“So What?” – Your BI-Weekly Guide to Advocacy With Impact
Lovingly selected and lightly snarked by Team APEP: David Devlin-Foltz, Susanna Dilliplane, and Alex Gabriel
Who’s Snarking Now?
APEP’s long line of excellent alumni and alumnae now includes Christine Ferris, newly minted Master of Public Policy (says Georgetown U, and nobody wants to argue with The Jesuits.) And so this week APEP welcomes Alexander (Alex) Gabriel, who has achieved semi-Master-y in public policy at the University of Maryland with a concentration in education policy. (Full Master-y in May 2017.) Alex will be supporting our work with longtime clients like CARE and ITVS as well a new project with Aspen’s Youth and Engagement division. That’s a great fit for his background. Duties as assigned of course include fun-filled accounting tasks and opportunities to add snark to your bi-weekly reading. Welcome Alex!
Civility, anyone? No, really – anyone?
We are fans of Carolyn Lukensmeyer, now head of the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona. Her team’s efforts to promote civility in the current political campaign sounds Sisyphean. Or, to some of us here at APEP, “like a salmon swimming upstream in the Zambezi. Right below Victoria Falls. In the rainy season.” Measuring what’s civil and what isn’t ain’t much easier. But consider putting aside your professionally appropriate skepticism and signing on in support.
Championing Newborns!
APEP’s work with “champions” for policy change goes way back. Here’s a brand-new and excellent practical guide to identifying champions, developing relationships, and assessing efforts to engage champions in support of policy change, with a big kudos to Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives campaign. And if you like newborns, savvy midwives, and excellent BBC period pieces, check out Call the Midwife.
