Making poverty history?

Development through leverage, using lobbying and campaigning to press for global policy reforms, has assumed a growing role as an NGO strategy in pursuit of poverty reduction, fuelled in part by advocacy successes and facilitated by the revolution in communications technology. Thus, development NGOs are no longer solely deliverers of 'development' in various tangible forms, but seek to engage their constituencies in 'changing the world' through public action, emphasising, as Nelson Mandela said, that 'It is not the kings and generals who make history, but the masses of the people' (in Bedell 2005: 3). In this volume, the description of the growth in commitment to advocacy by Australian NGOs illustrated this trend, as did the increasing allocations of time and resources made to advocacy by international NGOs. Only relatively small percentages of total NGO incomes were devoted to advocacy prior to 2996. Although advocacy still accounts for a small percentage of total expenditure, more recent data suggest growing financial commitment to advocacy, with NGOs having increasingly developed and articulated advocacy strategies.