Social Work with People Practicing Same-Sex ... - ILGA Europe

• Government bodies and local self-governments, as well as their structural
units. These may include central departments, city councils, Supreme Council of
AR Crimea, the National Council on TB and HIV/AIDS, parliamentary committees.
• State institutions. State institutions are different from the government bodies,
because they do not have regulatory or rule-making powers. State institutions
include health care facilities (hospitals, local AIDS centres), academic
institutions.
• Political parties and their structural units. Peculiar feature of political parties
is the fact that they follow and support (actually or verbally — it does not matter
here) a specific model of social development and certain system of social values.
That is why parties are always associated with the power, even if they currently do
not hold the power. Only through the power political parties are able to implement
their political programmes. Parties can be valuable “targets” of the advocacy,
because we can reach constructive agreement with them: the party will promote
the goals of the advocacy campaign at the level of the state power, while the
advocacy agents will support the party by all means available (like electionsrelated
propaganda).
It should be added that it is possible to work with political parties both at the central
and local levels, because thanks to the proportional electoral system political parties
are represented at the level of local councils.
• Other targets. Even though advocacy usually focuses on entities, associated with
the power, sometimes its “targets” may include entities outside the government
system, such as human rights organizations, faith-based organizations, professional
unions and associations, NGOs and charitable funds, as well as mass media.
So, the targets of advocacy may include individual entities (e.g., public officials),
collective entities (e.g., political parties, faith-based organizations), and impersonalized
government bodies (e.g., government authorities, local self-governments). Experience
of advocacy campaigns suggests that maximum effectiveness is achieved if we work with
specific individuals, rather than with abstract institutions. However, this experience
also shows that oftentimes it is impossible to avoid cooperation with institutions.
For example, today you work with this particular head of the Committee to Counteract
HIV/AIDS, TB and other socially dangerous diseases, but tomorrow they appoint a new
person to this position, and you will have to start everything over.
In the work with responsible persons, we should understand that:
• They will never change their policies or behaviours only because ”someone asked
them to do so”. Such “requests” should look like well-grounded and repeated
demands.
• Changes should be initiated at the right moment. To do so, we need to keep track
of appropriate social and political processes. Such “right” moments may include
electoral campaigns, or first days of the official at the position, or when this person
publically expresses his or her opinion regarding our advocacy issue.
9. Advocacy campaign planning.
The next logical step is the direct planning of the campaign itself. There exist four key
planning tools:
1) Development of the campaign's strategy.
The strategy is a peculiar “roadmap” with “road signs” that will lead us to our goal.
The strategy lets you know where you are, where you want to be and how you will get
there.
The strategy includes general and consistent description of the problem, your staring
point (current state of affairs), your goals and objectives; the strategy provides
justification of the main areas of advocacy work within the campaign, and expected
results. At the same time the strategy should describe overall social context, where
the campaign will be implemented, since failure to consider social settings will make
adequate planning impossible.
У меня уши вянут, когда натуралы
жалуются: “Послушай,
зачем вам нужен День
гомосексуальной гордости,
ведь у нас же нет Дня гетеросексуальной
гордости?” Помню,
когда я был маленьким, я
постоянно спрашивал у мамы:
“Почему есть День матери и
День отца, но нет Дня ребенка?”
Мама отвечала: “Каждый
день — это День ребенка”.
Всем натуралам, брюзжащим
по поводу гей-парадов, я говорю
то же самое: каждый день
является Днем гетеросексуальной
гордости! Почему
вы не можете наслаждаться
своим пиршеством без того,
чтобы не поносить нас, жующих
свои сухари в углу?
Роб Нэш, американский актер
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