Targets, indicators and monitoring

Monitoring and evaluating advocacy work is relatively new territory for NGOs and donors. The earlier mentioned training guideline - How to do advocacy- from BOND contains a useful online note on this topic.

Excellent materials

There are some excellent materials recently published regarding the monitoring and assessment of impact of advocacy work.

• Impact Assessment for Development Agencies: learning to value change. Roche, C, 1999, Oxfam Development guidelines, Oxfam and Novib, UK. This is a comprehensive and thorough discussion of impact assessment and it includes a chapter devoted to advocacy impact assessment, which builds on Roche and Bush 1997 and discusses various approaches, constraints and key considerations for assessing advocacy impact.
• Assessing Impact of advocacy work. Roche, C and Bush, A, 1997 Appropriate Technology, Vol. 24, No. 2. There is also an excellent more general survey of impact assessment of advocacy methodologies and tools. We include this because it would be good for the WSS sector to look at how advocacy is being monitored an assessed beyond the sector.
• Monitoring and evaluating advocacy: A scoping study, by Jennifer Chapman and Amboka Wameyo, Jan 2001 ActionAid, UK. The basic lesson is that if your advocacy objectives are vague and unspecific, it is almost impossible to monitor or evaluate your progress.

Indicators of political will

Kraig Klaudt, Advocacy Campaign Coordinator WHO-Geneva made useful contributions at the 2001 Integrated Marketing Communication Summer course at NYU (see Courses and Conferences) on indicators of political will. In a STOP-TB eForum discussion from Aug to Nov 2001 he summarised the following indicators for the existence and emergence of 'political will':

Behavioural outcomes

One could imagine a number of specific, ultimate behavioural outcomes that one could track, which would indicate increasing, static or decreasing political will for hygiene promotion within a country. To name a few:

• appointment of high-calibre hygiene promotion programme leadership;
• relative salaries of hygiene promotion programme staff compared to other staff;
• size and administrative positioning of hygiene promotion within the MOH/Min of Water;
• specific changes in hygiene promotion policy, legislation or regulations;
• implementation of hygiene promotion policies, legislation or regulations;
• changes in levels of hygiene promotion funding;
• actual allocation of hygiene promotion funding.

Changes in attidudes

In attempting to achieve these outcomes, one could measure intermediairy attitudinal indicators, which could suggest whether or not one's advocacy strategies are on target for achieving the desired behavioural outcomes. This would involve pre- and post- tests (using opinion polls, focus groups, etc.) among decision makers regarding changes in their awareness, knowledge, attitudes and values toward hygiene promotion.

Level of advocacy work

In influencing positive changes in awareness, knowledge, attitudes, values - and ultimately influencing the political behaviour of decision-makers toward WSS - one could monitor the level of advocacy activities. Successful advocacy strategies are often a prerequisite for positive behavioural outcomes by decision makers. Some basic measurements of advocacy activities include:

• amount and quality of media coverage;
• frequency and scope of advocacy activities by partners and coalitions;
• amount of discussion in legislatures and political for a number of useful and highly visible political statements by celebrities and decision makers.

Capacity indicators

Effective advocacy is usually predicated by the capacity of organisations or networks to conduct effective advocacy activities (advocacy capacity is not the same as IEC capacity). Since this is the foundation of the entire process of creating political will, these are the most basic and rudimentary indicators that can be measured in monitoring the process toward achieving greater political will for water and sanitation services. Some examples include:

• number of advocacy staff;
• experience of advocacy staff;
• size of advocacy budget;
• size, diversity and influence of advocacy coalition;
• existence of a strategic plan for national advocacy;
• number and quality of advocacy materials and media events;
• frequency of communication with political leaders.

Investments needed

The inability to invest in the capacity for hygiene promotion advocacy is one of the main reasons why desirable behavioural outcomes by decision makers for hygiene promotion are often not forthcoming. This investment in hygiene promotion advocacy must be made by NGOs, associations, universities, health services, the private sector, and donors. Political will rarely emerges by accident.