Advocacy can be defined as speaking out and demanding what one needs. Farmers need tools that can help boost agriculture in their villages. This tool must be used to facilitate the improvement of rural infrastructure such as roads and further enable farmers to have easy access to both farms inputs and farm outputs. The principles of this toolkit have been taken out of tried and tested examples of smallholder advocacy related work. Any organisation, community or group of farmers with an interest in building the capacity of farmers in advocacy, can use this toolkit. The toolkit can be used as a five day training workshop, or alternatively, it can be used as a series over longer periods, for example over five weeks, meeting once every week, covering different bits in each seating – depending on the availability of time, pace of learning, and depth of discussion. An external facilitator may be used to run the workshop, but this is not a prerequisite. The group may get a member from within themselves to lead the workshop(s). It is recommended that the leading member should take out sufficient time before the workshop to read and understand how to use the toolkit. Every section of the toolkit has a few exercises. It is necessary that all exercises are done, especially as the different exercises draw on varied skills, abilities, and competencies for problem solving. Through a series of exercises the toolkit will reveal to the farmers in practical ways how best to get their demands met, through advocacy.
