For charities, NGOs and civil society organisations engaged in advocacy and campaigning, centring the people most affected by the issues at hand is essential to doing the work accurately, credibly and effectively. This is about more than representation; it leads to better judgement, helps surface risks earlier and builds stronger trust. But doing it well takes time, resource and care.
This was at the heart of our recent What’s next for advocacy communications? conversation with Kafia Omar, Advocacy and Communications Manager at Action for Humanity.
In the session, Kafia shared thoughtful and practical insights on what it takes to engage meaningfully with lived experience in advocacy, while making the case that if advocacy communications is to be truly effective, lived expertise needs to help shape the work from the outset.
The session highlighted several practical takeaways for organisations looking to make this shift:
Lived experience is not a story source, it is expertise
Lived experience should not be treated as a way to validate or illustrate a campaign. It is expertise, and should shape the direction work from the outset. This requires a mindset of co-creation and partnership, not late-stage input as a story source. Otherwise, they risk building campaigns on assumptions and blind spots that do not reflect the reality of the issue.
This is not just more inclusive, it leads to stronger, more effective advocacy. It helps organisations identify risks earlier, put better mitigations in place, and design campaigns or programmes that are more grounded in the realities they are trying to address. It also builds credibility and trust with key stakeholders, whether in the media, government or the wider public, showing that the work is rooted in evidence and real expertise.
Sustained engagement is crucial
Meaningful participation needs to be regular and sustained. Long-term relationships lead to stronger understanding, greater trust and better judgement about how stories and insights should be used. They also give people more ownership over their stories and help organisations stay closer to the realities they are trying to reflect. By contrast, one-off engagement can become extractive and risks tokenism. Sustained relationships are far more likely to create a balance.
Transparency and safeguarding must be at the heart of the approach
A crucial part of building these relationships is being transparent with the people and communities you are working with. They need to understand what your organisation can and cannot do, how their stories will be used, alongside any limitations, risks and safeguarding considerations. Kafia reflected on this in the context of her work, including War Child’s Bring Them Home campaign, which focused on repatriating British nationals detained in north-east Syria. Where issues are highly politicised or subject to public scrutiny, it is essential that people understand any potential risk of backlash and that organisations take steps to mitigate harm wherever possible.
Consent is not enough on its own; organisations also need to think about risk, anonymity, and psychological support. In some contexts, the safest or most effective route may be anonymised testimony, indirect storytelling, or private advocacy. This might look like sharing stories with pseudonyms and removing identifying details, considering closed-door briefings over public communications, and ensuring they have strong referral networks in place for psychological support.
Organisations have a responsibility to remove barriers to meaningful participation
If participation is only accessible to the easiest people to involve, it is unlikely to reflect the full reality of the issue. Organisations need to consider what makes participation difficult and actively remove those barriers, rather than defaulting to the easiest voices to reach. This takes investment, but it is essential to gaining a full picture of the realities involved.
It means thinking carefully about the barriers that might prevent people from taking part – from language needs and the provision of interpretation or translation to lost income, transport costs and childcare. It may also mean navigating visa requirements, or finding digital alternatives such as virtual meetings, presentations or video testimony where travel is not possible. Accessibility requirements should be considered throughout, so that participation is not limited to those who face the fewest obstacles.
Accept complexity, but communicate it well
Advocacy often deals in nuance, while communications often needs clarity and a compelling hook. The answer is not to flatten complexity, but to communicate it through the right mix of formats. A strong headline can open the door, while videos, interviews, reports and Q&As carry the depth and nuance that must not be lost. The challenge is to strike the right balance between a clear public message and the richer supporting content behind it.
In practice, that may mean using a range of formats to highlight different kinds of insight, from audiovisual storytelling that captures attention to animation where direct testimony is not possible, as in War Child’s Bring Them Home campaign, which Forster supported, working with Kafia. Organisations can also strengthen lived-experience testimony with polling or research that helps challenge assumptions and reinforce the wider case for change.
Be targeted when resources are limited
Now more than ever, many campaigning organisations are finding their budgets squeezed and great pressure to cut costs. Limited budgets are not a reason to abandon this approach, but they do require thoughtful prioritisation – focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to working with people and communities.
Budget constraints require creativity about what formats and partnerships look like, encouraging teams to be strategic about where and how they engage. In practice, that might mean virtual participation, pre-recorded video, organising media visits where costs are shared, coalition working with like-minded organisations, or gathering quotes, testimony and audiovisual material through research processes.
Organisations should also think about how the testimony they gather can work harder across the organisation, for example not just in communications, but in funding conversations, government engagement and other influencing activity.
Ultimately, lived experience is what makes advocacy work stronger, more credible and more effective. The challenge is not whether to centre it, but ensuring it is done with the time, care and intention it deserves.
If you missed the live session, you can watch it back here. We also encourage you to explore Action for Humanity’s website to learn more about their work and the practical ways they are embedding meaningful involvement and lived expertise into policy, practice and advocacy.
Catch up of the rest of the series here.