Themes: Policy Development
Objectives
- To make participants develop policy recommendations concerning to issues they see relevant
- To make participants experience on developing policy recommendations for lobbying and advocacy purposes
- To make participants understand about the social welfare system and its implications
Duration and Planning
- 5 minutes : Explanation of the method
- 15 minutes : Defining the objective
- 15 minutes : Deciding the target audience
- 15 minutes : Setting out the issue clearly
- 15 minutes : Provide options
- 20 minutes : Developing policy recommendations
- 5 minutes : Debriefing
Materials
- Flipcharts
- Board markers
- Post-its
- Pens
Recommended Method
The facilitator provides the participants with the policy recommendation development process flowchart as below :
During this stage, the facilitator divides the groups according to the session implemented before where they have seen the issues during lobbying session where they have already practiced the issues so that they can pick up from the information they already have and continue from there or divide separate groups according to the interests of the people.
The facilitator explains that, during this session, there is no limitation that the participants will work on the policies. In each stage, the participants will work on first 5 stage in the first session as :
- Defining the objective
- Target Audience
- Issue
- Provision of options ( If something doesn’t work, what can work? )
In the second session “Revising policy recommendations”, the participants will work on the actual policy recommendations that they have already developed and adopt these policy recommendations to the contexts that they live in, or they consider relevant in international context. The facilitator informs the participants each stage will take 15 minutes.
Defining the objective
The facilitator tell the participants that they have 15 minutes to define the objective by answering the following questions :
- Is it the introduction of new legislation, or changes to existing laws?
- Is it a new strategy for government, or change in direction of an existing strategy or to improve an existing policy or service?
- Is the policy develop to draw attention to a local issue such as planning or transport services?
The facilitator checks the participants through the process and ensures that they are defining their objectives concerning the policy recommendations according to the needs that they see relevant.
Until all the groups define their objective ( not a target audience, not a solution but an objective ), the facilitator should not continue with the second stage and ask participants their opinions.
Target Audience
In this stage, the facilitator explains that who will be the target audience of their policy recommendation is it a local issue or a national or international issue. In case that the objective is to influence the government strategy, a parliamentary committee or civil servants in government departments will likely be the best audience. It is important to also decide who the key stakeholders are and what influence they can have on the policy decisions, i.e. what NGOs, government departments, businesses, etc. will have an interest in the area and the research that you have produced.
Set the issue clearly
After identifying the objective and target audience, the participants should define issues from the statistical information or the reports that supports their claims. In that phase, the facilitator should make it clear that, even the issues are exists from their experiences, it does not matter without an objective data or information.
Giving Options
The issues might be clear, but there are more ways to go from point A to point B, the facilitator explains to participants that, they have to find at least 3 separate ways as a solution to the policy makers so that in case one option do not function or work for them, they have more options to work with the policy makers.
Developing policy recommendations
The participants develop their own policy recommendations concerning to the issues that they see relevant with options to be implemented by the policy makers. In this stage, it is important to make the participants understand that the policy recommendations can be viable or not and it does not matter, they should work on a recommendation which is really important to them.
Debriefing
After this round, the facilitator asks groups to leave their flipcharts and working papers aside which they will continue in the second stage and debriefs the overall process by asking following questions.
- What issues that you have identified and worked on?
- Did you need to give up some parts of your ideas due to restrictions? Was it hard to provide options more than one?
- How did you feel while developing the policies?
- Do you think the policies that you have developed now can help the young people? If yes, why? If no, why?
After the discussion is over, the facilitator tells participants that they will continue with the second stage of the implementation of the policy recommendations.
Additional Information and Readings
Cardi. (2020). 10 Guidelines for writing policy recommendations. In lenus.ie.
