Brooklyn Food & Fitness Task Force
Basic Advocacy Training Application
We are providing a 4 session Basic Advocacy Training for Brooklyn Food and Fitness Task Force members and community residents to gain the skills necessary to educate and engage neighborhood stakeholders in local advocacy around food and fitness.
Over the duration of the course, partners will learn the key steps to planning an advocacy campaign. In order to learn advocacy in a “hands on” way, the participants will explore strategies and policies that promote public safety in Farmers’ Markets and Parks. By creating an advocacy campaign around this specific issue, training participants will learn the general skills and steps necessary in organizing an advocacy campaign.
Participants who complete the 4 session course will be certified in Basic Advocacy. They will also be apart of the Brooklyn Food and Fitness Task Force’s network of advocates and will be informed of other members’ advocacy campaigns. Participants are strongly encouraged/have the option to continue on with the advocacy campaign they developed through the course of the training. These advocates will mobilize the community around the issue of public safety in Farmers’ Markets and Parks in order to launch an effective grassroots campaign.
We are indebted to the following resources in helping us organize the training and plan our activities: Networking for Policy Change: An Advocacy Training Manual by the Policy Project, An Introduction to Advocacy: Training Guide by Ritu R. Sharma, Manual for Facilitators of Advocacy Training Sessions from WOLA, the Grassroots Advocacy Training Exchange. Yonnette Fleming from the Hattie Carthan Community Garden and Farmers’ Market has been integral in mobilizing the Task Force around the issue of public safety in Farmers’ Markets and Parks. Independent advocates Fleming and Jeff Heehs organized the appropriate skills building activities in this advocacy training and will guide the public safety in farmers’ market campaign.
Objectives:
1. Task force and community members will learn why citizen advocacy is crucial to food and fitness policy.
2. Task force and community members will learn what kinds of issues can be addressed through policy and how to identify them
3. The basic steps to building a grassroots campaign and basic advocacy skills
4. How policy works in NYC and NYS
5. Task force and community members will be able to identify resources that will keep them informed about food and fitness issues and current pending legislation
Expectations for all the participants:
1. Develop basic advocacy skills
2. Be able to create effective advocacy goals and objectives
3. Be able to identify different steps in advocacy process and the challenges in an advocacy campaign
4. Gather 2009 violence statistics for farmers markets and Parks in the vicinity of your organization
5. Join the Food and Fitness Task Force advocacy list serve
6. Attend at least one advocacy meeting held by a Task Force partner
7. Sign on to all petitions of the Task Force in a timely manner, help support campaigns by getting petitions from community members, write and call politicians to voice your support for Task force campaigns.
Expectations for participants continuing on with the public safety in Farmers’ Market and Parks campaign:
1. Conduct at least one grassroots community meeting, advocacy session or town hall meeting in your community drawing attention to the issue. Collect attendees’ information in order to point them to larger campaign efforts.
2. Advertise and network all advocacy meetings held on this issue as a way of promoting the campaign.