Building an Aging Advocacy Network: Findings from the New Hampshire Senior Leadership Series

Public policy related to senior issues has not kept pace with the changes called for by an aging population. Advocacy is an important part of the policy landscape as it promotes a united effort to create change and encourage legislative action. Effective advocacy helps inform and educate policy makers, allows individuals to have their voices heard, builds stronger communities, and allows people to live more fulfilling lives. However, policy makers are inundated with causes to support, and it is easy for certain populations or causes to be lost in this process. This has been especially true for advocacy efforts around the needs of an aging population. At the legislative level, the older adult advocacy network is disjointed, underrepresented, and drowned out by groups that have stronger, moreformidable advocacy networks. The lack of a strong grassroots advocacy network for older adults is of growing concern as our population ages. This is a particularly important issue in New Hampshire as we are one of the oldest states in the nation (US Census, 2014). This paper examines the lack of advocacy for senior issues in the Granite State and explores strategies that can be employed to grow grass-roots leadership among older adults. The New Hampshire Senior Leadership Series, a program that provides support and training in advocacy and leadership skills, is highlighted as a promising practice to address this need. The series educates seniors in leadership skills necessary to advocate for legislative and policy changes that promote healthy aging, livable communities, and options to allow seniors to live and age in the communities of their choice. In order to ensure that New Hampshire residents have access to services and supports as they age, advocacy and leadership is a critical need. To determine the value of the Senior Leadership Series, a survey was developed and distributed to all Senior Leadership Series graduates. The survey aimed to determine how effective the series was at preparing participants to be community leaders and advocates

Developing Capacity, Skills, and Tobacco Control Networks to address Tobacco-related Disparities: Leadership and Advocacy Institute to Advance Minnesota’s Parity for Priority Populations (LAAMPP)

Priority populations disproportionately experience tobacco-related disparities, despite population level declines in tobacco use. The Leadership and Advocacy Institute to Advance Minnesota’s Parity for Priority Populations (LAAMPP) recruits and trains African immigrants/African Americans, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Chicano/Latinos, and LGBTQ community members to develop leaders to address tobacco harms in their communities. This paper describes and evaluates the LAAMPP Institute, and discusses lessons learned through the Institute and future directions for community-based tobacco-control efforts. The mixed-methods evaluation included qualitative key informant interviews with LAAMPP Fellows and community and project contacts, a Skills Assessment Tool, project case studies, and a social network analysis of the Fellows’ tobacco-control social networks at baseline and follow-up. At follow-up, Fellows’ tobacco control networks were larger, more extensive and diverse, and included more actors perceived to be influential in tobacco control. Fellows’ skills increased in core competencies (tobacco control, advocacy, facilitation, collaboration, cultural/community competence) and Fellows used tobacco, advocacy and cultural/community competencies more frequently. Four of five cohorts successfully passed policies. The results of LAAMPP suggest that a cross-cultural leadership institute contributes to the successful development of capacity and leadership skills among priority populations and may be a useful model for others working toward health equity

Next Generation Organizations: 9 Key Traits

Outlines a vision for impact-driven, business savvy, culturally competent organizations wired for policy advocacy that value continuous learning, shared leadership, ambiguous work-life boundaries, constituents as thought partners, and boards as value add

The outcomes of family and consumer leadership education: creating positive change in disability policy and practice

Background When individuals with disabilities are trained in evidenced based practices and how to advocate for themselves and their families, they are best able to ensure that services and supports meet their needs and create and realize a positive vision for their future. Participants and procedure In New Hampshire in the United States a Leadership Series provided seven weekend training sessions to an annual cohort of about 25 family members and 10 adults with disabilities about better practices in service provision, defining a vision for the future, and community organizing and advocacy strategies, using informational sessions and participation in small work groups. Results A total of 100 participants completing the Series over a six-year period completed pre and post surveys consisting of both closed-ended and open-ended questions. Respondents reported highly significant increases in their knowledge about service provision and advocacy strategies, significant increases in their clarity of vision for six out of seven life domains, and significant increases in their membership in community organizations and frequency of advocacy activities. Conclusions The Leadership Series fostered increased efforts to create positive change in the lives of the participants and their family members with disabilities and in the services and supports provided to family members with disabilities

Raising Money While Raising Hell: Catalytic Community Leadership and Successful Fundraising for Community Foundations

This paper debunks the myth that advocacy-oriented community leadership is naturally antithetical to fundraising, and highlights examples where foundations have built their fundraising efforts by playing advocacy-oriented community leadership roles.

Advocacy leadership in early childhood: Educators' perspectives

"This research examines possibilities for advocacy leadership in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings regulated by current ECEC policy (Council of Australian Governments [COAG], 2009a). Advocacy leadership has been defined by Blank (1997) as leading with long- term planning and vision which can be utilised to reform public regulations and policy. Building upon Blank’s (1997) construction of advocacy leadership, this research considers ways to open possibilities for advocacy leadership in the Australian ECEC context through exploring the position of educational leader through changing research approaches. Of central concern in this research are apparent silences regarding advocacy leadership in the implementation and development of current policies including the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and School Aged Care (NQF). A focus group and an individual interview were used as data collection methods to gather educators’ perspectives about advocacy leadership for themselves. Topical life history narratives were used as methodology to provide narratives for data analysis about one topic related to the participants’ work life. Participants were asked to share stories of their work life in response to questions about leadership in early childhood education. Participants were invited to join the focus group using purposeful selection. Four ECEC educators who did not hold a leadership position, were certificate, diploma or bachelor qualified with a minimum of five years’ experience and from the wider Brisbane area were invited to participate. Subsequently, one participant was invited to elaborate on her life history narrative responses through an individual interview. Although the research was focussed on the role of educational leaders in advocacy leadership, the participants were not educational leaders themselves. Data collected includes: a start list of constructs; transcripts of educators’ responses (from both the focus group and the interview) to questions about leadership prior to, and during, the introduction of the NQF; and field notes. A Foucauldian genealogical analysis was used to analyse the data which were located in educators’ topical life history narratives about their work. These were read through three discursive lenses, administrative, educational and governmental lenses. A reading of the data through these lenses shows ways in which administrative and educational leadership discourses can be seen to be predominant ways educators narrate their perspectives of leadership. At times, these narrations appear to express their experience of leadership as competing expectations and priorities. The analysis of the data reading for techniques of governmentality highlights ways in which there are multiple opportunities to construct leadership in ECEC. The consideration of ways discourses and techniques of governmentality enable and constrain advocacy leadership opens possibilities for thinking about and doing leadership differently in ECEC. This research could inform both ECEC leaders and educators in their practices and responses to current policy.

Foundation Investment Management Practices: Thoughts on Alpha and Access for the Field

As the first affinity group recognized by the Council on Foundations, the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) has been an advocate and catalyst for diversity, inclusion and equity in the field of philanthropy. This advocacy has ranged from increasing diversity among foundation leadership and staff, to promoting greater awareness of grantmaking for impact in Black communities. An area yet addressed by ABFE is the inclusion of diverse investment managers in the management of foundation endowments. ABFE is extending its advocacy platform to focus on increasing opportunities for minority-owned management firms to act as fiduciaries on behalf of foundations and endowments

2012 Annual Report: Achieving Access to Health for All Coloradans

This annual report includes: an 'about us' introduction, a letter from the leadership, details of grantmaking activities in the areas of health data and information, health advocacy and policy, health care services and systems, and health and well-being, financial information, and information about the board of trustees and staff of the organization

The Experiences of Counseling Graduate Students Who Participated in Professional Legislative Advocacy Training

Legislative advocacy efforts are increasingly becoming part of a counselor\u27s professional identity, yet scholarly literature lacks studies about experiences of counseling students involved in legislative advocacy for the counseling profession. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the meaning counseling students ascribe to their involvement in legislative advocacy for the counseling profession. Astin\u27s student involvement theory was the conceptual framework utilized to explore the lived experiences of counseling graduate students and recent graduates who participated in a 4-day long American Counseling Association Institute for Leadership Training on legislative advocacy and leadership or in professional legislative advocacy at the state level. Convenient and snowball sampling yielded 8 participants who engaged in semistructured interviews. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the data were analyzed to identify essential themes. Thematic analysis was conducted by hand using literature-based codes and lean coding as well as NVivo software. Themes included awareness, faculty mentor, involvement, incorporating legislative advocacy into the curriculum, lack of confidence, student learning and personal development, legislative culture, motivation, student obstacles to professional legislative advocacy, and problems in working with other professions. Findings may be useful for counselor educators seeking to integrate professional legislative advocacy into the counseling curriculum. Implementing a professional legislative advocacy approach into the counseling curriculum might contribute to counselor students\u27 developing a propensity for leadership, advocacy, and professional legislative advocacy beyond graduation

Paralysis over Palestine: Questions of Strategy

This essay by a prominent Israeli activist grows out of concern that advocacy efforts in support of the Palestinian cause have remained stuck at the protest-informational stage of combating disparate manifestations of the occupation. What is needed, the author argues, is a strategy to mobilize the vast range of civil society groups -- Palestinian, Israeli, and international -- to forge an effective lobbying and advocacy force that can lend the Palestinian leadership public support and a measure of parity with Israel. Intended as a starting point for debate, the essay explores the possibilities of a "middle range" strategy that would articulate the essential "red line" elements crucial to any just and sustainable settlement, provide a coordinated strategy of advocacy, and explore a range of "endgames," including a regional approach to resolving the conflict if the "two-state solution" is found to be impossible because of irreversible "facts on the ground.