Campaigning in Somalia
One of my recurrent themes for this blog over the years has been my fascination and amazement at the fact that the language of campaigning is truly international. I recently put that theory to the test again by undertaking an assignment for Saferworld in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland. Over a five day period I ran a two […]
Holding out for a hero with The Right Ethos
Earlier this week I tweeted: “Help for Heroes is non-political and non-critical, we simply want to help” – that’s suitable, but means that they don’t have the right ethos Help for Heroes have just recently won an award for being the Most Admired Charity and this comment about being “non-political and non-critical” struck me and […]
Evie Papada
Whilst Campaign Coordinator at Amnesty International Who is the campaigner you admire the most? The campaigner I admire the most is Sarah Duthie. She is a campaigner at Greenpeace. Apart from your current organisation which other organisation that campaigns do you currently admire? ‘War on Want’- They seem to campaign on very topical issues and […]
Lizzie Jeans
Whilst Campaigns Consultant at End Child Poverty Lizzie is freelance campaigner. She was previously Campaigns Manager at Help the Aged and has worked for the Methodist Church, People & Planet and Christian Aid. Apart from your current organisation which other organisations that campaign do you admire? Shelter, Christian Aid, RNID and YWCA. Who is the […]
Meeting Wangari Maathai – environmental and social activist
The death of Wangari Maathai on 25th September 2011, took me back to the day I was fortunate to meet her. It was the same day as Live 8 Day in 2005. At the time, I was the Mayor of Islington and for my year in office, I had a theme – a small campaign […]
So what next?
I recently returned from Germany where I led an advocacy capacity building session for an NGO, and as I have often remarked in the past in a room full of different nationalities, there really is a common international language of advocacy campaigns. I was also struck at how the big challenges in this work are […]
Building capacity for advocacy campaigning
What is the best way to help train campaigners? Is it a week long course? A day course at regular intervals? Mentoring support? A peer group? There is clearly no one answer but it is one question that has been much on my mind recently. A year ago at the Refugee Council, we ran a […]
Charities should challenge politicians’ view of them
The article “Donors Will Reject Charities” refers to comments form a Canadian charity law expert. He spoke at a European-wide conference stating that donors in 10 years time will question whether charities are worth funding as they don’t solve social problems, but simply make things more tolerable. I think we need to note that his […]
Don’t lose the fire in your eyes
A while ago I led an advocacy campaigns training course about how to work with the UK Government and Parliament. As part of that course, the group went across to Parliament and met with a Conservative MP to hear directly from him about the role of the MP. One of the questions that the group […]
Developing your theory of change
A couple of months ago I was involved in running the residential weekend for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation award winners. We had gathered the award winners together and over the course of a long weekend attempted to cover some of the key points in campaigning – reflecting on both success and failure. I am always […]