The project team "Active Citizens: Better Society: Advocating for Cooperation and Democratic Development" from April 27, 2020, conducts a series of online trainings with the aim of strengthening the capacity of project and program partners in the field of public advocacy. So far, three webinars have been successfully organized, each of which was dedicated to a specific topic and contained both an advocacy and a communication component.

After the introductory session, held on April 27, the first in a series of webinars was held on Wednesday, April 29. In the first module, participants were introduced to different definitions and goals of public advocacy, as well as different elements of communication strategy. Also, the topics of civic activism and political power were covered.

The second webinar was held on Wednesday, May 13. This time the partners listened and discussed the concept of political will, approaches in public advocacy and triangle analysis as a tool for strategic planning in public advocacy. In the second part of the webinar, guest lecturer Ana Mirković, from the Digital Communications Institute (DCI), talked with partners about the strategic use of social networks and digital tools in communicating advocacy initiatives on networks.

At the third webinar, held on May 27, the emphasis was on setting the agenda, the message in advocacy, as well as the structure of the communication strategy. Also, the participants had the opportunity to hear about the establishment of priorities in terms of social issues and their presentation to decision-makers, as well as the importance of the media agenda. The second part of the webinar talked about coding and decoding messages in advocacy, message organization, as well as what issues are most important to us when we define communication goals and target groups that we address in our advocacy campaign.

The series of online trainings ends on June 24, when the last webinar is scheduled.

After that, work continues with project and program partners through the provision of knowledge and skills in the field of public advocacy and other training and mentoring support. Further activities can be followed here.