Identify an issue that is of importance in your community and choose a group through which you could advocate this issue.

Assignment 3: Plan for Advocacy

Complete all of the
assigned reading for Units 9 to 11 and review your answers to the study
questions. Identify an issue that
is of importance in your community and choose a group through which you could advocate this issue. Next, obtain
your tutor’s approval for your chosen issue and group. Consult with your tutor
if you are having difficulty selecting either an appropriate issue or group or
both. Formulate an advocacy plan for this issue that focuses on working with
this group.
To gather information on
the group, use their websites, printed materials, and videos, and trustworthy
news articles and stories on the group. If you choose to communicate with the group in any way, (email, phone, in-person), please let your tutor know so that
the appropriate research ethics can be discussed and followed.
If any part of your
assignment involves research with human subjects (interview,
survey/questionnaire, focus group, life history, participant observation), read
the Women’s and Gender Studies Research and Ethics Guidelines. Then download and complete the
appropriate recruitment and consent forms, which are available on that page.
Submit them with your assignment.
Your plan for advocacy
should
1. Describe
the group you propose to work with and provide an analysis of the group’s
strengths and weaknesses.
2. Clearly
identify the key issue of your advocacy effort.
3. Describe
the opportunities as well as the barriers that the group may face with respect
to the advocacy issue, you have chosen to address.
4. Contain
a detailed description of how you intend to proceed. Your plan should discuss
o who
will advocate
o to whom
they will advocate
o how
they will advocate (that is, what strategies they will use)
o what
group processes and tools will be used
o the
timelines
o a
budget
5. where
appropriate, include alternative possibilities for each of these categories and
give your reasons for the choices you have made. Be creative and imaginative in
your choices.
Your advocacy plan should
also reflect your responses to these critical questions:
o What is
the focus of my advocacy strategy?
o Who are
my target audiences and what do I want them to do?
o What is
the impact that I hope these strategies will have?
o What
are the actual policy changes and decision-making structures that I want to
change or influence?
For help in answering
these questions, see
Association for Women’s Rights in
Development (AWID). (2003, December). An advocacy guide for feminists. Young
Women and Leadership, 1, 1–8.
The structure of your
advocacy plan should be clearly laid out. Include appropriate headings and
subheadings, and provide sufficient information under each heading to give a
clear description of the situation and the proposed plan of action.
Your plan/essay should be
no less than 1,500 and no more than 3,000 words long. It should detail the
research you have done on the issue and the resource materials you plan to use.
Remember to provide scholarly support for the claims that
you make in your essay and to document
your sources thoroughly and correctly using APA style. All direct
quotations and indirect references to course materials (study guides and
readings) and to sources that you find in your own academic research (books,
journal articles, news articles, organization websites) must be cited both
in-text and in a references list. Every time you use someone else’s words,
ideas, statistics, or research, you must give them proper credit by using an
in-text citation. Proper in-text citations are worth a large part of each of
this course’s assignments. If you have not used in-text citations before,
please contact your tutor with questions. For help on using APA format, go to
the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).
Your tutor will also want
to know when ideas are your own; indicate that by using the first person and by
clearly stating, for example, “I think,” “I argue,” or “I propose.”
Assignment 3 will be
evaluated for
o accurate
representation of your ideas on group process, strategies, and tools as
presented in the course materials
o a rich
representation of the group drawn from various source materials
o a comprehensive response to the critical questions listed above
o clarity
of writing, including
o organization
o sentences
o grammar
o mechanics
o style
o vocabulary
o spelling
o documentation

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