🤝🏽 Want to Work With Government? Here's How.
Tactics for successful education advocacy - from 58 experts on the frontlines.
Transforming government systems can seem daunting, time-consuming and expensive. Navigating shifting power and budgets across dozens of agencies/politicians/bureaucrats, leaders that change with each election, layers of complex regulations and policies…Many give up before they start.
There *are* leaders who are successful at advocacy. But too often, they are too busy doing the work to write down their tactics.
So I am excited to share the result of many months of hard work by myself and the Global School Leaders team: How to Scale With Government.
This toolkit shares 9 mindsets and 30 tools for anyone who hopes to impact public systems. We were lucky to peek under the hood of 79 cutting-edge organizations, interview 58 experts, and learn from many inspiring activists and government leaders I met during travels to Brazil, Kenya, Pakistan, India and Indonesia.
To celebrate the release, I wanted to share a few of my favorite parts of the toolkit.
CO-DESIGN and EXPOSURE TRIPS are common themes - get government officials involved early and often. This is a shot of Rwanda’s highest education official at an Educate! showcase. We have a great insight from their COO, Maggie, about how they engage multiple levels of government instead of just focusing on the national level:
This is one of Indonesia’s most influential Ministry of Education officials on a Tanoto Foundation learning trip. ZiziAfrique runs similar trips in Kenya (below). If you can convince a government leader or politician to come see and experience your model, you can create an experience they will never forget.
One of my favorite examples of a COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGN is Alif Ailaan, which helped to grow momentum for government action on education in Pakistan. They also used POLICY TRACKERS. Community Health Impact Coalition uses similar tactics (see their stunning messaging below - they simplify their issue/goal in such simple, sticky language).
Everyone stresses that when you do SYSTEMS MAPPING, it is not only the agencies and titles that are important. You need to think about which people are key, and build strong relationships to support those people in order to FAN ALLIES and champions. I love this quote by Patricia, an expert at influencing policy:
Anna, a coalition-building expert, explains how we need to have humility and truly listen to what our partners in government need:
Politics is key! (Though I’ve written before about how we don’t talk enough about this.) You can use SCENARIO PLANNING to envision potential futures, but sometimes an opportunity will emerge completely by surprise due to an election, and you’ll need to act quickly. Here are some examples of when politicians or political appointees came into power and decided to launch transformative policy reforms:
It is so powerful when government leaders can learn from and exchange ideas with their peers in other countries. Here we have an Ethiopian leader arriving in Ghana:
Food4Education also enables cross-country exchange. They brought Kenyan government leaders to India to see the country’s largest school feeding program - to help them see what could be possible for Kenya. (F4E’s Founder Wawira Njiru is featured on our cover with Kenya’s President - and they just won the Skoll Award for their game-changing work!)
An important reminder and reality check from Amitav: systems change can take a *long* time. It requires a gritty attitude to persist and pivot no matter what obstacles emerge. But the results are worth it when you shift policies that impact millions of people.
My favorite part - all the wisdom from these leaders on one easy-to-print page. I wish you strength, endurance and courage in your journey to transform public systems!
Love this piece, Kat! 👏🏽