In February, a three-day intensive “Advocacy Academy” program was held in Zakarpattia for public organizations, initiative groups, internally displaced persons (IDPs), host community members, and activists. The program developed and strengthened participants’ advocacy skills to advance IDP rights and interests.
During the program, 13 participants learned about various advocacy tools and approaches, necessary actions to protect public interests, the role of advocacy in professional activities. The participants formed teams and left the Academy with prepared work plans for future advocacy activities.
The Academy contained events and exercises to facilitate an exchange of knowledge, experience, and ideas between participants and foster a deeper understanding of how organizations work with IDPs in Zaporizhzhia oblast. Various activities formed the participants into new groups, so that each pariticipant had the opportunity to interact with the others.
On the first day of the Advocacy Academy, the participants got to know each other and created an atmosphere of unity for joint actions to protect IDP interests. They learned about the concept of an “advocacy activity” and different approaches to planning advocacy activity (legal, human rights protection, and people-oriented). Later, participants delved into the concept of a “target audience” and its needs for planning advocacy campaigns.
“Thank you! A wonderful topic, interesting and well-structured practical tasks for consolidating the theory.”
Volodymyr, volunteer, social worker, Mukachevo
In order to better understand what to advocate for, it is necessary to understand the problems of the community or region in which the advocacy campaign is planned. Therefore, the next day participants researched the urgent needs and problems for IDPs in Zakarpattia and developed strategies for solving them. For this task, they were introduced to the tools “Problem and Solution Tree” and “5 Why Technique”. For better preparation of advocacy campaigns, trainers updated participants’ knowledge about how to use data in advocacy activities. In addition, the trainers referred to numerous reports from international organizations on internal displacement, as well as large-scale studies conducted by the United Voices in Action program. When developing advocacy solutions, participants also analyzed potential barriers and risks using a PEST analysis.
An important part of the training was work on identifying goals, allies, and opponents, where participants also learned to create key communication messages aimed at different target audiences.
“I like everything, and I know for sure that, unlike other trainings I attended, I will think about advocacy after graduating from the academy. I am impressed and pleasantly surprised by the fact that I can be useful in advocacy, I thought that this activity was exclusively for lawyers.”
Anna Demyan, member of the Coordination Council of IDPs in Uzhhorod
On the final day of the academy, the teams familiarized themselves with the tools of advocacy campaigns and learned both how to analyze potential risks and how to conduct monitoring and evaluation during advocacy activities. At the end of the third day, the participants finalized their advocacy campaign projects and presented them.
“Thank you for the new knowledge that broadened my horizons, helped me to see what I already knew in a different way, and showed me how this knowledge can be used in my professional activities. I was pleased to participate in learning, meet new interesting people, working in a team, and learning about new influence and analysis tools. I especially liked the new tool “Tree of problems and solutions”, which I will definitely introduce in my work.”
Nataliya Nikityuk, lawyer, Mukachevo
The academy was very practical, and the teams went through important trainings one advocacy and human rights activities together. After the end of the program, the team created three advocacy campaigns aimed at protecting the rights of Zakarpattia’s IDPs:
- Advocacy campaign aimed at getting IDP pensioners an “Uzhhorod card”, which allows free use of city transport.
- Advocacy campaign aimed at conducting an audit of residential and non-residential buildings of the Mukachevo City Council and allocation of a building for temporary accommodation of IDPs.
- Advocacy campaign aimed at providing displaced teenagers and youth of the Mukachevo district with the opportunity to use the services of various educational and developmental activities.
