Our Mission
The International Centre for Policy Advocacy (ICPA) develops & supports effective advocacy initiatives to promote & safeguard democratic principles & open society values.
Our DNA as an Advocacy Support Organisation
Having worked to support and empower many actors from across the globe over 20 years, these are the core principles at the heart of everything we do:
- Expanding voice – facilitating access to those who are often left outside of the circles of influence & democratic decision making from across the sectors.
- Supporting role – we are never the public voice of advocacy efforts we support; we play a kind of 'midwife' role: advising, supporting, pushing, but in the end, it’s your baby!
- Piloting & Scaling – starting small, testing and iterating approaches to craft solutions with the best potential for effective outcomes, even in the most challenging environments.
- Evidence & testing – getting the right data to inform decisions at all levels.
- A movement perspective – partnering with networks that can deliver change at scale and who keep a shared movement goal front and centre.
- Peer learning towards communities of practice – we focus on real needs to advance core skills and build sustainable professional communities.
See how these values and principles are applied more specifically in our projects, trainings (policy and narrative change) & resources.
Public Policy & Narrative Change Focus
In our policy work, we support a wide range of actors (NGOs, researchers, think tanks and civil servants) working on all kinds of issues from macroeconomics to education to minority inclusion, and the expertise we bring is methodological and process-focused and supports actors to produce practical policy analysis & advice and effective communication & advocacy to increase their chances to influence decision making.
It became clear with the growth of populist politics in the 2010’s that the centre ground of public attitude was being lost and there was dwindling support for policy proposals advancing a diversity and democracy agenda. This inspired us to start working on narrative change and strategic communications around the issues of migration & shrinking civic space. In our narrative work, we support NGO networks to develop their skills in producing effective messaging to shift attitudes among sceptical public audiences and also develop tested advocacy strategies for such networks to use.
Where we work
