Involving Congregations in Advocacy Now (ICAN) Introduction My Faith and Advocacy The How-tos of Advocacy How to bring advocacy to my congregation Resources Miscellaneous Activities and Handouts

Involving Congregations in Advocacy Now

"Involving Congregations in Advocacy Now" or ICAN is an online resource for people who are interested in addressing through advocacy the needs of those persons in our society who live in poverty or experience various forms of oppression.

ICAN was originally used in a weekend training program to be followed up by participants in congregational, faith-based advocacy work. Therefore, throughout the resource, several pieces are aimed at developing this program in a workshop format for a congregation. These may be adapted for a day-long training or a series of adult forums.

While this tool may be used by congregations to develop an advocacy program, individuals may also find it useful in enhancing their own advocacy skills.

On each page of this document, you will find a "print" button.  Pressing this button will open an additional window, offering a neatly formatted PDF document you can print from your browser. Should you need to print whole chapters of the document,  use the following links. Print "Introduction" Print "My Faith and Advocacy" Print "The How-tos of Advocacy" Print "How to bring advocacy to my congregation" Print "Resources" Print "Miscellaneous Activities and Handouts" Alternatively, the  entire document is available for download from the following link.  This download is ideal for high-speed Internet connectivity.  Dial-up users may experience longer download times. Print "Involving Congregations in Advocacy Now"  (2.7M/ 68pgs.) Should you wish to save a document to your computer (to access the document at a later time without Internet access), use the "Save As" function in your browser.

Whether you are looking at this tool as an individual or developing a training program for your congregation, there are some aspects of adult learning to remember:

1. Adults come with a foundation of life experiences and knowledge. What you share they need to process through their own screen of life experiences.
    
2. Adults expect a safe and supportive environment where instructors and participants are treated as peers.
    
3. Adults are self directed and goal oriented. They work best when their individual needs are addressed through flexible program design.
    
4. Adults expect the information shared to be relevant. Regular feed back in both directions (teacher-student) can facilitate learning.
    
5. Adults are practical and expect to try out new ideas. The more active the learning (as opposed to passive lectures) the better retention and growth.