Themes: Lobbying and Social Rights
Objectives
- To make participants experience the lobbying
- To make participants develop a plan of lobbying
- To make participants understand about the decision-making mechanisms
Duration and Planning
- 15 minutes : Flowchart of lobbying
- 15 minutes : Proposing an Idea
- 15 minutes : Developing the law/legislation/action document
- 25 minutes : Engaging with politicians
- 5 minutes : Debriefing
Materials
- Flipcharts
- Flowchart printed
- Board markers
- Post-its
- Pens
Recommended Method
The facilitator provides the following flowchart of the legislative process in an “imaginary” country due to international nature of the activity. However, if you are implementing this activity within national context, develop the flowchart of the legislative process in-line with the national context.
After the presentation of the flow-chart ask participants to develop their ideas in the first stage by referring to the experiences and using the knowledge developed within the project and propose a law/legislation/action document. During the implementation, the participants are allowed to use any type of material as well as engage with each other’s groups. Prior to the start, the participants are divided into the 5 groups. The facilitator informs the participants that, they must choose a cause which is important for them to propose an idea at the first stage and the facilitators will be the decision-makers and they must choose one person within their group to present their arguments to the facilitators.
In this process, they can prepare a detailed document or they can have basic arguments and the facilitator will decide and provide arguments why it is viable and why it is not viable.
Engaging with politicians
After the participants develop their arguments, the facilitator listen, questions and they say “Yes” or “No”. During this process, the others can intervene and say their opinions about the idea and each group has maximum of 5 minutes to convince the facilitator i.e. decision maker to accept their idea.
After the engagement round is over, the debriefing phase is implemented. During this process, the facilitator ask participants to evaluate their experiences and compare it with the real-life and how it could be and adds that, tomorrow morning session will continue with the policy development so that the participants will work on detailed on their arguments and they can continue with the arguments that they have developed during this session.
Additional Information and Readings
- Hammond, H. (2022, June 12). Lobbying: a tactic for social change. The Commons. Retrieved : https://commonslibrary.org/lobbying-a-tactic-for-social-change/#The_Process_of_Lobbying
