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Concern Worldwide Workshop, BIAM, Dhaka,
Bangladesh, 7-9 August 2006
The ODI / Concern
Worldwide, Bangladesh (CWWB) workshop on the topic Policy
Analysis, Engagement and Advocacy took place 7-9 August, 2006
at the BIAM conference centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The workshop
was facilitated by Naved
Chowdhury as part of the capacity development support
provided to southern CSOs by the Civil Society Partnerships
Programme (CSPP).
The objective of the CSSP is to help Civil Society Organisations
(CSOs) influence national policies and practices to make them
pro-poor. Through the CSPP, ODI has organised regional and
national workshops in Africa and Asia to provide a forum for
CSOs to discuss the opportunities and challenges they face
when trying to inform policy and share experiences about what
works and what does not, learn about the latest worldwide
research and practice in this area, and identify gaps for
future work.
The objectives of this three day workshop were to enable
participants to:
- Share experiences about CSO-policy context in Asia
- Learn about the latest worldwide research and practice
in this area
- Share experiences about approaches to influence policy
and what works
- Start to develop strategies to improve policy impact
Participants expectations were to learn more about advocacy
strategies and tools, best practice, opportunities for policy
change, how to move from challenging to engaging with the
policy process, frameworks (e.g. RAPID) and failures and successes
of civil society.
At the end of the workshop various suggestions and recommendations
were made for the way forward, including:
- Concern Bangladesh's organisational stance on various
advocacy issues should be clarified;
- Concern Bangladesh should establish a centralised advocacy
committee, as opposed to project-specific advocacy work,
although there were some objections to this suggestion,
as it was believed that this might lead to a neglect of
advocacy issues on the project/field level;
- Leadership on advocacy is needed;
- An advocacy focus group to build staff capacity on advocating,
while providing technical assistance on various issues relating
to advocacy;
- At any given time, the organisation should focus on no
more than be 3-4 advocacy issues in order to avoid a 'dilution'
of messages;
- On a national level, senior management and the Country
Director have big roles to play in terms of raising the
profile of various advocacy issues. On a local level however,
all staff have a role to play.
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