The A Spot

So tomorrow I leave for an extended trip to Kiev, Ukraine and Prishtina, Kosovo. Both places I have been to before but I still get a little antsy just before a long trip. The kids are prepared, excited about Mommy taking an airplane ride, and have asked me to bring them back a train. Not sure what that is about but I will do my best.

I am excited about the trip as it gives me a great opportunity to see some of our work in action and contribute a bit. In Ukraine we are tackling an interesting issue - how to get government officials and citizens talking to each other more effectively, constructively and authentically. In a small pilot we are working with a new consultant, Bill Edwards, from Gov3 Consulting, a UK based firm to run a workshop with NGO leaders and government officials. It has been a steep learning curve as I learn the ins and outs of working with government ministries.

Now Kosovo on the other hand is an entirely fly by the seat of my pants kind of trip. As usual. We are making changes to IPKO Institute and rethinking what we have to contribute to the development of Kosovo now that it is an independent country. I get to spend some time with Akan Ismaili who is the CEO of IPKOnet and co founder of IPKO. We are cooking up all sorts of great ideas and hopefully I can blog about them soon!

The run up to this trip has me thinking alot about foreign assistance and US foreign assistance in particular. I know, I know, I am not much fun at a dinner party. But there is a great video circulating from the Center for Global Development which popularizes an idea that is long overdue - the US needs a new foreign assistance act. Take a gander at their video on You Tube.

More from the road.

(Or, the story of how one activist motivated an apathetic, apolitical citizen (me!) ) by A Spot Guest Blogger Gretchen Elias

My roommate, Jess, works for Toxics Action Center, a nonprofit spin-off of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). The PIRG is a nationwide advocacy organization with a network of affiliated nonprofits in nearly every state. Jess has been working there for the past two years as a community organizer, providing coaching, mentoring, and advice to citizens fighting toxic pollution in their communities.

Right now, Jess is working with a Vermont-wide campaign, Safe Power VT , to shut down Vermont Yankee (pictured above, during a cooling tower collapse in 2007), a decades-old nuclear power plant in southern Vermont. It’s going to be a tough battle. The nuke plant has a powerful lobby on its side, along with some effective media coverage portraying the plant as a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way to produce energy. Of course, the citizens groups that Jess advises feel differently—and in my opinion, the facts are in their favor. But to beat the nuke lobbyists and convince the legislature to move forward with shutting down Vermont Yankee, they will first have to convince a heck of a lot of ordinary citizens across Vermont.

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Teresa’s Making Do With What You’ve Got entry raised an interesting question, one that’s been nagging me for a long time: how do advocacy proponents and advocacy trainers approach the issue of who is benefitting from their work, and what those beneficiaries are advocating for?

I used to work at an umbrella organization that assisted NGOs interested in gaining access to events and committee meetings at the United Nations. My group was issue neutral — we supported the right of all NGOs, regardless of mission or orientation, to have access to the proceedings of the UN and have their say on issues before decision-making bodies. One of our member organizations happened to be the National Rifle Association, a group whose mission I happen to disagree with. But it was my job, as much as it was in my power to do so, to make sure that they had access to key delegations and committees at the United Nations — the better to persuade UN representatives that the right to own guns was important and should be safeguarded at the international level.

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Last Tuesday was Town Meeting Day here in Vermont – a State holiday that allows voters in small and mid-sized towns to get together and debate the coming year. In my rural town, more than half of our 903 residents turned out to discuss the annual school budget, the purchase of a new fire truck, and how much support we should offer to a library in a neighboring town. Children colored and played in a near-by schoolroom, and in the middle of the meeting the town recessed to share a lunch of shepherd’s pie and jello salad.

The discussion was civil and orderly, governed by Robert’s ubiquitous Rules of Order. Everyone who wanted to have a say on a given issue, for or against, was given the chance to speak and make their case. The whole affair was eerily reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom of Speech, in which a weatherbeaten rural citizen — with more than a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — rises to speak his mind at a public meeting, the rest of the crowd leaning in the better to hear him.

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Welcome to the “A” Spot, and welcome to our inaugural post!

And just what, you must be wondering, does the “A” stand for?

Why, it stands for “advocacy,” of course. The Advocacy Spot.

Hmmm. Yeah… And I guess now you’re probably wondering what we mean by “advocacy”.

Good question! That, in fact, is exactly what the A Spot is all about! Now that’s out of the way, we can get started.

Pardon me? Oh. Right.

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