COMMLD 562: Communication for Advocacy

Course Description:

This course is focused on ”integrated advocacy,” which is a strategy of communicating one’s advocacy efforts through multiple channels – like the marriage equality movement, net neutrality efforts by Google, Facebook and Netflix, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. You will develop part of an integrated advocacy campaign working for a client in this class. Real-life challenges and advocacy needs of our clients will allow us to use integrated advocacy model in an applied sense. We will build stories around goals and solutions. We will come up with advocacy tactics and create an advocacy campaign that will ignite change. This is a hands-on course. The course will help you develop immersive storytelling skills, and practice community organizing. You will learn persuasive communication and engagement methods, and how to pack a punch with a campaign aimed at making change. Guest speakers and mentors with experience spearheading campaigns will serve as guides throughout the quarter. The course will culminate with a short advocacy pitch session.

“Changing the world” gets a lot of lip service – this class actually teaches you how to do it! Sejal’s experience on successful advocacy campaigns like the $15 minimum wage provides a backdrop for instruction in tested strategies and techniques that can be deployed to move the needle at the community, social and policy level. Watching my fellow students’ presentations at the end of the quarter, I felt like we were all really well equipped to go out and have a positive impact like never before.  — Alex Stonehill, Associate Director, MCCN Cohort 19

Meets Law & Ethics requirement.