Nov 12 E&A meeting

Renew the Canadian International Immunization Initiative

The meeting started off with our very engaging guest speaker Amanda Sussman (author
of “The Art of the Possible : a handbook for political activism”) who delivered a
presentation of how to work with the Canadian government for social progress and
changes. She showed us how to sustain our motivation within our very busy lives and
limited time.

Advocacy is about public interests. Its goal is to raise awareness first, this is most
important, as it lays the basic foundation to precede policy change.

Amanda also stressed that it is extremely important that our expectations should be clear
and our objectives should be focused. In order to achieve results, we should be using the
SMART method. That means, our objectives should be :

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time sensitive

One of her valuable pieces of advice to us is that our intended policy change will not
happen overnight, but on incremental steps. It is important to remember that politicians
need to find the balance between competing interests; therefore policy change will not
suddenly go about in one way.

Then she hosted the question period and instilled interactive discussions with all
participants.

Afterwards, one of the participants, Roshelle, shared with us a response letter from Len
Edwards (Deputy of Foreign Affairs). This is certainly a positive result of our efforts to
advocate on Canadian Initiative to Save a Million Lives. Len promises to bring up the
issue to the G8 Summit in 2010.
Francoise led us to the Action Sheet and shared with us on her research that for every $ 1
invested in vaccine actually saves $ 14 to 27 US dollars in medical costs. Meanwhile $ 60
Cdn can vaccinate 285 children against polio in the developing world.

Elizabeth delivered the EPIC concept and showed us an example of asking our MP to
persuade Minister Oda to commit $ 50 million investments for renewing CIII (refer to
Action # 3). The EPIC concept is outlined below :

Engage the person. Whenever possible, add a personal touch for this attention-getter.
Pose the problem
Inform them of possible solutions
Call to action : ask the MP to commit to an action

Adopting the EPIC concept, we had a chance to practice laser talk in pairs.

Wendy ended the meeting with a quote from Winston Churchill

Success is never final, failure is never fatal, it is courage that counts

… and reminded us that it is our dedication that makes positive change in the fight to end
global poverty.

Our focus on actions this month is on writing letters (see Action # 2 & 3). We committed
to each other to have our letters finished by the end of the month.