Strengthening advocacy organizations through self-reflection and research

Advocacy organizations face increasing challenges and pressures. In a world with shrinking civil space, it is important to support civil society organizations (CSOs) to operate in the most effective way for their contexts, to develop robust education policy that serves the needs of society.

Faced with unstable or unpredictable environments, CSOs need to engage in adaptive management practices, to avoid the pitfalls that could lead to a loss of influence or their operating licenses, or even prison.

Action research is a complementary methodology for CSOs in this regard, as it supports them in generating actionable insights for their policy influencing activities via regular reflection.

Education Out Loud highlights the importance of adaptive management and continuous learning for CSOs in advocacy and policy influencing. By embracing action research and collaboration, these organizations can navigate complex environments, drive social change, and contribute to robust education policies that serve society’s needs.  

As part of Education Out Loud’s efforts to contribute to the education advocacy field, MDF Training and Consultancy and the Australian Council for Educational Research UK (ACER UK) consortium adopted an action research approach to support effective advocacy and policy influencing among Education Out Loud grantee partners. This approach includes developing their innovative Action Research and Learning Cycle. The objective is to help organizations improve their advocacy and policy influencing by iteratively testing the assumptions of their program’s theory of change, validating their advocacy and policy influencing approaches, and embracing adaptive management practices.

This ambitious initiative was deployed, tested, and validated through direct collaboration with and support of three Education Out Loud partners across five – countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa including:

• Institute of Informatics and Development (IID) and the equality consortium in Bangladesh
• School for Life and the Citizen-Led Action for Educational Accountability and Responsiveness (CLEAR) consortium in Ghana
• The Girls Education Advocacy in the Region (GEAR) Alliance in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
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Impact of MDF-ACER Action Research and Learning Cycles in Education Out Loud partners

 

Partners enthusiastically engaged with the MDF-ACER Action Research and Learning Cycle, and produced research that reportedly has meaningful insights for their programming and organization. The cycle proved effective for CSOs enhancing their ability to engage in adaptive management practices. Key organizational changes included commitment to integrating research into daily activities and improved capacity for data management and stakeholder engagement.

 The social change matrix proved particularly helpful. Grantees reported that this tool gave them a structured way to map out their stakeholders and explore changes they wished to achieve.

“As we delved deeper into the action research, we began to grasp the complex relationship between formal and informal stakeholders. We were able to understand how to engage them for change at individual and systemic levels, and it was truly an eye-opening learning for us.”

Research Assistant Education Out Loud Partner

 

 The partners showed they could develop actionable learning agendas, which provided insights for adaptive management practices. Nevertheless, they face some obstacles in implementation within advocacy and policy influencing. These center around partners’ size and research capacity. This likely means organizations should begin small, with the complexity and scale of their research growing with their confidence and capabilities.  

Lessons from research on advocacy strategies

The MDF-ACER consortium also conducted its own research, documenting advocacy and policy influencing strategies used by Education Out Loud supported organizations and their partners, and exploring the conditions under which they were effective. CSOs in this study demonstrated remarkable ability to navigate complex environments and implement advocacy and policy influencing activities. A significant theme was the importance of collaboration and capacity building among CSOs.

The study identified two main categories of effective collaboration: CSOs speaking with a collective voice, and sharing knowledge and skills within their networks.  The research identified effective advocacy and policy influencing strategies, categorized into five main types: bottom-up approaches, youth-led initiatives, direct engagement, media advocacy, and policy document development.

Their success hinged on deep understanding of local context; effective approaches in one country are not necessarily suitable in another.  

“The findings from the research have given us a number of openings and … learnings that we are going to take on board to ensure that citizens’ interface with duty bearers at the local level is enhanced.”

Advocacy and Policy Influencing Specialist, Education Out Loud Partner

“Through this action research, instead of us being interested as intermediators between the community and their parliamentarians, we want to facilitate an engagement whereby the community actually engages their parliamentarians, the policymakers.”

National Coordinator, Education Out Loud Partner

In collaboration at the national level, we have a powerful civil society movement that speaks with one voice according to the Sustainable Development Goals and according to the implementation of policies in Malawi. This has enabled us not to be undermined when we go to the Minister. They [Malawian civil society organizations] know that they are not alone. Civil society is there. The NGO body is there. Everyone is there.

Programs Manager, Education Out Loud Partner

Learn more

The research findings are shared in a main report, a case study for each partner: IID (Bangladesh), School for Life (Ghana), GEAR Alliance (Malawi, Zambia & Zimbabwe).
Additionally, three open access online learning modules hosted by the Global Campaign for Education are available to all civil society organizations. The modules cover these topics:

• Using the social change matrix for improving advocacy programs
• Good practice in citizen-led advocacy
• Approaches and methods for action research.   

This blog was originnally posted on the GPE website. Read the original blog here.