e-alliance ::

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) in partnership with the ACT Alliance, and with funding from EAA member FELM (the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission) has conducted a survey to better understand member experiences and capacity needs with regards to advocacy.   Almost 50 organizations participated in the study. They confirmed that building advocacy capacity – internally, with partners or among communities – is a top priority.

Needs and priorities
Nearly all responding organizations recently attended, organized or funded advocacy capacity strengthening activities. Many have produced manuals and other resources to help strengthen their advocacy and a handful have developed in-house training capacity. Most of the capacity building takes the form of workshops, although experience sharing events are a preferred learning technique and there are occasional examples of mentoring relationships. The most common challenge experienced by respondents is that upon returning to their organizations participants are hard pressed to find time to apply their new learning.

Members expressed a strong interest in building their capacity to advocate around food issues, climate change and human rights. From the skills perspective, they identified advocacy evaluation, fundraising for advocacy, lobbying, and public mobilization as their priority skill building needs.
 
Challenges to strengthening advocacy capacity
The concerns related to strengthening capacity most often mentioned by respondents included scarcity of resources, forging a common understanding of advocacy, defining the role of the churches and connecting to communities in a meaningful way.  A number of organizations expressed growing interest in ‘rooted advocacy’ that responds to the direct needs and priorities of communities.  Many EAA and ACT members work in funding or coordinating relationships and there were frequent references to the dynamics particular to partnership. Concerns included control and conflict over agendas, efforts to empower southern partners and general coordination concerns.

Ways forward
A two-day workshop held in Geneva, 19-20 January 2010 with 23 members of  the EAA and ACT Alliances validated the findings of the survey. Following productive discussion, three priority areas were singled out for future action: a website with tools and materials for building advocacy capacity, strengthening advocacy monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy capacity around the food campaign.