Advocacy
Wherever change is needed, advocacy has a role to play. Advocacy is about taking action for change. It is about speaking up, drawing attention to an important issue, and directing decision-making towards a solution. Advocacy is working with other people and organisations to make a difference.
It can also be described as the act of arguing on behalf of a particular issue, idea or person. Individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments (for example at the level of the United Nations) can engage in advocacy.
Advocacy is action directed at change. It is putting a problem on the agenda, providing a solution to that problem, building support for the solution and for the action necessary to implement the solution.
A common misunderstanding is to regard advocacy as always confrontational. The strategies and tactics advocacy practitioners use depend on the national political context as well as the issues being tackled or the change sought.
Advocacy is not mere awareness creation. Raising awareness is, however, an important component of the advocacy process. Advocacy practitioners are solutions driven – they conscientise, organize and mobilize.
Advocacy is a ministry of influence using persuasion, dialogue, and reason to affect change. It seeks to address the structural and systemic causes of poverty by changing policies, practices, and attitudes that perpetuate inequality and deny justice.
To be successful, it must work at two complementary levels: policy influence and citizen empowerment. Advocacy can be carried out with those affected by poverty and injustice, for those affected, by those affected, or as a combination of all three.
Every day, all over the world, unjust and unfair policies, systems, practices and attitudes force millions to live in poverty. Young girls are pulled from school and forced into early marriages; children are forced to work in dangerous conditions; unfair trade rules leave farmers unable to export their goods.

Advocacy within World Vision
Advocacy is a critical component of World Vision’s work to tackle the causes of poverty, protect children and promote justice. The only solution to such wrongs is for people to demand an end to such injustice and inequality. World Vision works to empower communities to know and to speak up for their rights at local, national and international levels. In situations where such community-led advocacy is not possible, World Vision takes the voices of those living in poverty to those decision-makers with the power to change unjust policies and practices.
World Vision advocates on the local, national, and international levels for expanding and strengthening care for orphans and vulnerable children; reducing gender-based vulnerability to HIV, increasing access to a continuum of care and treatment for people living with AIDS and mobilizing resources for expanded HIV and AIDS response.
Development programmes conduct advocacy efforts among social, political and religious leaders and support activities that abolish traditional practices which negatively impact reproductive health.  Support is provided to assist individuals who are suffering from complications that occur as a result of harmful traditional practices.

How you can make a difference
You can join World Vision as an advocate by encouraging our elected officials to support laws and policies that help the poor and protect children. We live in a country with a great constitution and by expressing your concern about issues that affect the poor we can strive, together, for a tremendous impact. It is the mandate of elected officials to listen to the concerns of the people they represent.
As an advocate, you can serve the poor in a very unique way. We can bridge the gap between the poor and those who have the power to help bring them out of poverty.
Social justice advocacy draws attention to an injustice and promotes the public good. It focuses attention on improving the wellbeing of the poor and marginalised members of the community. For example, social justice public advocacy efforts take up issues relating to the rights of women, children, workers or people with disabilities.
Social justice advocacy consists of organised efforts and actions that use the instruments of democracy to establish and implement laws and policies that will create a just and equitable society.
Civil society advocacy seeks to effect charge by working hand-in-hand with those directly affected by the problem. Effective advocacy is undertaken ‘together with’ affected communities rather than ‘on behalf of’ affected communities.
Advocacy for development in broad terms will seek to shift power away from centralised state institutions to non-state actors, which will be close to social struggles on the ground. The emphasis will therefore have to be on the strengthening and empowerment of civil society:
Social justice advocates design their efforts and actions to persuade and influence those who hold governmental, political and economic power so that the formally constituted decision-makers will adopt and implement public policies in ways that will improve the lives of those with less conventional political power and fewer economic resources.
Human Rights Advocacy responds to citizens’ interests in transforming formal human rights into genuine and effective human rights. It uses constitutional guarantees and international norms, standards and mechanisms to hold government accountable for their actions and to expand the core of guaranteed political, social and economic rights.