Abstract

Advocacy to improve public policies is one of the key roles that road safety NGOs is doing around the world. The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety (Alliance) has developed the Alliance advocate training as an initiative to methodically approach advocacy through: identifying and targeting decision makers to generate political will and forge influential partnerships; building coalitions to amplify advocacy messages and to support collective action; and using data to increase the persuasiveness of messages.

The Alliance advocates training is part of the Alliance Empowerment Program which is a ground breaking capacity-building initiative that mentors, trains, funds, and convenes NGOs from across the globe to align them towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number 3 and 11. This program builds trainees capacity to advocate, implement programs, influence legislation, and strengthen the worldwide network.

At the Alliance academy, advocates are offered technical skills. However the impact of the training goes beyond technical content. Alliance advocates gain more confidence, new ideas, and increased optimism about what they could achieve with stronger programmatic skills and an expanded network of colleagues. Up to date 29 Alliance advocates have been trained and early results have started to flourish.

Safe Kids Philippines staff Alliance advocate from Philippines have built a coalition with local helmets manufacturers and distributed 900 helmets in 17 schools of 3 different regions in her country. Daniel Mwamba, Alliance advocate from Zambia has been able to increase its organization funding by 300% after the training. Lastly Afef Ben Ghenia, Alliance advocate from Tunisia worked jointly with decision makers to enforce seat belt use. This initiative accomplished in the first 2 months a 35% reduction in road fatalities in comparison with the same period in 2016.

The Alliance advocate training results show what can be achieved with strategic investments in NGOs