The Partnership for Advocacy in child and family health at scale, PACFaH@Scale organized a one-day training for its subgrantees on using media campaign as an effective advocacy tool.

The one-day-day training  was organized on Saturday  September 14, 2019 at the PAS training center in Abuja. Ten advocates  from eight PAS focal states participated. The objectives of the training were to enhance the skills of the PAS advocates on budget processes, monitoring and evaluation and updates, and to strengthen the capacities of the PAS advocates on television  appearances and media engagement.

The advocates were exposed to health budget processes, technical terms and the role of NGOs in health budget advocacy, monitoring and evaluation.  Dr. Afolabi Bajume, a Technical Adviser to the Director-General of Nigeria Budget Office, facilitated this session. Participants were  also trained on technical mastery of data and the power of analysis,  and how to be leaders and data-informed confident speakers in front of the media.

The Campaign

The participants discussed the objectives of the campaign:   To create awareness about  the performance of the 2019 health budget,  advocate to the  policymakers and legislators why the 2020 health budget  should include critical provisions for FP, CKD, RI, and PHCUO and to mobilize support for appropriate allocation of money in the health budget to fund the proposed 2020 budget.

The Media Mix

The advocates will engage a total of 17 media organizations, including TV stations, local and international Radio stations, Newspapers, Online newspapers and with a robust social media campaign encapsulating the 1-month campaign.

The Messaging Focus

The focus of the advocates will be to use the data available from the budget office and the 2018 NDHS to buttress their advocacy demands. Facts such as continuing inability of Nigeria to allocate 15% of the budget as agreed in the 2011 Abuja declaration, drastic cut of the FP budget from N1.2bn in 2018 to N300m in 2019, non-release of counterpart funding for routine immunization in 2019 budget, non-release of single kobo for capital expenditure for the health sector in the 2019 budget as at September, increase in under 5 mortality in 2019, etc.

Dr Afolabi Bajuem, Technical Adviser, DG, Nigeria’s Budget Office during his presentation

 

 A cross-section of the Advocates during a group work

 

Photos