Engaging stakeholders is more about how your excitement and presence in the work of advocacy presents itself to others. How you go about the work of engaging the residents of your community and how they respond to your work of advocacy is a start to engaging others in the work you live. You can draw people and opportunities to participate and live lives of advocacy by your attitude. It is more than advocacy it is the work of seeing a need within your community and placing yourself in the midst of the issues to be addressed. You will draw others who feel that what you are doing is good, right, just and fair. You will meet those we describe as stakeholders and be approached with opportunities to further your calling.

I’ve always found that storytelling is a great way to engage audiences in advocacy. By telling stories (rather than quoting statistics or metrics), the reason for the advocacy is easier to relate to for most people. In other words, it’s far easier to gain buy-in when the object of the advocacy finds something they can personally relate to. This is much easier in reacting to a story than in trying to make sense of a column of numbers, no matter how well displayed.

Firstly, doing away with the colonial term ‘stakeholder’ and recognising people as agents. Advocacy that is generated from within communities has proven to be the strongest when campaigns and projects are led by agents/ communities themselves. Enabling and creating roles for agents to engage in campaigns for the development of the community is a good practice. For example: to advocate for increased participation of girl students in the classroom, including voices of girl students who attend class consistently, alongside voices of mothers who have been able to ensure daughters go to school regularly in the campaign would be an effective strategy

Engage key stakeholders effectively requires to employing blend strategies and effective persuasion: 1. gather information and understand their interest, values and priorities 2. Share common goal and objectives 3. establish credibility and integrity 4. foster coalition building and strategic communication 5. adapt feedback mechanism

Understand where everyone is coming from, build relationships and trust, find common ground. Be clear on your goal, work with allies, and commit to a sustained/long-term approach.