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Looking ahead to next year’s VSO Campaigns!

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Read our blog from November that looked at the issue of blogs in Kibera

So in yesterday's blogs I presented a snapshot of the year almost past. Today is all about looking forward to and planning for the future.

As with all the best plans (I think) these plans are not complete. In fact i'm not sure that campaign plans can ever be 'complete'; rather they are much more likely to exist in a state of frequent flux and evolution. However since I joined VSO in July we've got to work identifiying, thinking and strategising. It's been a thrilling five months and as a result we have now identified a bunch of the main things that will occupy us into the New Year.

We're going to have a lot of work to do...

I hope the outlines below don't stray too much into jargonistic and unapproachable development sector language but i'm afraid it probably does read a bit like a work document. In the main that's because next year we've got heaps and heaps of work to do if we (and I include you, beloved reader, in that 'we') are going to progress towards our vision of a world flourishing in economic and social justice. The seas in which our campaigns next year will sink or sail are stormy and fraught with all kinds of unpredicable monsters- Euro Zone meltdown, rumours of another unpredictable year of weather and harvests due to a possible repeat of this year's La Nina and ongoing climate change, and concerns in the UK about levels of unemployment here- we cannot know precisely what is over the crest of the New Year wave but we can be certain that we're going to have a lot of work to do in order to overcome the challenges.

The plans: Putting people first

As you would hope the keystones of next year's campaigns will be the people that we work to serve, people in disadvantaged situations, and VSO's incredible volunteers. Whether those volunteers are currently on placement around the world, returned back to the UK or people volunteering to take part in campaign activities and events across the UK. VSO recently launched our new strategy 'People First' which describes our primary role as 'bringing people together' and our plans for next year are that our campaigns make that connection between poor country and rich country campaigners really explicit. We believe that by bringing together;campaigners from north and south, east and west, our evidence for policy proposals can be strengthened, our media coverage can be even more inspiring and our campaigning and advocacy more representative of the needs and concerns of people living in poverty. As well as having opportunities for UK campaigners to team up with poor country campaigners on specific projects we are hoping to ensure that southern voices and the voices of volunteers come through even more in all of our communications.

As well as putting campaigners and communities, north and south, east and west, at the core of our campaigns we'll also put a frank analysis of who we can influence, by what means and to what affect at the core of our campaigns. This will mean understanding and evolving our tactics as we deliver the campaigns but it's likely to involve a lot of personality - we think we're going to need more hand written letters to Ministers and MPs, more face-to-face lobbies, like The Godmothers Lobby mentioned yesterday, and more creativity from communities of campaigners across the UK if we are going to influence public and business policies successfully. So in the New Year we'll be testing ways that we can work with people in the UK to do campaigning that really emphasises the personality of everyone taking part in the campaigns.

If you are a volunteer (or aren't but are interested) and want to help us shape and deliver this aspect of our plans get in touch on campaigns@vso.org.uk

Quality Jobs for All:

This is not the name of our campaign that we hope to launch in April but does fairly well capture what we want to progress towards through our new campaign on jobs next year - we want quality jobs for all. Joblessness, skills for jobs, job creation and associated policies have been one of the long neglected areas of development policy thinking for a long time, despite 80% of people in poverty believing that a secure job would be their preferred way out of poverty, and our campaign will be attempting to ensure world leaders take their finger off the mute button and start listening to the sense that this mostly ignored 80% are speaking. We think there are three main areas of policy around jobs that are of particular importance; job creation (are jobs being created in the right places for people to work), job quality (pay, conditions, work-life balance etc) and skills for jobs (vocations, critical thinking, basic numeracy and literacy...) and we need to research which government policies and corporate practices can be reformed in order to best affect the job opportunities for people in poverty. We're not starting from a blank sheet of paper on this - our work at this year's G20 has laid some of the ground work and VSO's long experience in 'livelihoods' (jobs) gives us a strong foundation on which to build.

Women's rights and sex equality:

For many years VSO has led campaigns on issues relating to sex equality - on female HIV/AIDS carers, female education, and on the establishment and funding for the UN agency for women's equality UN Women that we campaigned on this year. We are going to continue campaigning on sex equality into next year because we know, from the programmes that VSO volunteers "on the ground" deliver and from aggregated statistics, that it is women and girls that experience more and worse poverty than men. For the next few years we will be focusing our campaign on ensuring that women have influence in the fields of political and public life (by public life we mean media, social affairs, business affairs, civil services etc).

Women have a right to influence politics and public life and that right must be upheld in all circumstances as a fundamental tenate of international human rights law. We also believe that when women have influence in politics and public life countries achieve better development - although determining this more precisely in order that our case can be 'watertight' will require some further investigation and reporting. One of the reasons that we are particularly interested in these areas is that many development strategies in poor countries and by international donors obtain only surface level change such as new legislation or political quotas (which don't necessarily improve poor women's influence over policy) or simply pay lipservice to ensuring female empowerment. We are really interested in exploring the 'pathways' to politics and public life - what are the ways that policies and practices can support women getting experience at the 'grassroots' of politics and public life in order that more women can progress to the national and international echelons of power - we think that if more women gain experience influencing student politics, trade unions, parent-teacher associations, managing businesses and sections of the civil service then they are more likely to be able to influence at the national and international levels.

Legislation on Aid spending in the UK

Our third area of campaigning will be around ensuring that the UK Governmnet's plans to enshirn into law the principle of spending at least 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance and ensuring that that development assistance is as effective as is possible at relieving the long term causes and short term consequences of poverty. The schedule is yet to be set for when the legislation will be published and how long parliament will have to debate and pass this legislation however, sadly, we can expect that some sections of the British media and parliament will be vocal in their condemnation of the plans to spend just 0.7% of our national income on aid. It will probably therefore be necessary for us to show the constructive and progressive elements of parliament and press that a significant part of the UK population believes aid spending is important and the principle of putting this 42 year old promise into law is an important one. In the mean time you can read my blog from last month describing recent parliamentary news about this level of spending.

Get in touch...

We'll be developing briefing papers and policy reports, looking for case studies and campaign opportunities into the early New Year so if you've got some useful insight get in touch - same email address campaigns@vso.org.uk.

As with all of our news keep up to date by subscribing to this blog (use the orange RSS button at the top of the page) or drop us an email (to campaigns@vso.org.uk) and we'll make sure you are on our database to recieve emails.

Happy holidays and I look forward to working with you in the New Year!


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