A day in the life of an advocacy accompanier

As an Advocacy Accompanier, I probably have one of the strangest named, but most interesting jobs in CAFOD. I support CAFOD’s partners to do advocacy on issues like children’s rights, economic justice, land grabs, extra-judicial killings and climate change and in the last year I’ve worked in six different countries. But how can you be an expert on so many different places and issues, my friends often ask me? The short answer is that I’m not. And nor do I need to be. The local organisations on the ground have a wealth of knowledge gained from the work that they do every day that is different from mine. My role is to support them think through the how of advocacy and together we grapple with questions such as: How can you make sure that your land grabs report lands you in the Minister’s office and not in jail? How can make the public buzz about budgets? Why would a sceptical politician choose to attend Stakeholder Dialogue meeting at your community centre and not steak barbecue lunch at the 5* hotel corporate lobbying fest ? I ask these questions because effective advocacy always requires a strategy: it’s not enough to be passionate about a cause, to publish a lengthy report or spend your time convincing those who already agree with you.

The kind of support I give varies: workshop facilitator, mentor, critical friend, sounding board, or researcher – everyone has different needs so there is no one size fits all approach to this job! Perhaps it would be a lot less work and cheaper to run a generic advocacy course in order to disseminate a CAFOD approach to advocacy. However, I suspect that this would be ineffective, out of touch with local reality and risky in the long-run.

So, why this word accompaniment in my job title?

Who’s leading the charge against corruption?

Photo of an anti-corruption protest "Enough filth!" at Brazilian Congress by Flickr user The World Wants a Real Deal

A year ago, I wrote a post called “The ‘middle income’ poor and corruption” about campaigns in India and Brazil against corruption. Lessons we learned from campaigns in Brazil, and the unfolding of a dramatic anti-corruption movement in India have me questioning: just who is leading the “charge” against corruption in these middle income giants?

Clearly, the key to sustainable, lasting change in corruption will be strong coalitions between rural and urban people, and across class lines.

Both Indian and Brazilian campaigns have shown how different groups have different interests and favored means of communication, and holding together a lasting coalition of them is no small feat.

Why the Church must be involved in politics

There seems to be an increasingly vocal minority of what can only be termed secular fundamentalists in the UK who want the Church and other faiths to stay out of politics because they disagree with parts of its agenda.  By politics I mean having an influence on policy and being involved in providing services.

Such thinking is not only deeply illiberal (ironic when many of the most passionate advocates of this cause claim strong liberal credentials), it goes against the interests of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.