In my role as Coordinator of the Incide Network I have had the opportunity to apply the TAI Advocacy Toolkit (Access Initiative Tool for the Creation of an Outreach Strategy) in its pilot form, together with two local partners that belong to Incide.

The objective of this tool is to facilitate any organization that wishes to carry out an organized process of debate and decision-making, by taking 8 methodological steps that allow them to agree on and define a coordinated strategy in order to achieve changes in a certain area of public interest, and in this way influence the definition of this public issue.

In the case of Chile, this tool has been used in two cases involving environmental conflicts.

The first experience was with the local organization MODEMA (Environmental Defense Movement), whose objective was for the corresponding authorities to deny permission for the installation of a coal-fired power plant.

The second case involves OCAS (Environmental Citizen’s Organization of Salamanca), which works with communities based around the Los Pelambres Mining Company operations. This mining company is currently planning to close the Los Quillayes tailings pond, after over 10 years of use. The objective of the OCAS organization is to achieve a sustainable closing of the pond, which includes participation by the surrounding communities.

Towards these ends, OCAS has organized roundtable discussions between community representatives and the Los Pelambres Mining Company, which have allowed for the community to be informed on the process, and for their proposals regarding the problems of the closing to be considered as well.

With each of these organizations we coordinated a one-day Workshop, during which we went over the 8 steps of the Outreach Strategy, in order to reach a consensus regarding a clear working plan with reasonable deadlines.

What I would like to highlight, beyond the actions that it was decided to take in order to achieve the objectives, are the positive and unexpected effects that I was able to observe regarding the process of applying the 8 steps.

What is interesting is that these positive effects, which I am about to describe, were impossible to predict before having facilitated the workshop, which I suppose makes them even more noteworthy.

The first of these effects was seeing that the workshop caused the local partners to take on a more strategic level of leadership, and thus a less activist approach to the challenges that they face. By this I mean that on this occasion they took the time “to sit and think”, rather than just making decisions in order to carry them out immediately. In effect, as most of the time they have to react very quickly to events that occur without much notice, and thus have to decide what to do on the fly, there is a clear tendency towards activism. I say activism not in a derogatory way, rather I would like to point to the fact that they are almost always in a position in which they have to decide and act on their decisions at the same time.

In this way, the workshop was a great opportunity to take the time to think and analyze their possible actions with a wider perspective.

This contribution by the workshop also led to other positive effects, such as the balancing and sharing of information between different members of the organization, making the various positions regarding the problem that they face more explicit, and leading to more dialogue regarding decision-making. This made for a generally more democratic process.

It was possible to observe rather explicitly that not all members of the organization had the same level of information. Some are more informed than others regarding, for example, what the corresponding authorities think about the issue, the company’s strategy regarding those who support the project, the formal deadlines of the SEIA (the Environmental Impact Evaluation System), which of the community leaders have a more condescending attitude towards the company, etc.

This balancing of information that took place has a positive effect on the organization, strengthening the participation of all its members, as their opinions and ideas are more substantive because they are based on up-to-date and timely information. It is also useful as some members came to change their minds on certain issues, once they had access to valid information that made them realize that their former opinions had been based on false assumptions.

It was also interesting to see how on some occasions the members of the organization have differing approaches to the problem at hand. In this way, the workshop is helpful to confront these differences in a civilized manner, which definitely contributes to the strengthening of the organization, as members are able to compare different perspectives and opinions and, in the best of all possibilities, agree on better founded and better designed strategies.

In my opinion, this tool represents a significant methodological and political contribution to the outreach work that the organizations that belong to the Access initiative are involved in.

Andrea Sanhueza