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Archive for March, 2010

The New Advocacy: NGOs take note…
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Public involvement has changed how advocacy works.

Today, civil society organizations – whether they are local nonprofits or national associations – are fostering social change through collaborative dialogue with their publics instead of “top-down” or expert-oriented campaigns.

By involving the public, who want to be engaged, these advocacy efforts are leading to more sustainable and innovative solutions to shared problems.

Old School!

Civil society organizations play a crucial role in democratic societies.  Working outside government, they provide service to those in need and help government implement the right policy approaches.

In the past, many of these organizations advocated for change in a more-or-less closed process.  Staff or insiders would decide what was wrong with government policy, design on what they thought was the “right” solution and engage in advocacy to persuade government decision-makers to adopt this approach.

In this old school model of advocacy, the broader public or community were bystanders, not proactively engaged in finding and implementing solutions.

The New Advocacy

More forward-thinking organizations in civil society, though, are using newer and more participatory forms of creating positive social change.  Instead of bypassing the public, they actively involve the broader community in thinking about problems and how to solve them.

We’re working with a nonprofit organization who have really embraced the new advocacy.  Their mission is to create a more sustainable food system and instead of just lobbying government with their own solutions, they are hosting a series of community-level dialogues across Canada to talk about food security and how it can be improved.

They’ve recognized that policy change happens when the change is chosen and championed by members of the public.  Only then will decision-makers, who are often “behind” public opinion, champion change themselves.

This is the “new” advocacy.

- Ellis Westwood -

Our Health. Our Perspectives. Our Solutions.
Friday, March 19th, 2010

Ascentum is pleased to be assisting the New Brunswick Health Council (NBHC) in its first province-wide citizen engagement initiative, entitled ‘Our Health. Our Perspectives. Our Solutions.’ Manon and I are particularly pleased to be working on this project in our home province! ☺

Engaging citizens in meaningful dialogue is a core element of the NBHC’s mandate, which states that, “New Brunswickers have a right to be aware of the decisions being made, to be part of the decision-making process, and to be aware of the outcomes delivered by the health system and its cost.”

The team over at NBHC is great to work with as they clearly embody this mandate. They have brought Ascentum on to ensure the engagement process is appropriate and results in meaningful feedback that will ultimately inform the NBHC’s recommendations to improve health services.

The first of 4 dialogues in Phase I kicked off last weekend in Moncton, and will be circling the province to Bathurst, Edmundston and Saint John. Phase I focuses on exploring the perspectives and concerns of citizens with respect to the current state of New Brunswick’s health system.

Phase II dialogues will take place in the same four locations – the four corners of the province – and will shift to looking to the future, to envision the kind of health care system New Brunswickers want to have, and identify possible solutions to the challenges identified in Phase I.

Finally, the engagement initiative will culminate in a provincial dialogue to be held in Fredericton in June, which will bring together participants from all 4 locations in Phase I and II. This Phase III dialogue will identify shared priorities and elements of a common vision that will inform and guide the NBHC in its recommendations to the health system partners.

You can learn more about this citizen engagement initiative, and access the Conversation Guide, by visiting the NBHC website: http://www.nbhc.ca/index.cfm

Stay tuned as this exciting project unfolds…

- Nicole Pollack -

Building a Mental Health Strategy for Canada – Through Public Participation
Friday, March 12th, 2010

During the first two months of my co-op placement here at Ascentum, I’ve been writing a case study on the development of a pan-Canadian, consensus-based mental health strategy. This is a nation-wide initiative of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), which collaborated with Ascentum to design the in-person regional dialogues and the online consultation process. (more…)

The New Media Experiment
Friday, March 5th, 2010

There is a great series on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) called the Age of Persuasion. It is all about the business of marketing. The show is hosted by Terry O’Reilly who happens to be both compelling AND persuasive himself.

I listen to it religiously through the power of podcasts. Coincidently, the 27-minute episodes correlate to my morning or afternoon commutes.

There was an episode that aired last year entitled, “Embracing New Media.” I had missed it, so when I saw the title I thought, “Fantastic! Terry tackles social media adoption.” Unfortunately, the title misled me. Fortunately the episode was informative and illuminating in other ways, especially when you extrapolate it to the adoption of social media.

Terry’s premise is that with adoption of every new media, you can count on several things taking place. First, people will inevitably say that this is the end of previously adopted media. For example, television would be the end of radio or the internet will be the end of television.

Second, you can pretty much guarantee that people will try use the tried and true tricks of the former media in new media. Think about a newspaper ad being transformed (e.g. read aloud) on a radio ad in the 1920s. They were pretty boring and ineffective at first.

Thirdly, he makes the conclusion that while new media needs to be experimented with, to see what works, old media needs to reinvent itself. Just ask yourself, in today’s age, why do we still have telegrams? Their role is for formal announcements and congratulations. Old media has a new or niche role.

So what does this all mean for social media? What we can count on is that with the adoption of any new media we will try old tricks that may or may not work that well. We have seen that take place with websites like brochures or Twitter feeds that clearly don’t understand the concept of 140 characters. Neither of these attempts are wrong, because what we also know, and Terry shares with us so well, is that we have to experiment.

We know that Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, wikis, and other social media need at least three things to work. First, they need to figure out the value proposition for the end-user to “subscribe” and to continue to have interest. What does our audience get out of this?

Second, they need to figure out the specific organizational context in which the social media is be utilized. What do we as an organization get out of this? How does it align with our goals?

Finally, there also has to be a willingness and expectation set that things will be tried, will work, will not work, and will need to be adjusted and refined. SO THEREFORE what our community wants and what we originally wanted, may have to be re-worked as well. (The caps are just to make sure you were still paying attention.)

I will leave you with one last thought from the Age of Persuasion. When the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell was figuring out how the telephone was going to be used at first, they needed to figure out the protocol to start and stop a conversation. There were many words that were thrown around but we eventually settled on “Hello.” The inventor of the telephone himself had proposed something completely different. His proposal was to start each conversation with, “Ahoy! Ahoy!” (like Mr. Burns on the Simpsons!)  Experimentation, trial and error, and user preferences finally determined across many languages that “Hello” was what worked best. We are at the same point with social media adoption and practices. Before this new media is worked out, we have much experimentation, trial and error, and evolving preferences to look forward to. It is something we can count on.

The unofficial podcast for the Age of Persuasion is at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbc_ageofpersuasion. There are too many copyright issues for CBC to host on their own site.

- Joseph Peters -