IREX Advocacy concluded the first full-fledged communication, networking and advocacy workshop with 24 representatives of four counties from the first round.
The “whole-system-in-the-room” approach gathered library directors, coordinators, trainers, librarians, both urban and rural, local government, and dedicated media supporters.
While the communication-related topics were partly new, the networking and advocacy ones were completely new. Most participants’ expectations referred to understanding what advocacy is, learning how to communicate more efficiently, testing working in a network, building a successful team, and establishing better collaboration avenues with local government and media representatives. Despite participants’ eagerness to learn about all the interesting topics presented, most of them needed more time to process the novelty of the approach and themes of the workshop. They had the opportunity to create their own folder with the handouts provided by the IREX workshop team, thus gaining ownership of the entire training material. Moreover, some compiled several folders for county library directors and other colleagues who could not attend, so as to share their newly acquired information, which is not the norm in most cases.
During the workshop, participants experienced the stages of group development presented during the networking session and acknowledged the validity of the approach. They particularly enjoyed role plays and the highly interactive and participatory approach to running the workshop in a totally new manner to most of them. All participants took active part in all small group activities and sketched advocacy plans referring to obtaining a proper library space, or inserting a permanent budget line dedicated to library development in the local government annual budget. Some have thought of advocating for resolving local social issues through debates and advocacy campaigns conducted by the library, but in order to finalize the advocacy action plans they will need technical assistance from IREX.
Participants also believe that bringing all involved stakeholders to a workshop is a way of changing the local dynamics for the future implementation stage of the program. However, they stressed the importance of investing a simpler, more applied, practical version of the workshop to county-level librarians in tandem with local government representatives.

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