A better childhood. For every child. www.childrenssociety.org.uk Make Change: A
A better childhood. For every child. www.childrenssociety.org.uk Make Change: A quick-start guide to local campaigning Hi. Welcome to The Children’s Society’s guide to campaigning, which will help you make a difference for children and young people. Firstly, a massive thank you! The success of The Children’s Society depends on you to make real change, and it’s fantastic that you’re getting involved. Whether you’re just getting started, or you’re a seasoned campaigner, this little guide will help you plan and run a winning campaign in your area. Whether you do something as simple as signing a petition, as involved as arranging a demonstration, or as direct as giving a speech: any action, big or small, to make a better world for young people to live in makes you a campaigner. Contents The Children’s Society 3 What is campaigning? 3 Planning 4 Making a change 4 Raising awareness 5 Getting started 5 Growing 6 Meetings with other campaigners 6 Forming a group 7 Alliances 8 Making change with your church 9 Lobbying your MP 10 Lobbying your local councillor 11 Growing media attention 13 Photographs 14 Materials 14 Case studies 14 Campaigning using social media 14 Blogging 15 Succeeding 16 Celebrate your successes, however small 16 Evaluating 17 Tools, links, resources, contact 18 Press release template 19 02 The Children’s Society We aim to create a society where children and young people are valued, respected and happy. Through our campaigns and research, we seek to influence policy and perceptions to improve child protection so young people have a better chance in life. Since Edward Rudolf founded The Children’s Society in 1881, we’ve been working tirelessly for children and young people and, every step of the way, this work has been supported by dedicated, concerned people just like you. In recent times, we campaigned on behalf of young runaways, and lobbied for an end to detention of children seeking asylum. Campaigning is about helping people come together to change something. It might be about tackling injustice, encouraging people to make a particular decision, or changing the way people think about an issue. Or it can be about reversing a decision or halting a dangerous proposal. As a campaigner supporting The Children’s Society, there’s a wide variety of activities that you might take part in. You don’t need to devote every waking hour to it; any time you can spare will really help. You may find yourself writing letters, signing petitions, organising marches, holding meetings, arranging prayer vigils or devising publicity stunts. Or you could develop fundraising ideas and talk to others about what their support could provide. If you become a house box network coordinator, or organise a fundraising event, you’ll be making a long-term commitment to the needs of young people. Call 0300 303 7000 for more information about getting involved in fundraising. Your campaigning might be focused more on reaching out to local and national media, or meeting with elected officials. It can be all of this, and more. What is campaigning? 03 Planning What is it you want to achieve? Be clear and specific. For example, some end goals might be having freshly cooked school meals in your local area, or making sure the police are trained in responding to child sexual exploitation. You need to be clear what your end goal is, then work out who the people are that have the power to make that change for you. Who is it that you need to target? A lot of campaigns, regardless of the size or issue, get off on the wrong foot by not being clear about who they are targeting in their campaign. You need to think about who can act to enable you to meet your goal. This group or individual will be the direct target(s) of the campaign. Making a change Sometimes you’ll be able to meet your principal target directly to talk to them. But you’ll probably need to persuade people who influence them too – the last thing you want is to convince your target that this change is important and then have other people persuade them otherwise. Quite often, you’ll target the person lowest down in the hierarchy who has the power to make the change you want. It’s no good always building campaigns that target the Prime Minister. So, meeting with ‘influencers’ is very important. This may include teachers and young people, or all local constituents. OutCry! We were delighted to achieve our OutCry! campaign objective when the government announced its timetable to end the detention of children for immigration purposes. The family unit at Yarl’s Wood was closed immediately. From the outset of the campaign – in collaboration with Bail for Immigration Detainees – we looked at what we wanted to change (immigration detention of children and young people), who had the power to change it (national government) and what methods and resources we had at our disposal for achieving it. 04 END IMMIGRATION DETENTION OF CHILDREN Every year, the UK immigration system locks up 1,000 children. Detention is damaging, expensive and unnecessary. We want to live in a more humane and compassionate society. We believe detaining children is immoral and unacceptable. Do you? Join the campaign at www.outcrycampaign.org.uk The Children’s Society Registered Charity No. 221124 | Bail for Immigration Detainees Registered Charity No. 1077187. Exempted by the OISC | The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund Registered Charity No. 1064238 Photograph posed by model © Shutterstock | 7584/10/09 OutCry! A2 Poster 20/1/10 10:49 Page 1 Raising awareness On some campaigns, you might want to raise awareness of a situation or change the way people think about an issue. This won’t be about identifying one particular target, as your target will be a wider group. If you were campaigning to raise awareness of young people being trafficked, for instance, you might target local transport centres and public spaces. These campaigns will depend on strong public appearances, events and alliances with organisations that can expose your issue to lots of people, such as schools and media outlets. • Don’t put the cart before the horse. Many campaigns and campaign actions are not successful because the organisers have only thought about the action, not about what it’s intended to achieve. Don’t plan to have a petition, stunt or meeting before you’ve worked out what the best course of action to take would be. First get your objectives clear, then think about what actions, and contacts, can help you to achieve them. • Think about what resources you have and what you might need. Do you need people with specific skills – writing newsletters, organising meetings? Can The Children’s Society help you with this? (You’ll find contact details at the end of this guide). • Think about the external environment and other peoples’ timings. When is the local council setting its budget, when are the key committee meetings, when are local elections in your area etc? Some campaigns make the mistake of running the campaign based on their own timings and ignore key dates in the external environment. You won’t be expected to act as The Children’s Society official representative. Your actions will be more powerful if you’re acting as an independent citizen, in support of our campaign. So make sure people know you don’t work for The Children’s Society and that you’re representing yourself and stating your own views. Getting started Start in your own front room. If you have friends who may want to get involved, invite them round for a coffee and talk about the issues you care about. Start making a plan. You might think chatting to friends, or sending an email, will never achieve anything. But it’s worth remembering there’s no such thing as starting off ‘too small’: lots of little actions will always add up to big change. 05 Growing You can start growing your campaign as soon as you decide you want to do something. If you’re starting on your own, or with a group of friends, start spreading the discussion; chat to neighbours and family members. Quite often, you’ll be surprised who is touched by the issue and is keen to get involved. Meetings with other campaigners Holding an open meeting is a great way of building your local campaign. You can create a space for newcomers to learn more about the issues, decide if they want to help out and discuss together how to move it forward. Before the meeting, have a think about the following things. • Have you got a suitable venue that’s not too noisy? • Is it easy to find and easy to access, with good transport links? • Get an idea of how many people might be coming. Check with the venue that there’ll be enough space for all of you. • Make sure everyone knows when and where the event is taking place. • Try to organise the meeting at a time when most people will be able to come, like uploads/Finance/ make-change-a-quick-start-guide-to-local-campaigning.pdf
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- Publié le Dec 30, 2022
- Catégorie Business / Finance
- Langue French
- Taille du fichier 1.2230MB