How to Become An Advocate

This post is about sharing ideas and techniques that we can use to become better advocates at each stage of the advocacy process.

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We have a common cause: Alleviating the unjust suffering of our child, loved one, spouse, or friend who deserves to be treated better while incarcerated.

As a member of M.I.S.S. we must make a commitment to advocate for those who are unable fight for themselves. Therefore, I did a little research and found this information that may help us to get our thinking caps on and share ideas.

1. Defining the Problem – What problem are we addressing here? What, specifically, do we want to accomplish? Let's start by describing some easy techniques for exploring our challenge and keep things positive. Using one or two good ideas will give us a much clearer indication of what we want to do or need to do.


2. Defining a Good Idea – Take a few minutes ahead of time and think about the criteria that define a good idea. We need to at least spend time considering our resources, our mission, our environment and the time-frame in question.


3. Generating Ideas – Traditional, informal brainstorming can come into play at this stage. We know how to do that sort of brainstorming. However, we may not know about the many techniques that exist for generating ideas. But we can learn to be more creative.

 

4. Evaluating Ideas – An informal process of comparing our list of ideas to the criteria that define a good idea. Many ideas are rather weak in their original form. Don’t worry about that! Let's take promising ideas and reinforce them.


5. Deciding What to Do – Taking time to formally study a decision is usually a good idea. Some decisions are simple enough to make without much research or analysis. For the other decisions that come at us, there is a need to develop a formal method for deciding what to do.

6. Doing SomethingThis is the obvious last step in any advocacy effort. We can describe some principles and practices that can lead to better results. Just remember, even a small improvement (however defined) in two or three parts of the process can really make a difference!

(If you are just getting into the advocacy game after the cause and general approach have been defined you can still use the tools and techniques referenced above.)


Who wants to study these techniques and apply them to our mission? I do!

 

We need all the suggestions we can get to effect a change in our justice system!

 

Together we can do the "UN-DO-ABLE"

 

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Peace, Love and Blessings

YaVon

 

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