This month I want to pick up on my story that I started last month reflecting on an experience that I had several years ago at the ski resort of Borovets in Bulgaria supporting Roma communities across the country with their campaigning plans. You may recall that all...
After strong encouragement from one of my nephews, I am beginning to experiment with the use of video shorts. I have used video for a long time as a means of sharing my approach to campaigning, but I am intrigued by the power of video shorts and also the incredible...
The ski resort of Borovets in Bulgaria several years ago was the scene for me of a very powerful experience in my work trying to support people to campaign for change. I had been in this beautiful location for several days doing some work supporting Roma communities...
Last month, I had the pleasure again to do a few sessions at the latest Sanctuary in Politics course, this time held in Swansea. This is an incredibly special training course, run by City of Sanctuary UK, and it’s basically political education for refugees and people...
Last month I was in Brussels running and advocacy workshop for Eurochild with their European campaign on Early Childhood Development. I have had the good fortune to be involved with this European campaign, involving now 11 different countries, since it began back in...
After a very busy end to the year, I have just had the chance to review 2022 – and once again I have been amazed at the opportunities that I have had to support campaigning around the world. To give some sense of my work over the last 12 months, I have… • supported...
I recently came back from Almaty in Kazakhstan, where I was running an advocacy campaigns workshop for parent groups across the country. It was great to have the opportunity to do this in person, despite the temperature being 36 degrees! I ran through the twelve key...
Over the past few months I have been doing some work for a global organisation working to support refugees to help them think through some of the advocacy angles around the challenge of climate change. This is a really important question and one that has been around...
The final issue which we explored at the recent Helvetas workshop in Northern Macedonia with colleagues from across the Balkans was digital advocacy campaigns. In this short video, I offer some reflections on some simple principles for effective advocacy campaigns...
Late last year I had the good fortune to travel out to Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia to support a regional advocacy workshop run by the Swiss INGO, Helvetas. This regional network had been running for several years and was well established, and Helvetas wanted me to...
Firstly, I'd like to wish all the readers of my blog a happy New Year! I can only wish that we all have a better year and that travel once again becomes a possibility for those of us who can and want to do so. Before the last year finished, I got some really...
I’m just back from my first international assignment in a while. I had the pleasure of working in Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia supporting an advocacy network across the Western Balkans. There was a focus on three key areas: Firstly, we discussed the importance of...
Over the last year I have had the opportunity to do something different in my training. I was asked by NCVO to deliver one day of their five day charity management awareness course. The course is run for military personnel in the final two years of their time in the...
I've done a few assignments recently with the dilemma of campaigning and service delivery has come up. You know this dilemma – an organisation asks should they be providing direct services to people or should they be campaigning? And this issue has come up within...
I've recently been doing some work supporting a group in Kenya to develop an advocacy campaign, and I heard myself encouraging them to go on a fishing trip. What did I mean by that? Well, we had spent a lot of time thinking about our campaign message, our targets and...
I've recently been working 'in' Sierra Leone, and I recently met up with colleagues, who urgently told me that they needed to change the future story. We've been working well together discussing a common approach to advocacy campaigning, and agreeing our key messages...
Over the past few months, I’ve been supporting a number of groups around the world to develop their theory of change, or future story, for their campaign. In both Tajikistan and Ukraine, I’ve been supporting coalitions of parents’ groups initially by providing them...
Last month I was invited to speak on a panel at a meeting of advocacy campaigners from across MSF worldwide on my approach to M&E. I found this invitation really timely in encouraging me to document my more recent thinking on this subject, which has been evolving...
I was looking at a colleague's website the other day, and was very taken by his client list. Since 2004, I have worked for a variety of clients both in the UK and internationally. I am now one client shy of 40 over this period with many of my clients coming back to me...
Over the past few months in the advocacy training that I have been running across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, I found myself focusing on two words: confidence and humility. I found that having done an initial training in advocacy, it is often the case that people...
I've just had the report through for my 2020 visitors to this site. Over the past 12 months there were over 1,000 visitors from 88 countries! While maybe not too surprisingly over half of these visitors came from the UK, I was really pleased to see Bulgaria in the top...
Over the last few days I have run a couple of webinars which have shown me, if I needed showing, that campaigning is a global language. The webinars were held with colleagues in Tajikistan and Ukraine. Both sessions were follow up sessions to earlier training sessions...
Today I've launched another way to communicate campaigning. After my website, books and video courses, I am delighted to have done a new audio course on campaigning. I know myself that I gain a lot from listening from podcasts. And I like the approach taken by...
I was running a campaigning webinar recently with colleagues across Bulgaria, and I was asked - how do we get the credit? The point was expressed that you can do loads of campaigning work, develop evidence and policy, build support and get policy or practice change....