Enhancement of Advocacy Skills of NGOs to Effectively Influence the Policy Making Process

The project proposes to strengthen advocacy knowledge and skills for the selected NGO representatives with the goal of enabling them to participate in and influence public policy in the field of social development and rights. The project will fulfill the terms of references provided by the Funder and will prepare a detailed curriculum for a series of 3 capacity building trainings; conduct the training workshops in order to significantly enhance the participants‘ knowledge of and modern methods related to advocacy, fact based lobbying and awareness raising; develop a toolbox on advocacy and make it operational and accessible for NGOs through a dedicated website.

Goal of the project is for the majority of the NGOs participating in the capacity building trainings on advocacy to plan and implement more effective advocacy campaigns by using their new skills and web-based toolbox; with the longer-term objective being improved policy decisions related to human rights and social development.

Objectives, activities and indicators of the project:

Objective 1:  Prepare a detailed program and curriculum for the series of 3 capacity building trainings and work between training workshops.

Objective 2: Organize 3 two-day capacity-building workshops for no less than 15 selected Lithuanian advocacy NGOs in order to significantly enhance the participants’ knowledge on principles and methods of advocacy, fact-based lobbying and awareness raising.

Objective 3: Develop and make operational and available to NGOs a dedicated website with a toolbox on advocacy.

The primary target groups of the project will be the individual participants in the seminars/workshops (one from each NGO) and thus the host NGOs of the participants, and all NGOs that can access the advocacy toolbox on the web. The secondary beneficiaries will be the NGOs in Lithuania networking and cooperating with the civil societies participating in the capacity building.

Outcomes: the role of NGO advocacy and civic monitoring will be enhanced.

Result: advocacy actions on critical human right issues arranged, including mental disability, and encompassing particularly stigmatized populations such as Roma, LGBT, etc.

For the purposes of the project implementation, the Coalition will gather a group of national and international experts who will be responsible for the content of the project activities under administrative management of the staff of the Coalition.