Chaste’s Report from the OXFAM Digital Public Campaign Workshop

Digital experts from within the civil society sector – recently took part in a three-day Digital Public Campaigning workshop, facilitated by Alexis Masset, a Digital Campaigner and part of the Quality Support & Capacity Building Team at Oxfam Novib, in The Hague, Netherlands and Michael Borum, the Global Digital Influencing Advisor at Oxfam America. . Here they share the issues explored and outcomes established during this hands-on event with Oxfam In Nigeria partners engaged in public campaigning, both offline and online, this workshop was very important as it helped in deepening understanding of what digital public campaign is about, so that in the end we can actualize the dream of building our campaign on concrete evidence and experience on the ground. The Workshop was held at Bolton White Hotels in Abuja from Wednesday 8th – Friday 10th, November 2017 9 am – 5 pm Daily.

Highlights:

Hamzy Code Presentation
Day 1-3 Sessions
Feedbacks from the Group

OXFAM offerings

Provision of Templates for Campaign

Group Support for Amplifications and Advisory

Videos: The Red Thumb, Coffee Shop, Tax Evasion and More

Technology has the potential to be an enabler for this push for greater collaboration within our sector. Working with the Digital Influencing team at BudgIT, our team has been working with coalitions, partners and Oxfam teams, providing central infrastructure and capacity building to allow any team – or partner – to launch public campaigns targeting governments and corporations with our inventions Datanonym and Report Yourself.

Civil society collaboration is challenging and complex – there are always competing agendas, perspectives, and outputs. You can watch the face of any person from a civil society organisation (CSO) explode in agony when you mention the thought of “coalition” work. Despite this, we all know that we must move together.

As a collective sector, we lack the agility and flexibility to move quickly behind moments of global and national importance. Big CSOs are usually slow to react, and digital-first organizations move more quickly. But what if we could support each other and respond to these crises together? It’s needed now more than ever.

I participated in the Taxation group where our campaign was in preparedness to Davos 2018 (World Economic Forum Annual Meeting) we picked the tag #MakeTaxWork4Us : We explored how Government can End Multinationals Corporations from tax dodging in Nigeria and increase investment in essential services; I had the opportunity alongside the team to present and we got public feedback on the use of words like ‘MNC’ to be referred to ‘Big Companies’ while we leverage on the possibilities of working with government to review, enforce laws on tax dodging.

Our time at BudgIT with the next generation of civil society digital leaders underpins that there is a strong willingness to collaborate and respond to looming crises together. Later this week, we are coming together to continue to discuss how to actually do this across our campaigns. Stay tuned for more.

Thanks to the Oxfam Team, Communication Lead, Abiola Sosami and our Team Lead, Oluseun Onigbinde for the opportunity to represent.