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Advocacy 101<br />Purpose and Community<br />8/4/2009<br />1<br />

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What is Advocacy?<br />Speaking on behalf of yourself and others<br />Supporting rights<br />Solving problems<br />Writing letters<br />Bringing people together<br />Always learning<br />Sharing power<br />

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Why Be An Advocate?<br />To “Pay Forward” to your Community<br />To fight stereotypes and lack of access<br />To empower others<br />To develop your self<br />To build a career<br />To build a community of activists<br />To build choice for all <br />

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What is Your Community?<br />It is the place and people where you feel like you belong<br />Community is based on mutual trust and respect<br />If a vital community is a fast flowing river, the rain that keeps it flowing is shared “stories”<br />Out of stories, a community creates its culture, its rituals, its beliefs<br />

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Purpose Grows from Community<br />Every Advocate has a purpose or a goal<br />The purpose guides how you help others and what you fight for<br />If you want to be an effective advocate, your purpose should grow from your community<br />It should reflect your community’s needs and dreams<br />

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Your Support Network (SN)<br />You need a SN to develop skills and focus on purpose<br />Your SN should be a group of people who share your purpose<br />Your SN will help you understand your community’s needs<br />Your SN will help you develop change activities that support your purpose<br />Your SN will guide you through failure and celebrate your success<br />

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Build Your SN<br />Find members of your community who are dissatisfied with the place of the community in the larger society locally, regionally, whatever<br />Start and continue sharing stories in a community comfortable place about the dissatisfaction until some agreement on a goal is reached<br />Use that agreement to plan an action<br />Stick with an easy win<br />Use the easy win to find more members of your SN<br />And so on<br />

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How to Plan<br />Start with how you’d like things to be (outcome)<br />Step back from the Outcome by asking “What would we need to get there?”<br />Keep stepping back to where you are now<br />Execute!<br />If your outcome is too big, you’ll see that as you try to step back<br />If you get stuck, stop planning for a week and come back to it<br />

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Keep the SN Together<br />Your community has more to do than your purpose<br />Keep your community together by sharing more than an advocate’s purpose<br />Do projects for each other<br />Support other people’s work<br />Have fun!<br />

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Advocacy and Community<br />The community is bigger than your advocacy<br />Let the community tell you where your advocacy should go<br />If your community resists your advocacy, take the time to figure out why<br />Change your advocacy to fit your community’s journey<br />

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The Advocate’s Role<br />As an advocate, you are a steward of your community’s assets (people, skills, history, money)<br />A steward preserves and expands assets, and does not waste them<br />Assets belong to the community, not to you<br />An advocate must make moral decisions in advocacy actions, no matter how “bad” the target of an action might be<br />

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Soul Resources<br />Civic Link at http://bit.ly/IlCgd<br />How to Change the World at http://bit.ly/W9T94<br />Creating Community Books on Amazon at http://bit.ly/zeGBZ<br />Transformational Leadership at http://bit.ly/150ayc<br />

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Web Resources<br />National Consortium on Leadership and Disability for Youth at http://www.ncld-youth.info/<br />Community Organizing Links at http://bit.ly/E6R8S<br />Leadership and Disability at http://bit.ly/ON22O<br />Disaboom at http://www.disaboom.com/<br />

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My Resources<br />My Twitter Account: mdrcngd<br />My Blogs:<br />The Recovering Life<br />LTC Reform<br />Communities of Power<br />Universal Education<br />MDRC Website: http://www.copower.org/<br />Linkedin Profile: http://bit.ly/s1mS<br />Email: ndelisle@prosynergy.org<br />Download This Presentation: <br />Comment on this Presentation<br />

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Final Thoughts<br />&quot;Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”- Abraham Lincoln<br />&quot; … Each human being has value as a human being; ... we&apos;re all interdependent; the idea that we can change the world, and the first step is to change ourselves.&quot; -Dr. Burton Blatt<br />&quot;Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.“ -Martin Luther King Jr.<br />