This document provides an introduction to advocacy in education and health. It discusses how policy is made, including understanding government mandates and commitments, governing philosophies, and the importance of evidence-based action. Policy development involves many stakeholders and external factors that influence decision makers. Effective advocacy requires understanding these complex dynamics and presenting well-researched arguments and data to support proposed policy changes.

1. An Introduction
to Advocacy in
Education and
Health
By Physical and Health Education Canada
January, 2016

2. Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
How Policy is Made. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Understand the Background: Mandates and Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Governing Philosophies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Evidence Based Action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Policy Development is Messy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Strategy Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Articulating the Problem or Challenge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Identifying Goals and Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Audiences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Message Development and Framing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Tools and Tactics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3. Introduction
As as champions of physical and health education, we need to present the case for our
cause and find ways for our voices to be heard. While we may have strong views and
a fundamental belief in the merits of our cause, a government official or other decision
maker may not share this belief when faced with numerous other pitches for policy
change or funding.
This is a short guide to help strengthen your ability to advocate for meaningful changes
in health and physical education.
Physical and Health Education Canada advocates for and advances quality physi-
cal education and quality health education programs offered in Health Promoting
Schools to enable students the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills and at-
titudes needed to lead physically active and healthy lives, now and in their future.
Our vision is all children and youth in Canada living healthy, physically active lives.
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4. How Policy is Made
Understand the Background: Mandates and
Commitments
Governments make public policy commitments in a number of ways. As a starting
point, it is best to understand what commitments have been made – verbally and in
writing – by political officials as well as the public service. Key pieces to review are:
• The Speech from the Throne
• Budget statements
• Major framework documents such as Ministry Strategic or Corporate Plans
• Audit reports performed by the Federal or Provincial Auditor General
These documents provide a sense of the government’s formal priorities, spending plans
and parameters, and areas where public policy delivery may need to be improved.
However, this background context is rarely enough on its own but is something to be
familiar with as elected officials and public office holders may frequently reference
these documents as indicators of what they are planning to do during their mandate. If
your policy ask can align with these documents than they cannot be used as barriers
to the change you seek.
When a new government takes office it is wise to read the party’s election platform.
These may identify policy directions or priorities to which the party has committed.
The practical constraints of governing however can often quickly supersede those
pledges, which are often made to appeal to the party’s base of supporters or to lure the
undecided voter in the heat of a campaign.
Governing Philosophies
Some governments have a bias towards non-intervention or a minimalist, hands-off
approach, while others may be tempted to be more interventionist or prescriptive
in tackling societal issues. Education policy may well be an area in which change
is undertaken more cautiously and in an incremental manner given that curriculum
changes or other policy guidance to educators will have potentially significant and
lasting impacts on hundreds of thousands of young people. It tends not to be an area
where change is undertaken in a hasty manner or for frivolous reasons.
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5. Governments are also impacted by numerous external factors, such as:
• Fluctuations in public opinion, polling data, political fortunes and opportunities
• Opposition party agendas
• Statements of major interest groups and NGOs
• Reports from third party monitoring agencies such as Statistics Canada and the
World Health Organization
• Media interest and attention
What this tends to underscore is that government, politics and public administration is
in many cases a highly reactive sphere of activity. Decision makers are constantly in
the cross-hairs of third parties and outside groups who seek to pressure them for the
purpose of extracting policy changes or the allocation of public funds. They are highly
attuned to these shifting tides of public and voter sentiment, economic and social
research and new policy thinking that may render their ideas obsolete or inadequate
if they are not careful. Some of what they respond to may also be as simple as what
is trending in the social media world or within an online community of experts which,
although it may be transitory in duration, still demands a policy statement or response.
In essence, policy making is effectively about weighing a balance of opportunities,
benefits, implementation issues and costs to determine whether a minister, school
board official or a principal should risk the expenditure of precious political capital to
undertake a new direction or end an approach that is deemed to be no longer productive.
It is important to note that there are often individuals within ministries who are wedded
to the status quo and invested in the current provision of resources, program dollars
or staffing headcounts. The certainty of past practices can often make it difficult for a
politician or senior decision maker who wishes to do something but is constrained by
policy inertia or others within the system who prefer, for various reasons, not to act. In
this case, one needs to alter the incentive matrix that confronts a politician or decision
maker in order to prompt him/her to act, notwithstanding the short term costs.
Evidence Based Action
Increasingly, governments respond to hard data, metrics, cost-benefit analyses,
comparative analyses of other jurisdictions or the reports of think tanks or respected
research institutes. A good example in the education and physical activity sector
would be the issuance of reports such as the Canada Health Measures Survey which
reports on obesity and weight levels of different population cohorts or the Report Card
of Active Healthy Kids Canada which grades governments on different indicators of
performance.
The periodic surveys of teachers and educational administrators undertaken by the
Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute have a particular relevance to the
provision of quality physical and health education in Canada. This kind of data can
be persuasive and you should strive to incorporate it in your written presentational
material and “leave-behinds.”
Policy can also be influenced by international comparative data on educational
attainment by such institutions as UNESCO or bodies that attempt to benchmark
and measure health and quality of life outcomes in different countries. Leveraging
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6. this data when the comparison is not favorable to Canada can help to garner policy
change as officials strive to address problem areas where Canada or a provincial or
territorial government risks being perceived as a laggard. Bureaucracies tend to have
a preference for empirical, paper-based and evidence-driven submissions rather than
arguments based on assertions or pleading. It follows then that an important goal must
be to put your asks in writing and back them up as much as you can with evidence and
research from authoritative sources.
The economic and financial costs of a policy tend to feature in a significant way in the
calculation of whether or not to act. These considerations may in fact be decisive at the
end of the day. As we live in an era of fiscal restraint, the easy and default response
of many public servants to policy change ideas is to say that such proposals will be
too disruptive or “they will cost too much and we don’t have the funds.” But this can
be strategically countered by the notion of the costs of inaction or by the idea of the
false economy; i.e., that failing to invest today will incur far greater, non-negotiable
costs tomorrow. Proposals whose costs can be rigorously quantified and whose likely
benefits can be ascertained by means of a solid Social Return on Investment analysis
will likely receive more respectful consideration.
Our task must be to demonstrate that a policy approach that gives preference to
other academic subjects such as math, science or computing to the detriment of
physical and health education may end up contributing to sedentary lifestyles, sub-
optimal academic achievement, obesity, social isolation, lack of mental and emotional
resilience, adoption of risky or self-harming behaviours, early onset of chronic illness,
increased risk of workplace absenteeism, industrial accidents or long-term disability
claims. All of these things have costs that must be shouldered by society and the
taxpayer and invariably exceed the costs of hiring additional specialist physical and
health education teachers.
Our challenge with educational policy makers and with skeptical Finance ministry
officials is to introduce and win acceptance for the notion of hidden externalities –
medium and longer term costs that inevitably occur as the healthy living and wellness
benefits of physical education are denied to Canadian youth and as we focus instead
on the alleged short term “savings” from not hiring specialist physical educators. Thus
as we think about positioning our set of “asks” with provincial governments, there is
a compelling linkage that can reasonably be drawn between the policy decision to
reduce the number of HPE specialists in the school system and the broader crisis in
the sustainability of provincial health care budgets.
Timing is also often a key determinant as we reflect on how and when policy is made.
Governments and Education ministries may be more open to embarking upon new
policies earlier intheirmandates thanimmediately priortoanewwritcycle.Governments
and policy makers tend to know that policy changes will take time to show results and
be judged a success and, as a result, the political-electoral cycle tends to artificially
constrain what they think they can bring to fruition within the space of 4 years. The
beginning of a new fiscal year may also be a better time to propose policy changes as
resources may remain uncommitted and the discretion to act may be greater. Policy
change may also be easier to accomplish in the wake of a crisis, a damning public
report, or when a sizable portion of public opinion is mobilized in a particular direction.
Proposals that provide government and elected officials with a solid plan that offers a
strong measure of credibility are likely to be given a serious hearing at that point. This
is the rationale for seeking regular opportunities to meet with policy officials even if the
timing, at first, appears less than optimal.
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7. Policy Development is Messy
In sum, if policy is formally made in standing committees of provincial legislatures or
through the in-camera committee and council structures of school boards and districts,
or via the public hearings process of school trustees, the reality is that a host of other
stakeholder consultations, web-based campaigns, informal submissions by insider
groups and professional bodies, public plebiscites, or media-driven populist awareness
campaigns, all shape the contours of what is eventually decreed as policy. Policy may
ultimately reflect the interests of established bureaucratic insiders, of key corporate
or philanthropic interests, or of the populist reflex of an animated general public given
voice by a charismatic politician. There is nothing necessarily linear, transparent or
predictable about how policy is made and as an advocate for our sector you need to
be attuned to that highly messy reality. In other words a comprehensive, data-driven,
multi-channel approach is what may ultimately get us results but for that to happen you
need to develop a clear strategy and stay at it in a persistent fashion.
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8. Strategy Development
There are several key things to bear in mind as you develop a strategic plan. It is
best to engage in the process of brainstorming your strategic plan with several other
colleagues so the process of idea generation and priority determination is a collective
undertaking. Test your ideas with other people whose experience and judgement you
value. They may bring insights or novel ways of thinking about the challenges you
confront. Strategy formulation is an iterative process and you may need to adjust your
objectives in light of changed circumstances (a new government or Education minister)
or new research (researchers in the mind-body field are obtaining new insights all the
time) or developments in adjacent jurisdictions that can be highly instructive for your
work.
Try to think about how you might position your overall strategic objectives to ally with
those of some related or allied interests (say the arts and music teachers, guidance
counsellors, school health nurse or anyone else that you essentially perceive as
“friendly”.) You do not want to create such narrow objectives that only you will benefit
if they are realized; this relates to a powerful maxim of human affairs – it is easier to
disappoint one, isolated group than a cross section of different folks. It is also pertinent
to another concept that is gaining ground in the educational literature today which is
that we should strive to understand and situate the child in a holistic context. By thinking
about your strategy in terms of the overall well-being of a child in the multiple affective
dimensions of his/her life – physical, emotional, social, nutritional, cyber, cognitive – you
enhance the prospects that others will see some part of their agenda in your objectives
and help you realize them. The reality is that the stereotypical understanding of what
it traditionally meant to be a physical educator is no longer rich or fulsome enough to
garner the interest or attention of senior administrators or other policy officials.
It is imperative as you develop your strategy for positioning the health and physical
education in your province in the 21st century, to have a sense of how you see the
sector developing in the next decade. What is the vision that you and your peers aspire
to in order to fulfill your mission as an advocate for the physical and health education
profession in your province? Your strategy will be determined to some extent by
whether your goal is finite; to simply increase the number of specialists operating at the
K-8 levels or, alternatively, whether it is more expansive; to implant a “comprehensive
school health” philosophy in all the schools in a particular board or district or, in the
province as a whole. The scope and scale of your ambition will determine to a large
degree the strategy you ultimately adopt.
Think as well about the resources – financial and personnel – that are available to
you as you set out your strategic goals and objectives. The ambitions of the plan you
are creating must not exceed your capacity to deliver on it. If time away from your
employment duties to travel or attend meetings poses a problem, then your strategy
must necessarily place greater reliance on technology and web-based advocacy work.
Skype meeting software, webinars, an electronic newsletter, or a regularly updated
website may become your tools of choice as you seek to get your message out. Can
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9. you arm and equip colleagues in other towns and cities, perhaps some of them closer
to the provincial capital, with key tools and resources to enable them to deliver your
message? Having a network of committed champions can compensate for a modest
travel budget or limited discretionary leave. However, dollars and staff, while important,
are not the only resources you must take stock of. The time it takes to devote yourself
to this kind of advocacy work must be set against the demands of your day job, the
needs of your family and the maintenance of your health and well-being. Unless you
are fortunate enough to be paid to lobby, advocacy work can be demanding at times
and you will need to keep a careful eye on the work-life balance that provides the
foundation for you to advocate on behalf of the sector.
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10. Articulating the Problem or
Challenge
It helps to define the problem or challenge that you wish to address in your advocacy
work. Breaking it down into discrete and more manageable pieces may make it
less intimidating than biting off the whole piece at once. The metaphor of scaling a
mountain is instructive. You rarely reach the summit on the first day. Instead you plan to
climb from a base camp to several camps at pre-selected altitudes, all the while being
prepared to engage in course corrections as a function of the terrain or the weather.
By seeing your work of affecting change in the area of physical education as a series
of intermediate steps, you will be able to plan an advocacy campaign using a more
graduated approach in which different but related aspects of the problem are identified
and tackled separately.
It is usually helpful to obtain a little historical context on how the problem or issue
became so acute. What are its origins? How did we get to where we are today?
Analyzing something in a historical vacuum is dangerous as you risk recommending or
deploying solutions that have previously been tried and found inadequate. Challenges
today are often multi-dimensional in their origins. Social or educational issues rarely
manifest as neatly defined vertical silos. The problems we confront with sedentary
behavior or insufficient physical activity are known as “wicked” or vexing problems for a
reason; they have not lent themselves to resolution with one simple intervention. That
they persist is an indication that there is something stubbornly complex about the roots
of the problem that requires a “horizontal” approach or solution.
Inactivity and its corollary, obesity, usually have their origins in policy failures, neglect
or omissions from a variety of perspectives and in various settings of the individual’s
life. There may be staffing and hiring questions, scheduling issues as it relates to the
timetable; nutritional quality issues in the school cafeteria or surrounding restaurants;
poor role models at home; lack of active and safe routes to school; absence of
adequate equipment and infrastructure; unregulated proliferation of mobile computing
and gaming devices; school policies focussed exclusively on achievement in the three
“Rs”; gaps in provincial curricula documents; or a lack of senior level administrative
leadership on questions around physical education or active living, etc. The problem,
in other words, requires a coordinated, joined-up solution or an “end to end” response.
Engineering approaches designed to bring about behavioral change in the individual
(in this case a child or youth) are rarely easy to effect without a comprehensive or
multidimensional posture.
As a health and physical education champion you need to target those pieces of the
problem that can be practically and efficiently tackled with the resources, time and
money currently available to you. Securing some smaller wins first may be the best
way to proceed and will help build momentum for you while making believers of other
more sceptical or ambivalent colleagues. The advice would be to define the problem
and articulate it in a way that seems surmountable while acknowledging that there is a
complexity to the issue that demands time and ongoing commitment. Even if the nature
of the problem is profound, a final piece of advice would be to avoid using defeatist
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11. or negatively charged language when characterizing it to the people you meet, as this
may cause them to think the task is forlorn or without hope. As we have seen in social
progress movements, small initial steps forward can quickly morph into irresistible
mass movements for social change.
Identifying Goals and Objectives
A good advocacy strategy will have several related goals and objectives, some of an
intermediate nature and others slightly more ambitious and longer-term. You may also
wish to differentiate between externally focused goals and objectives, aimed at another
actor or institution and premised on some action you want them to take on your behalf
(see below), and a more internally driven goal such as increasing your membership of
physical and health educators or holding one or more workshops within the next twelve
months.
Where it is appropriate and practical, attempt to align your objectives with the broad
thrust of the ministry or board’s own objectives or learning outcome goals, showing
how there is a common cause between what your organization is aspiring to, and the
target’s broader objectives. If improved test scores or enhanced provincial achievement
outcomes in math, science or language are the stated goals of the ministry or board,
then as a health and physical activity advocate you need to describe how an increase
in the provision of quality daily physical education will improve readiness to learn and
academic outcomes.
Your objective could be something along the lines of:
To convince the ministry that targets for student academic achievement can be met or
exceeded by ensuring that children and youth in grades K-8 receive sixty minutes a
day of quality physical education and activity grounded in a physical literacy method.
Another goal around mental health resiliency of teachers might be structured in such
a way as to draw a link between more in-service professional development around
managing stress for teachers (and students), and reduced incidence of absenteeism
and use of sick days. This will clearly have beneficial financial and budgetary
implications for ministries and boards of education as more resilient staff who are able
to foster their own well-being are absent less often.
Goals and objectives are essentially the primary purpose of your organization and the
realization of them is a critical success factor for you. Therefore, you need to keep
coming back to them as there will be numerous opportunities for mission drift and
digression into peripheral activities.
Clearly there has been a fair bit of thinking devoted in broader management literature
and theory to what qualities and attributes should be apparent in the goals and
objectives which you adopt for your organization.
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12. A common approach is the SMART process. Ideally, each organizational objective
should be:
Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
Assignable – specify who will do it.
Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
More recently some authors have suggested the addition of “ER” to have SMARTER
goals, signifying “Ethical” and “Recorded”. Overall, the SMART concept has merit and
may serve as useful guidance as you go about constructing your goals.
Audiences
As most public interest advocates or private lobbyists will affirm, there are usually
several different audiences for the materials that you produce which means that you
must refine the language and complexity of your messaging depending on which one
you are addressing. The rubric below of relevant audiences seems appropriate when
we think about to whom we are promoting physical and health education issues. The
decision to place the general public and parents at the top of the list is a recognition of
the pivotal importance that such audiences enjoy in allocative decisions that elected
officials and public servants take with respect to the resources under their control.
Public and parental opinion is hugely influential in the calculations of elected decision-
makers as they must account to them every four years at the ballot box.
In our system of government, taxpayers and voters cannot be ignored for long. It
is imperative that your communication pieces and advocacy messages about the
importance of health and physical education resonate with these audiences. Without
these groups being seized of the importance of our issues, the politicians are in a
position to delay and procrastinate if they make any concessions at all. For these
reasons, it is often helpful when conducting public opinion research to ensure that
there are significant and identifiable numbers of both random members of the general
public and parents with children as a specific segment in your respondent sample. The
responses you get from the latter group may be particularly influential as you build the
case for an increase in quality physical and health education. The other audiences are
important and can be helpful in relaying our messages or by working internally within
the educational system or lobbying for change on inter-departmental committees or
community councils. Finally, it is critical to not lose sight of the important role that the
principal plays in the decision-making context. It is the principal who sets the tone in
the school for just how actively committed the staff is to health-promoting behaviours,
including physical education and physical activity during the school day.
Audiences
• General Public
• Parents and Guardians
• Politicians (Provincial Elected Representatives and School Trustees)
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13. • School Board, District Superintendents and Officials
• Principals and Teachers
• Guidance Counsellors, School Health Nurses and Public Health Unit Personnel
• After School Program Providers
• Family Physicians and Doctors
• Children and Youth (Students)
• Municipal Officials and Recreational Managers
Message Development and Framing
As you develop specific messages to be used with your target audiences, you must be
cognizant that people today are experiencing information overload and that they often
have minimal bandwidth in the mental space they use to process messages. This is not
of your choosing but it is a fact with which you must contend. This raises the question
of how should we frame our issues to secure greater public attention, discernment
and message retention. Framing is an exercise in choosing particular language to
try to define or shape how an individual processes a message or issue. It is about
tapping into metaphors which people use as classification and simplifying devices. The
intention of the framer is to create a sort of mental organizing device or window through
which a person, event or statement is interpreted and perceived by others. To illustrate
the point, during the 2011 Federal election campaign, the Sport Matters Group used
the frame “Sport: Its More than a Game” to focus attention on the sector’s issues.
Another example of a successful frame was the 1992 Clinton Presidential Campaign
use of the phrase “It’s about the economy stupid”. This had the effect of reminding
Clinton’s campaign workers that they ought to keep drumming home to voters that
things were not good on the economic front and that Clinton had a plan to make them
better. All other facts, data and campaign propaganda became subject to this mental
screen.
The goal of framing is to find a unifying thematic device that is similar to a tag line
but which hints at the existence of some compelling and more profound material
underlying the frame. The frame puts the proponent’s message on a terrain with which
she is more instinctively comfortable if further explanation or rebuttal is necessary and
telegraphs to the recipient the line of argument which is likely to follow. If the frame
is the top level device that conveys the broad theme of the advocacy campaign, then
beneath it are more specific individual message bullets. You will need to brainstorm
about what precise facts and points that these messages should contain, but they
should be supportive of the broader frame. Messages need to be reasonably succinct
and able to be recalled from memory as needed. When you are in a meeting with
a public office-holder or appearing before a legislative committee, having several of
these message bullets handy will give coherence to your presentation. Framing is a
strategy built on intentionality and, done persuasively, gets the recipient to accept the
initial premises of your argument.
It is probably fair to say that over the past twenty years physical and health education
itself has been successfully framed by others in a less than flattering light insofar as it
has been seen by decision makers as a dispensable, discretionary activity that could
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14. be cut with few repercussions. We all know this to be false and the evidence all around
us confirms this fact but the pejorative frame persists. As advocates, we need to drive
home a different message that speaks to the role that our profession plays in producing
happy, healthy well-adjusted children and youth whose academic performance by and
large exceeds that of their sedentary peers and who are less tempted to engage in
risky behavior.
Tools and Tactics
Having developed a frame, a set of messages and knowing who your intended
audiences are, you will then need to execute your strategy. This will involve recourse
to various tools and tactics; some traditional and some more innovative and recent. At
least several of these tools ought to be utilized as you engage in advocacy on behalf
of the physical and health education sector.
Meetings
Clearly much of your advocacy work will take place in formal meetings with either
educational policy makers or elected representatives. They tend to be busy people. You
may only get 30 minutes to discuss your issues and proposals. Try to be factual and
to provide as much quantitative and qualitative data as you possess in support of your
ideas. Try to convey a mix of objectivity and passion in what you are asserting. If you
do not get a hard commitment to action your proposal, try to secure an engagement to
continue to liaise over proposal refinements, new data and reports, or just to periodically
check-in on the status of your file. Always be civil and courteous as you need to leave
open the possibility of further communications down the road.
Fact Sheets and Leave Behinds
You should always have with you some supporting written material in the form of key
facts and data that substantiate your assertions. It is also helpful, providing you have
the resources, to have a leave-behind document which is usually a one-pager in hard
copy (heavy stock paper), glossy format that contains your main asks and your contact
details. This usually provides your counterpart with everything they need to know about
your key issue(s) and is a handy future reference tool. It is also something that a
politician or senior bureaucrat can hand off to an aide or a subordinate as a brief
on what you are requesting. You cannot assume that busy people will always take
accurate or comprehensive notes during a meeting or that their powers of retention are
excellent. The leave-behind document ensures that the most germane points of your
verbal presentation exist in written format after you have gone.
Presentations to Parent Councils
On occasion you will want to meet with local school parent councils to explain the
rationale for policy changes you would like to see. Parents can be powerful advocates
and allies with the school principal and with trustees whose support may be critical to
the adoption of your proposal. Better still, several provinces have Provincial Parent
Advisory Councils that can disseminate your ideas to a wider constituency of parents.
This can amount to important political support for the cause of physical and health
education.
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15. Coalitions
Having a set of partners or sympathetic groups to ally your cause can be very helpful.
Providing reciprocal support for each other may require extra effort and time but can
be very advantageous to your case. Possible groups to consider include: public health
promotion officials; family physician groups; exercise physiologists; school health
nurses; sport and recreational groups; teachers representatives from the arts and
music; parent advisory councils; outdoor recreation and nature preservation groups;
community proponents for bike paths and safe routes to school; and others.
Brainstorming with such groups can lead to areas of mutual interest and, while with
some groups you may only forge temporary alliances, with others you may develop
lasting policy partnerships. The logical upshot of forming alliances with such groups is
that you may be able to organize mini-action days (i.e. lobby days at your provincial
legislature where you organize a full-court press with elected MLAs or MPPs). These
days it is critical to have strength in numbers as governments and other decision
makers can be more evasive if they sense you are isolated. Be aware, however, that
taking the lead in a coalition will involve you in some consensus-building, strategic
compromises and some small “p” politics.
Commissioning reports by research groups or independent
parties
It may be helpful to forge relationships with researchers and academics in the fields
of education, public health, kinesiology, exercise science, etc., so that you can work
together to disseminate new research and reports that buttress the case for physical
education and activity. Having a new report which corroborates your assertions and
which has an aura of scientific-type respectability can be a real asset. It would be wise
to build such ties with one or two institutions nearby. If you have any funds at your
disposal, you may even be able to commission such work from time to time.
Videos
A newer tool that is gaining traction in our hyper-connected virtual world is that of
videos designed to educate, convince or bring profile to an issue. These videos can
be powerful additions to text-based tools and can bring a strong emotional dimension
to an issue. Given the pervasive use of YouTube and Vimeo and the sharing implicit
in these platforms, it is possible for a wider audience to hear and see your message.
Webinars
Another tool to contemplate is the travel-saving device of a Webinar which enables
you to disseminate key messages, research, report findings and public opinion survey
results to online participants. The advantages of this two-way virtual communication
are increasingly becoming obvious. Any recordings you make can be repurposed and
redelivered in the form of video, audio, slides and transcripts. People can come back
to the content at a later date if they want to review it again. Furthermore, you may be
able to bring in other specialists or guest speakers who might not otherwise be able
to attend a meeting with you at a ministry or school board but who will still be able to
share their particular insights and expertise.
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16. News Media
While journalism is undergoing a dramatic restructuring, traditional news media still
carries weight with officials. Governments and ministries continue to monitor news
media, and recognition in the press can identify your issue as one of importance. That
said, it is increasingly difficult to earn substantive coverage. And there are different
variables when considering print, television or radio. For most advocacy campaign,
the focus will be on print journalists, followed by radio. It is rare for small to mid-sized
advocacy groups to earn television coverage. The investment by news organizations
in television coverage is greater (reporters and camera operators must travel to a
location) and advocacy tends not to lend itself to compelling visuals.
Radio can also be difficult because so few radio stations have their own dedicated
newsrooms and even those that do have very limited resources, the exception being
news and talk radio. And similar to television, radio has a defined period of time that
limits the amount of news that can be presented. For talk and news radio programming
it is important to understand how stories are covered. And coverage may not come
from the news department. Consider morning shows, drive home shows, and similar
shows that are not strictly news programming.
When reaching out to journalists it is very important to understand who at your targeted
outlet are most likely to cover your story. This can be done by looking at past coverage
of similar news events. Try to see if there is a pattern of who is most often assigned
to stories similar to yours, and when reaching out to these journalists tell them, “I read
your story on X. I thought you might be interested in hearing about Y”.
Like other methods, before engaging in a media strategy first understand how your
target audience engages with the news. The news media is a tool to demonstrate that
your cause has value, to present your framing, and to communicate a message to
your audience. But if your audience isn’t reading or watching than you are not being
an effective communicator. For instance, the Globe and Mail carries a much different
audience that the Toronto Sun. CBC Radio 1 has a different audience than AM talk
radio.
Social Media
A lot of focus is being put on social media as a tool of social change. There are many
different social media platforms, all serving different audiences and different purposes.
No one is expected to be an expert in all platforms and no successful organization can
engage in more than just a few platforms.
Before engaging in any social media strategy, first consider what your expected
outcomes are. Are you trying to develop a mass of supporters? Are you trying to
communicate with those supporters? Are you trying to get your message in front
of decision makers? Different goals will lend itself to different strategies. For most
advocacy campaigns and small organizations, a well attended Facebook, Twitter and
e-mail marketing approach can be the right mix to build an audience.
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17. Conclusion
With any advocacy campaign a strategic approach is key. Make sure you know:
• The problem you want to solve.
• The player(s) who can solve the problem.
• The people and factors that will influence the decision-makers.
• The framing of the message that will persuade your audiences.
• The tactics that will get you access and influence.
No matter the obstacles, keep at it. Policy change is a slow process and repetition is
key to making sure decision makers know that your issue is still an issue of importance.
At the end of the day, people change policy not facts, statistics or reports. Be a genuine,
honest, and trustworthy advocate and the respect you earn can go a long way to
affecting change.
It is the power of all of us that will see more and more schools across Canada being
recognized for their quality physical and health education programs, and ensuring a
future generation of active, healthy Canadians.
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