. All three activities can take place at the same time, since in
normal circumstances, these activities are often intertwined.

12. Process
 Advocacy is a process designed to affect social change.
The process of change can sometimes be time
consuming, requires sacrifices, patience, involvement,
and often requires giving one hundred percent, teamwork
both within your organization and team work with partner
/ coalition organizations, communication and openness.
Advocacy consists of a series of activities undertaken
with the aim of changing policies, practices and attitudes.
People who are engaged in advocacy and seeking to
influence the changes in society need to accept the risk
that change they are advocating for can come much later,
or even that nothing has changed.

13. Lobbying
 Advocacy often involves specific lobbying of decision makers.
Lobbying is a complex and sensitive task, one must approach
very well prepared.
 In Anglo-Saxon tradition, this word means the lobby of the
House of Parliament. In that lobby, the ones who wanted some
issue to be resolved in their favor, were waiting for members of
Parliament and tried to make an impact on them (i.e. lobbying)
to decide in favour of the issue they were interested in.
 Therefore, lobbying is a term that includes activities of
influencing the decision makers, both political and all other
decisions for which the community or individuals are
concerned about. Lobbying is a targeted activity and is mainly
consisting of a direct influence on decision-making persons.