The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) aims to place biodiversity as a priority topic on the national agenda of Macedonia by the beginning of COP15, UN’s Biodiversity Conference, scheduled to take place in China next year. To that end, UNEP is hiring an organization in Macedonia in order to devise an advocacy campaign.

Representatives of 20 organizations who are members of the “Clear it Up” campaign participated in this case study, by working for the past three days as part of the Advocacy and Lobbying training organized by the Institute of Communication Studies. They created strategies to ensure awareness of all relevant societal groups, including the private sector, on the challenges and opportunities related to the protection of flora and fauna species and nature conservation.

Training facilitators Lukasz Bochenek and Luts Meyer of “Leidar” – international advocacy company – passed on their knowledge and discussed with the participants on how to engage all actors in society, particularly the youth, to influence the government. The participants, by working in teams, developed plans that identified the main communication objectives and target audiences, created narratives and key messages, as well as taglines for their campaigns; they defined the communication channels through social and traditional media and determined the key performance indicators for their campaigns.

The training was organized within the “Connecting the Dots: Improved Policies through Citizen Engagement” project, supported by the British Embassy in Skopje.