Building Future Advocates - YLC 2012 Workshop
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Whether your chapter is taking its first steps into advocacy or you're looking to do more, we're here to help! Advocacy is an essential part of Habitat's mission and it's easy to implement in your own chapter. In this workshop, we'll break down what advocacy really is and why it's important, and share our own experiences with building advocacy at the University of Minnesota chapter. Finally, we'll discuss ways to tailor advocacy techniques and activities to fit your own chapter. With this workshop, your chapter can begin developing a presence in your community, making an impact on local legislation and building future advocates.
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Building Future Advocates - YLC 2012 Workshop
- 1. Building future advocates: Getting youth involved in advocacy Kenzie Kelly, Education & Advocacy Coordinator Kathy Su, President Habitat for Humanity at the University of Minnesota
- 3. Building future advocates: Getting youth involved in advocacy Kenzie Kelly, Education & Advocacy Coordinator Kathy Su, President Habitat for Humanity at the University of Minnesota
- 4. What are we doing today? • About us • What is advocacy, and why does it matter? • Our experience at the University of Minnesota • How can you make an impact? • Let’s take action!
- 5. Who are we? Kenzie Kelly Education & Advocacy Coordinator Kathy Su President
- 6. Do you know what advocacy is?
- 7. What is advocacy? • In general: Actively supporting or arguing for something, like a cause, idea, or policy • For Habitat for Humanity: Activities that inspire people to take action and promote housing policy solutions Done by changing systems, policies, and attitudes
- 8. Why does advocacy matter for Habitat? Let’s take a look at the situation… 1.6 billion live in substandard housing 35.1 million new housing units needed per year o That’s 4,000 units per hour! 5,536 years needed to solve the current problem How can we make this feasible? Combine advocacy WITH building and fundraising!
- 9. 94% of congressional staff members say emails have at least some impact.
- 10. Most officials only hear from 4–5 % of their constituents…
- 11. 1 email represents 100 people. 1 letter represents 500 people. 1 call represents 500 people. 1 visit represents 1,000 people. You can have a huge impact.
- 12. How did we get started?
- 13. What are our goals? • Partner with our affiliate Learn about legislative initiatives Create the most impactful message • Engage a lot of people at once! Involve members through an interactive meeting activity • Make advocacy fun and easy Visit the Capitol Provide easy actions like email alerts
- 14. What resources do we have? • Power in numbers 230 paid members Over 400 people involved throughout the year • Urban location Large university of 40,000+ Located near state capitol • Strong networks Close relationship with affiliate
- 15. Our paper house campaign
- 16. Impacts of paper house campaign $40 million Original proposal $15 million Senate proposal 204 houses built by members and brought to the Capitol $40 million House proposal Final bill passed and signed for $35.5 million!
- 17. Our next advocacy activities… Act! Speak! Build! Week 2012
- 18. Things to consider for your advocacy activities! • Have a clear, specific message Have an easy “ask” action Personalize it – share a story! • Develop a strong voice Who are you? Why is your voice important? How many stand with you? Why do you love Habitat? • Make it unique Go beyond template and form letter writing Make it fun and easy!
- 19. Talk to us… • Have you tried advocacy before? If yes, what have you done? If no, why not? • What could work in your chapter, campus, or community? • Questions?
- 20. Let’s advocate today!
- 21. Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program (S.H.O.P) • What is SHOP? It funds organizations who encourage self- help homeownership, including Habitat! • Who does SHOP help? With SHOP funds, Habitat affiliates have completed more than 15,000 homes for low-income families.
- 22. Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program (S.H.O.P) • What is the issue? In Fiscal Year 2012, 50% of funding was cut from $27 million to $13.5 million • What can you do? Ask Congress to prevent cuts in 2013! How?
- 25. As members of Habitat for Humanity at the University of Minnesota we are committed to solving the housing crisis in our community. We can't do this alone. We need your support! The Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP) has far exceeded its performance targets in numbers of families’ assisted, home equity created, low default rates, and private funding leveraged. Despite these successes, Congress slashed funding for SHOP in half in fiscal year 2012 from $27 million to $13.5 million. Please protect this critical, cost-effective program by supporting stable funding for SHOP in the fiscal year 2013 T-HUD appropriations bill.
- 26. Let’s do it! 1. Create a short slogan or sentence Ours: “Don’t put housing on layaway…support S.H.O.P. today!” 2. Write each word on a piece of paper 3. Snap some photos 4. Write a quote and make it personal – how has Habitat impacted your life?
- 27. Continue making a difference after this workshop! • Take 30 seconds to sign up for Email Action Alerts at http://tinyurl.com/YLCadvocate • Leave us your name and email – we’ll send you the finished card collage! • Vote on Tuesday!
- 28. Thank you! For more info: www.uofmhabitat.org/BuildingAdvocates www.habitatcampuschapters.weebly.com Keep in touch: kenzie.kelly@uofmhabitat.org kathy.su@uofmhabitat.org
Editor's Notes
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JAzNfinkqdA
- KENZIE – One Day Without Shoes is a great example of how an organization like TOMS mobilized 250,000 people for a single cause. Advocacy has become more than just writing letters and attending rallies…though these actions are still important and impactful, now advocacy has moved into the realm of multimedia, interactive methods that actively engage participants. Whether you know it or not,opportunities for advocacy and sharing our voicesare all around us, especially so close to this year’s elections. We should be taking advantage of this and creatively introducing advocacy to the youth of Habitat, to help build strong, lasting advocates for the future. From the University of Minnesota chapter, I’m Kenzie and this is Kathy, and we’re here with this workshop today to share our story and see how we can help you create advocacy stories of your own.
- KATHY -So, as we could tell from yesterday’s speeches, advocacy is a huge area that Habitat is focusing on this year. In our workshop today, we’ll start with a little introduction about us, break down what advocacy is and why we need it. Then we’ll share how OUR chapter got started with advocacy, and then learn about your situations to see how you can also create future advocates for Habitat. And finally, we’ll start making a difference today with a fun, fast, and easy advocacy activity.
- So first of all, introductions and a little about us!KathySenior in MarketingInvolved for 4 years, 3 positions on exec board: Volunteer, PR & Mktg, PresKenzieSenior in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavioral SciencesInvolved for 4 years, Web Tech and then 2nd year as Education & Advocacy CoordinatorSo as you can see, both of us have been around our chapter for a while! We actually started by going on the same build, and then serving on our chapter’s first committee, putting on our chapter’s first ASB day. Even though it was just a small, one day event that year, this was our first experience sharing Habitat’s message and mission with our campus, and we saw the effect that we could have. This sparked our passion for spreading Habitat’s mission, and we’ve been involved ever since. However, this past year was our first time doing anything with advocacy and we had a lot to work through….first of all, we had to understand: what is advocacy?
- KENZIE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SvvurHIl8LA
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- KENZIE – A lot of chapters have the building, fundraising, and education parts down really well. However, we need advocacy to truly make the biggest impact! Why? A successful fundraising event may raise $1,000, $10,000, or even $100,000, which is no small feat! However, advocacycan impact legislation worth MILLIONS of dollars, which is more than any chapter could ever hope to raise on its own. We need to combine advocacy WITH building and fundraising!
- KENZIE – So we wanted to give you some facts to understand the true impact you can have on legislation through advocacy actions…
- KENZIE –However…only 4-5%
- KENZIE – So legislators get a lot of emails a day, but they know that even writing one email takes time and effort. Therefore, they think that every email they get carries the support of multiple people. For every email legislators receive, how many people do they assume also feel the same way? How about a personal letter? What about a direct phone call? Or a personal visit to the legislator?Clearly you can see that even simple actions like sending an email can allow one person to have a huge impact. Once we understood these numbers, we realized that any advocacy activity we do, no matter how small, would create an impact.
- KATHY – Once we understood these numbers, we realized that any advocacy activity we do, no matter how small, would create an impact. With that, we wanted to start somewhere. Our chapter at the University of Minnesota had never done advocacy before, so we started looking around the Habitat website for inspiration. We found an idea for a paper house campaign and wanted to do a version of this on our campus. With this basic idea, we decided to start setting specific goals for our first event.
- KATHY – So first of all, we knew we wanted to partner with our affiliate. As one of the largest affiliates in the nation, TCHFH had a lot of experience in working with legislative initiatives and adv activities, so we knew they could help us create the most meaningful, effective message. Also, of course they have so we wanted to have their help. Want to enhance TCHFH’s legislative agenda and help them out – combine our impact!Like we were earlier, we realized that many of our members may be unfamiliar with or even uncomfortable with advocacy, so we needed to introduce it to as many of our chapter members as possible, who are already strong Habitat supporters. We decided an activity at one of our general meetings would be the best outlet, where we had average attendance of about 80-100 people.Finally, we knew that we couldn’t make advocacy work without making it fun and easy, so our members will want to continue doing it!
- KATHY – Not everyone has the same situation as us! Wh
- KENZIE – SF2073/HD2485 to Improve and Augment Statewide Affordable Housing InfrastructureWe took this blank template from Habitat.org and customized with the help of our affiliate and graphic designer. Here’s an example.
- KENZIEThe bill we were hoping to impact was a bonding bill supporting affordable housing, and original ask = $40 millionAfter debate in the Senate,Senate's proposal = only $15 millionWe timed our 204 houses to be delivered to the desk of every representative, senator, and the governor in order to have the greatest impact before the final bonding allocation was voted on. We brought the housesAfter we brought the houses, the House issued a revised proposal for $40 millionFinally, governor passed and signed for $35.5 million – our impact was greater than we had ever imagined!
- KATHY - The success of our paper house campaign inspired us to continue with our advocacy activities, so here are some pictures from our 2012 ASBW which took place just weeks after the paper house campaign. Inviting John Lesch to our dinnerSigning drywall on house on campus for “Hands for Habitat”Taking pictures with frames, sending pictures to legislatorsDoing it through a large event like ASB helped us reach the whole campus, in addition to just our chapter members. This year, we’re hoping to continue doing advocacy and increase the number of people who do it on campus!
- KATHY – Not all chapters have the same resources and situation as us. Make sure to consider these when you’re planning advocacy for YOUR group!
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- KENZIEQuestions?