The Change Agency provides a range of tools online to help activists and advocates strategically plan their campaigns.

While the Lentara project isn’t specifically an activism exercise it is a project which these tools can be effectively applied to help develop an effective communication campaign.

The following is a chart I have created to group some of the tools they provide which may help guide us to the next step of the process after the broad return brief we delivered.

The Democracy Centre recommends nine steps to plan advocacy campaigns based around a sequence of simple questions. By answering each question, campaigners develop each element of their strategy:

1. What do we want? (goals and objectives)
2. Who can give it to us? (audiences)
3. What do they need to hear? (messages)
4. Who do they need to hear it from? (messengers)
5. How do we get them to hear it? (delivery)
6. What have we got? (resources; strengths)
7. What do we need to develop? (challenges; gaps)
8. How do we begin? (first steps)
9. How will we know it’s working, or not working? (evaluation)

To attempt to answer these:

1. To grow awareness, involvement, and support of Lentara’s Asylum Seeker Project in audiences outside their current field of influence.
2. People who are passionate and involved in the debate around Asylum Seekers but not yet aware of Lentara. As well as people who are aware but not involved (see “The Wave” Activity – blog post to come, See Circles of Commitment, See Spectrum of Allies activity and Power Map)
3. About the issues faced by the people Lentara help: i.e. People Seeking Asylum who are in Australia
4. The people who have been helped by the project
5. Video/Short Doco with an Impact Production campaign surrounding it, utilising the RMIT/Lentara Branding group’s aim to grow social media for Lentara
6. RMIT Media and Design students and equipment
7. Relationships with Lentara, Existing supporters and Asylum Seekers
8. Contact Lentara: We need to start meeting existing supporters and existing clients
9. We need a call to action, something simple and accessible with room to grow involvement and interaction, eg. social media: initial shares/views, video: escalate to small donation drive/crowdfunding round 2, video/social media: escalate to attending a small fundraising event or similar, print material at event: escalate to volunteering. Need to explore feedback mechanisms. Do shares and views of video indicate success? Does there need to be more in the Impact Production strategy to make goals measurable.