First advocacy workshop in Kayes with Illia Djadi, December 2021

From 13 to 17 December 2021, a training workshop on advocacy was held in Kayes (Mali) with 8 delegates from 4 villages in the Kayes region: Bouillagui, Banzana, Bougarila and Monzona. The workshop was facilitated by Illia Djadi, an international advocacy expert based in London.

The workshop aimed to strengthen the theoretical and practical advocacy skills of the participating villagers. The workshop enabled the development of a number of advocacy proposals based on the issues chosen by each village, which were presented on the last day to a group of managers from the technical services of the Kayes region.

Illia Djadi, the instructor, complemented his theoretical presentations with group work on the notion of advocacy, its equivalence in local languages and a slogan to combat climate change. Advocacy aims at sustainable changes, seeks to influence the decisions, policies and practices of decision-makers to address the underlying causes of poverty, environmental degradation etc. Questions of priority and feasibility were discussed at length with the participants. Delegates shared their experiences and identified a problem in their village as an advocacy topic. The day of 15 December was devoted to group work, village by village, on the issues identified. The partial results of the socio-economic survey in the different villages were presented by Marie-Christine Deleigne. The blogger Michel Yao also made a presentation on the role of the media in advocacy. The advocacy proposals were then finalised and presented to the other participants.

The last day of the workshop was held at the Governorate of Kayes in the presence of several government officials. Mamadou Sène Cissé explained the context and purpose of the Watigueleya Kèlê project to representatives of the mayor, the economic affairs advisor and the governor. Each village presented its advocacy case to an audience of technical service agents who were able to give their opinions and make proposals to solve the various problems.

One of the participants, Waly Traoré, said that “this intervention has allowed them to acquire a lot of knowledge and to strengthen their capacities in terms of advocacy”. Adama Assagaïdou Maiga, CAEF of the Kayes governorate said that “their assistance will never be lacking” to support the villagers in these resilience initiatives

by Assa Waly  Diakité et Binta Coulibaly