Francophone Advocacy Matters Training, Dakar, May 2013. Save the Children Child Protection Initiative (CPI)

The final report of the Advocacy Matters workshop held in May 2013, hosted by Save the Children’s Regional Office from West and Central Africa. Eight draft advocacy plans were developed during the 4-day advocacy capacity building workshop aimed at Save the Children staff: seven of the plans are for country programs and one is targeted at ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) as the key regional mechanism for advocacy in West Africa.

The workshop set out to: Increase understanding of Save the Children’s definition of advocacy, linkages to the Theory of Change and organizational strategy, including Global Initiatives; Increase ability on how to integrate advocacy to achieve overall program goals in a deliberate and strategic way; Learn steps to plan for advocacy and policy change initiatives; Use the advocacy planning steps to begin developing an advocacy plan for a particular priority issue; Strengthen relationships with other staff to learn from each other’s experiences; and  Develop a plan to share the workshop’s learning with other colleagues