Unit 3.1, Campaign

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MODULE 3: Unit 1

Defining the goal of your campaign

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Unit 3.1: Defining the goal of your campaign

What do you want to achieve? This is your goalThe first step on any campaign is to know exactly what you want to achieve. What policy or practice do you want to change? Some campaigns may seek to keep an existing service that is about to be closed; in this case you may want to keep things the same, but in order to do that you need to change the policy to close the service. It is important to be clear about your goal.Why is it a problem?For examples of this, you might think about what will happen if the women’s center closes? Or maybe in your rural area you don’t have any place where women can meet and talk in a safe place and do any planning.What do you think should happen?For example you might want to keep the center open, or provide similar services elsewhere, or close only part of theservice. You might want a youth club to be opened in a certain area, or a club that is already open to be open at different hours, or offer different activities, or publicize itself better.

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When should the change happen?If there is a threat to stop funding to a women’s center, your campaign may be urgent – to stop the closure before it happens. If you are trying to get a new youth club opened this is likely to take longer, so your campaign may have to continue for several months or even years. It helps if you can reduce what you want into a few short sentences so that you can explain the campaign to people quickly and easily.Setting priorities exerciseThe women who came together for a campaign don’t all know each other. Some women could be interested in campaigning but not having a shared goal. Some could have issues that they are already interested in campaigning on; others did not have a clear campaign goal.You need to start by using a mapping exercise to help the women think through the issues that were most important to them.Everyone could have been given a large sheet of paper and asked to draw the different things that they either wanted to change, or were worried might change.Some women could find it hard to start the mapping exercise, but once they got going, and saw the sorts of things that other women are putting down, they could all fill their paper with ideas and issues.Once the women had thought about their own issues, they could share their main priorities with the group. The whole group then can look at the long list of issues to find the ones that are shared by several group members.From this discussion they need to agree to work on the common priorities.

MODULE 3: ‘How to build a feminist campaign’

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