ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

Rights. Respect. Responsibility.®—The Fix the GAP Campaign Toolkit [PDF]

Creating an Action Plan

• Identifying Your Goals
• Identifying Campaign Targets

Now that you have identified an organization with which to work and together have conducted outreach to allies and constituents, you need to create a plan of action. This includes determining your goals and your targets.

Identifying Your Goals

• The long-term goal of the Campaign is to remove the restriction that one-third of prevention funds allocated under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) be spent on ineffective and medically unethical abstinence-until-marriage programs.
• The intermediate goals of the Fix the GAP Campaign are to:

• Reach out to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee, urging an end to the exportation of anti-condom programs and support for U.S. global funding for comprehensive HIV prevention education.
• Publish 25 op-eds and 25 letters to the editor in local papers in response to media articles about PEPFAR and to educate the public regarding PEPFAR and youth’s need for comprehensive HIV prevention.
  

Why Did Advocates for Youth Choose these Goals?
Advocates understands the importance of comprehensive HIV prevention education and realizes that legislation can help us ensure young people receive accurate, honest HIV prevention education. To help us accomplish this vision Advocates identified long-term and intermediate goals. Looking at goals this way permits us to break a larger vision (here, ensuring comprehensive HIV prevention education) down into smaller, more manageable, and winnable steps (here, targeted outreach to specific members of Congress). For example, think about what the Youth Activist Network wants to achieve through the Fix the GAP Campaign. The long-term goal of the campaign is what the Youth Activist Network would really like to see happen. The long-term goal is not the specific issue we are working on now, but one that helps us reach the larger vision for what can happen after we’ve won some victories.

But first we have to identify more immediate goals that lead up to our long-term goal. Our intermediate goals are: 1) to increase Congressional support for comprehensive HIV prevention education and services; and 2) to work with media to increase the public’s awareness about the limitations of PEPFAR. These are clear and attainable goals. Victory in achieving these goals can bring the long-term goal closer.

Your Goals
Now, you need to determine how your efforts can contribute to reaching the Campaign’s intermediate goal. What can your organization do to contribute to the Fix the GAP Campaign? Think about what will be attainable for your organization. Be clear about your goal(s).

Examples:

1. If you go to a school where most students live in the same state and your members of Congress are on the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations committees, then your goal could be to contact these members of Congress about support for comprehensive HIV prevention education. See the section below on “targeting” to determine if your members of Congress make good targets for these efforts.
2. If you go to a school where students are residents of many states and therefore have many different members of Congress, your goal could reach out to ten legislators who serve on either the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the House International Relations Committee about ending the current funding in PEPFAR for abstinence-until-marriage programs. See the section below on targeting to determine which legislators to focus your energy on.
3. If you live in a state with members of Congress who are not on the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations committees or who are vocal supporters of abstinence-only education, then your goals could be to increase public knowledge of the importance of comprehensive HIV prevention education by getting five op-ed pieces and three letters to the editor published in local papers.
   

Determining Attainable Goals
When choosing an issue to work on and setting your goals, keep the following points in mind.

1. Is the Issue or Goal Easy to Understand? The issue or goal should not need a lengthy or complex explanation in order for people to understand it and feel motivated to work with you. You should be able to point easily to the problem and explain simply how you are working to change things. For example:
   • Explanation: abstinence-until-marriage education does not provide youth with the information they need to make healthy decisions about sex.
   • Solution: We want to end censorship and give youth the information needed to make healthy decisions about sex
2. Is this Issue or Goal Widely and Deeply Felt? Determine whether people believe this is a real problem and if they feel strongly enough about the problem to do something about it.
3. Is this Goal Worthwhile? Everyone involved should feel positive about the goal and what you are trying to achieve. If not, you haven’t articulated the goals clearly enough.
4. Is this Issue or Goal Something You Can Win? Learn whether a similar goal has been achieved in the past, and if achieving it had the desired effect on the issue. Decide where the issue or goal is just right or too big or too small for your organization to tackle.
5. Will Attaining Your Goal Help Achieve Real Improvement in People’s Lives? You should be able to experience the improvement. For example, increasing support for comprehensive HIV prevention education should result in policies that respect young people’s right to information that can help them prevent HIV infection.
   

Identifying Campaign Targets

• Targets of the Fix the GAP Campaign are:
  • Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations committees
  • Editors of newspapers in which you want to publish op-ed and letters to the editor

How Did Advocates for Youth Determine these Targets?
A target is a person or people who can give you what you want. In any campaign there can be more than one target. The important thing to remember, here, is that the target is always an individual or individuals and never a board or institution. For example, our targets are specific members of Senate and House committees, not the Senate or the House of Representatives as a whole. Individuals are far easier to move than any institution. The Senate and House of Representatives, for example, may have fixed policies and/or ways of doing business; but each member has his/her own interests, aspirations, likes, and dislikes. For the Fix the GAP Campaign, our specific targets are those people who have influence in international policy making.

Your Target(s)
If your members of Congress are on the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations Committees, you might plan to target them. If your members of Congress are not on these committees, you might instead target legislators from other states or focus your energies on building public support for the comprehensive HIV prevention education through the media. You may select targets using different criterion, of course. These are just a few examples of how to select targets:

Examples:

1. If you go to a school where most students live in the same state and your members of Congress are on the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations committees and you have decided that your goal is to reach out to your legislators, then your targets will be those members of Congress.
2. If you go to a school where students are residents of many states and therefore have many different members of Congress and you have decided that your goal is to reach out to ten legislators who are members of the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations committees about the funding set aside in PEPFAR for abstinence-until-marriage, then your targets will be those ten members of Congress.
3. If you live in a state with members of Congress who are not on the Senate Foreign Relations or House International Relations committees or who are vocal supporters of abstinence-only education and your goal is to increase public knowledge of the importance of comprehensive HIV prevention education by getting five op-ed pieces and three letters to the editor published, then your target will be those individuals who work at the papers and make the decisions about publishing your letters.

What if My Members of Congress Are Not on the Targeted Congressional Committees?
Just because your members of Congress are not on Advocates’ current target list does not mean that you shouldn’t reach out to them. We want to build as much support as possible for comprehensive HIV prevention education. Contacting your members of Congress will play an important role in achieving this goal.

If you have members of Congress who definitely will not support an end to funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs, you can participate in other ways. Work with students in your organization or at your school who live in states with more friendly legislators to gain Congressional support. Or focus on increasing the public’s knowledge of the need for comprehensive HIV prevention education, by using community forums and other tactics. Finally, you can work on getting published op-ed pieces and letters to the editor on the importance of comprehensive HIV prevention education.

See the overview of tactics and determine what will work best for you or your organization. You can also contact Advocates’ YAN Program Manager or your Regional Organizer to get help in identifying useful tactics.

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