Creative Documentation and Steps to an Advocacy Community

With the best of leaders,
When the work is done,
The project completed,
The people all say
'We did it ourselves'

With big plans for piloting advocacy programming in the late winter I have been working to recruit as many teachers as possible, find appropriate curriculum, and work on my youth recruitment pitch. The process has been difficult for sure, because with budget cuts comes a lack of funding for after-school programs.

What I need to make certain is that I take some time to purchase some device for recording my work with youth. This way I can document progress and illustrate the power of my work for anyone interested in seeing it. Much like the opening passage suggests, self-empowerment (especially for youth) can be really powerful. Being able to document and produce images verifying the empowerment process (Awareness-Connection-Activism) is critical to persuading funders to continue funding, and sustaining youth confidence.

Two other aspects of youth work I would like to explore are using media with young people and hands-on advocacy experience. Without these two, the advocacy community (so integral to sustaining the fun, friends, and experiential learning ingredients in the whole) will be lost. Thus, using media and approved hands-on work will be something I will need to seriously investigate. In fact, I will need to know those aspects so well that I can teach the skills to an eight year old. If I am not totally familiar with the power of social media and the methodology of experiential learning my program will lose it's foundation and it will become vulnerable to hijacking.

I see these steps as necessary to creating an advocacy community:

1. Introduce educator to youth
2. Introduce fun, food, and friends environment
3. Roll out Call to Arms
4. Educate
5. Use media to educate, organize and entertain
6. Hands-on experiential advocacy learning
7. Use community centers to teach community advocacy
8. Participants design and implement advocacy events
9. Distribute toolkits for beginner advocates and graduates of program
10. Call graduates back to teach