Research to Advocacy: bridging the gap

1. Research to Advocacy:bridging the gap

2. Pro-poor Advocacy Pro-poor advocacy shapes political decisions and actions that respond to the interests of people who directly face poverty and disadvantage.

3. Key drivers of advocacy • Learning based advocacy (CMS, research, lesson learning workshops) • Broad network across the country • Research: based on real experience and evidence • Media • Alliances • pNGOs, GoB, Donors, Private Sector What are our strongest drivers?

4. Research • A research goldmine: • 36 projects; 32 partners; country-wide presence from rural to urban contexts; innovative and proven interventions • Research officers and assistants exploring challenges faced by the extreme poor: • Gender, khasland, health, Adivasis, old age, disability, climate change adaptation, slum evictions, …

5. Potential Advocacy ChallengesBased on shiree beneficiary experience • Exclusion from or poor access to services • Inability to cope with external shocks • Health and Nutrition vulnerability • Poor or adverse engagement with economic processes • Gender specific vulnerabilities and threats

6. Potential Advocacy ChallengesBased on shiree beneficiary experience • These categories are all potentially responsive to policy initiatives • They all fall within the scope of development programme design (GoB or donor funded) • They all show potential for private sector initiatives Hence they are all valid subjects for shiree advocacy activity

7. Research to Advocacy • How can the research programme add value to this advocacy agenda? – leading to greater relevance and impact  examples? • 2 similar pieces of research , yielding similar findings, will not have the same advocacy impact?

8. Research to Advocacy At different stages of the research cycle – looking at it from an advocacy perspective • Identification of research themes • Validation of research selected • Planning of research processes • Peer review and validation of results • Presentation of results • Follow up

9. Some questions to consider • How to choose research topics? • How to publicise research underway? • Who to choose to undertake research? • What terms of reference? • Who to do the research with? • How big? What scope? • Who validates the research? • How, where and when are results presented?

10. Ideas to strengthen advocacy within shiree • Strengthened link between researchers and key advocacy issues identified • Limiting advocacy challenges to current research topics • Examples of good practice: • Khas land • Slum Eviction

11. Ideas to strengthen advocacy within shiree • Focused advocacy workshops • Would focus on one advocacy challenge • Social protection • Gender equality • Health • Disaster risk reduction • Bring experts of identified theme to present their knowledge on the issue – advocate to us • Endorse advocacy outputs (i.e. policy briefs)

12. Ideas to strengthen advocacy within shiree • New website! • Shiree has launched a new website with a page dedicated to advocacy challenges • Would you use this as a forum to discuss or give feedback on shiree’s advocacy outputs?

13. pNGO key advocacy challenges • Are there any challenges shiree is not addressing in its advocacy campaign? • In your experience, which five challenges are most apparent or relevant? • What is your organization doing for advocacy?