Tool 1.1: Advocacy Workbook for Early Childhood Education
Key Guidance and Tools for Creating an ECE Advocacy Strategy and Plan
© GPE/Alexandra Humme
Introduction
Advocacy can take many forms and may require a variety of tools to support the development of well-thought-out advocacy strategies and plans. This Advocacy Workbook for ECE is a useful resource that can be used to guide your advocacy strategy development process and inform advocacy activities, plans, and monitoring and evaluation to advance ECE in your context.
The Advocacy Workbook for Early Childhood Education provides a host of tools, and templates for ECE advocates at the country, regional and global levels to guide your advocacy strategy development and implementation.
This step-by-step workbook will take you through the strategy development process and provide templates and instructions to support you to define and document the core elements of an advocacy strategy.
In each chapter, you will find an explanation of each of the core elements of an advocacy strategy, a worksheet on the accompanying tool, and a completed example of the tool. To save and edit your own version of the advocacy strategy tools and templates contained in this workbook, download the accompanying Advocacy Workbook Tools and Templates PowerPoint file linked here.
Upon completing this workbook you will have defined and documented your:
- ECE Advocacy Goal and Outcome;
- Stakeholder Mapping and Targeting;
- Tactics to influence your target;
- Key Messages;
- Success Indicators: Monitoring & Evaluation.
Objectives
Using this tool will support your advocacy by stepping you through a series of key tools for building out your advocacy strategy and plan. By developing a robust but simple advocacy strategy for ECE, you will be identify context-appropriate tactics and activities to galvanize momentum around ECE. Developing a clear advocacy strategy, with a defined goal, outcome, targets, and tactics to match, is potentially a powerful way to strengthen the country’s political will around ECE support and services. More specifically, this tool will help you to:
Understand the core elements of an advocacy strategy and how and why a strategy is critical to advance your ECE goals in your context.
Articulate your advocacy goal, outcomes, target, and tactics and messaging you require to influence the change you seek.
Monitor your advocacy strategy and plan, including setting indicators, methods, and results for measuring impact as you implement your strategy - and adapt to your changing context.
When to Use this Tool
This tool can be used as part of your programme planning processes following your sub-sector analysis to ensure your advocacy activities and initiatives around ECE are in alignment with your goal for ECE.
Advocacy must be implemented and embedded with any ece programmes and initiatives. Your advocacy strategy must be developed in tandem to ensure it is complimentary and in alignment with your ECE goal.
The tool constitutes guidance on key components of an advocacy strategy, and a set of accompanying tools which will guide you through your strategy development process, and ready you for implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of your strategy.