The Major Types of Advocacy and the Role of Advocacy in Promoting Social Change

Introduction

Advocacy is defined as acting on behalf of a disadvantaged individual or group, with minimal conflict of interest, for purposes of defending, protecting, and promoting justice and their welfare, while remaining accountable and loyal to them in a manner that is spirited and insistent. Justice and welfare for these disadvantaged individuals or groups can also be defended through being concerned primarily with their basic needs and through providing moral, financial, and material support. Systemic advocacy relates to acting to fix discriminatory challenges that affect a lot of individuals collectively. In some instances, a group of individuals may share the same discriminatory challenge. For instance, carriers might discriminate against individuals with physical disabilities particularly those who use wheelchairs and schools might discriminate against individuals that are thought to be intellectually handicapped. The collective representation and action for these groups of individuals is called systemic advocacy. This paper will highlight the major types of advocacy and the role of advocacy in promoting social change. It will additionally outline an advocacy campaign for an individual debarred from boarding a commercial airline based on his physical disability.

Major Types of Advocacy

Self-Advocacy

Self-advocacy denotes a person's capacity to communicate effectively his or her own rights, needs, desires, and interests. It acknowledges that individuals are specialists through experience and includes them in raising concerns and protesting for themselves concerning the things that are significant to them. It denotes that individuals have capacity to ask for what they need and want and to tell others about their feelings and thoughts.

Professional Advocacy

In certain instances, independent advocates who operate on a contractual basis support and enable individuals to express themselves and speak up about their views often during a major crisis or a period of change. In most cases, professional advocacy is usually issue-based and the individual leading such activities will only be required to collaborate with the individual or a group of individuals for a short period.

Citizen Advocacy

This type of advocacy purposes to include individuals within their local community by empowering them to make decisions and have a voice about the things that impact their lives most. In most cases, citizen advocacy engagements are usually long-term and they are not defined by time. Citizen advocates are mostly unpaid members of the local community and in many cases, function while obtaining support from a scheme that is coordinated by the communities that they serve.

Group Advocacy

Group advocacy comprises individuals with shared values, positions, and experiences forming a group to listen and talk to each other and express themselves as one voice about issues that affect them collectively. These groups' purpose to impact public service provision and policy formulation and opinion. They vary depending on the motive, influence, and size. In many cases, local groups’ representatives are incorporated in planning committees and become part of these groups’ monitoring and commissioning of community projects such as the provision of care services.

Peer Advocacy

Peer advocacy denotes one-to-one support offered by advocates who have had similar experiences or disabilities with to an individual seeking or using services. Supported and trained volunteers many times give peer advocacy being part of a project coordinated by individuals within the community. Many have argued that peer advocacy presents the best opportunities for empathizing with people’s needs given that they approach issues as peers (equals) and thus empathize and feel strongly about their situation, often fighting hard to ensure their needs are met.

Systems Advocacy

Systems advocacy mainly relates to altering or influencing the system (practices, policy, and legislation) in a manner that benefits individuals or groups with disabilities within the society. In this regard, systems advocates normally encourage changes to community attitudes and government policies relating to service delivery. In most cases, systems advocacy often negates individual advocacy to avoid conflict around purpose, focus, and the use of resources.

Instructed and Non-Instructed Advocacy

Under instructed advocacy, people tell the advocacy coordinators what they would like them to do or say. Under this context, the role of the advocate entails working with the individual or group to deliver specific needs and wishes. Non-instructed advocacy is the polar opposite of the instructed advocacy and there are about four known methods to non-structured advocacy. They include: the witness observer approach; watching brief approach; person-centered approach; and rights-based approach. It is of paramount importance to note that a person’s capability to instruct an advocate or partake in decision-making might vary.

The Role of Advocacy in Redressing Discrimination

Advocacy plays a crucial role in addressing discrimination within society and it helps to bring social change through a number of strategies. Targeted advocacy helps to reduce discrimination by sensitizing multiple stakeholders including the government and non-governmental organizations to come together and find workable solutions through appropriate policy formulation. Advocacy also helps through the management and the development of brand campaigns that target the redressing of discrimination, helping to bring together stakeholders involved in addressing such social challenges. Advocacy also helps stakeholders to partner and to develop operational and strategic plans based on strong theoretical frameworks of change. Advocacy also helps to build the capacity of the media and civil society organizations to better package and use data to influence political will. It additionally assists in monitoring and evaluation of social change initiatives and advocacy campaigns drawing lessons from previous intricate processes of change.

The Proposed Advocacy Campaign

The Case

This is an advocacy campaign seeking a change in policy for an individual denied the opportunity to board a cheap Australian Airline on the basis of his disability. The young individual, an ex-soldier who served in the Iraq War and got injured while on duty was denied the opportunity by the airline claiming that they did not have enough members of staff on board to help him and therefore redirected him to other airline carriers that have the capacity to cater for disabled individuals. The advocacy campaign is therefore seeking a change in the law to make it criminal for any entity to deny people opportunities based on physical or mental disability, particularly with regard to accessing services that are provided to the public such as in this case.

Aims and Objectives of the Advocacy Strategy

This advocacy campaign is aimed at bringing all stakeholders together to relook at the current laws and make recommendations that will be implemented as a law amendment seeking to criminalize such discriminatory acts in the country. It additionally seeks to empower the organization that investigates such matters relating to discrimination with additional funding by way of extra-budgetary allocation in the coming financial year.

Targets

This advocacy campaign targets the following individuals:

• The executive branch of the government
• The judicial arm of government
• Parliament
• Lobby groups and non-governmental organizations

Allies

• The media
• Corporates that support equality
• Focus groups that promote equality
• Organizations for the disabled within society

Activities and Output

This advocacy campaign aims at coordinating efforts to amend the laws to criminalize any individual or entity that discriminates based on physical or mental incapacity. Never again will an individual be discriminated against based on his or her lack of ability to act or behave normally owing to mental or physical incapacity. The current constitution protects all individuals under the law. However, this law is required to criminalize any direct attempt to discriminate against any individual, native or foreign, against future discriminatory acts. The idea is to have a team of experts obtained from different sectors within the economy to look into the current law and make amendments that will ensure there is no discrimination against individuals with disabilities henceforth.

• Within the first two months, it is expected that a draft proposal will be ready to be tabled in parliament for the normal process of law-making to take place;
• In the meantime, the advocacy team will engage experts in televised shows, which will help to educate the public on the issue at hand;
• The normal process of law-making will be expedited through mass mobilization and strong media coverage, which will help to accelerate the process;
• By highlighting the issue of the young soldier in the media, the story will help bring out other similar cases and will help drive the agenda.

Key Messages

The main message of the advocacy campaign will be:

• To eradicate all forms of discrimination against individuals who are physically or mentally handicapped; and
• To restore the dignity of individuals who are physically or mentally handicapped.

Budget

It is expected that the bulk of the funding for this campaign will come from non-governmental organizations that promote equality within society. Corporate funding will also be sought through lobbying and online ads in the main website of the organizations that support disabled individuals within a society. A total budget of $30,000 is proposed.

Conclusion

Advocacy plays a critical role in addressing discrimination and other social ills within society by giving individuals a platform to express themselves openly and the ability to have their needs and wants to be addressed. Members of the public most of who are ignorant about the challenges that minority groups face in society are sensitized through such advocacy campaigns and consequently informed and this helps to bring stakeholders together to change policies that lead to social improvement. Advocacy also helps in the brand campaign and through stakeholder partnerships between parties, solutions to existing problems are found. 

The current advocacy campaign was based on a case of discrimination based on physical disability whereby an individual was denied entry into an airline carrier based on his disabled status. This advocacy campaign was aimed at criminalizing such acts and changing policies that would see culprits get punished in the future. It was also aimed at ending the stigma against individuals with various forms of disabilities. It was expected that within 6 months, the newly proposed policy would become law and would have been implemented as a result of heavy lobbying and media campaigns geared toward ending discrimination based on physical or psychological incapacity.

References List

1. Flynn, M. and Ward, L., 2018. ‘We Can Change the Future’: Self and Citizen Advocacy. In Prospects for People with Learning Difficulties (pp. 129-148). Routledge.
2. Galer-Unti, R.A., 2010. Advocacy 2.0: Advocating in the digital age. Health promotion practice, 11(6), pp.784-787.
3. Nassar-McMillan, S. C. (2014). A framework for cultural competence, advocacy, and social justice: Applications for global multiculturalism and diversity. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 14(1), 103-118.