John O’Brien
Including a Revised Short Form of
CAPE: Citizen Advocacy Program Evaluation Standards
John O’Brien – May 1987
Learning From Citizen Advocacy Programs is for people who want to learn how to develop and run citizen advocacy (CA) programs. It defines the foundation principles of CA in a set of standards; provides a way to describe CA program performance; summarizes what some effective CA coordinators have learned to date about what works and what doesn’t work in doing their jobs and provides a way to describe and assess a CA coordinator’s work; identifies the strategic issues in providing a CA program with a firm foundation in community life and provides a way to describe and assess a program’s strategy for doing so; and compiles some resource materials which have proven useful in practice. While it defines citizen advocacy from the point of view of people who organize CA programs, it says little about the wide variety of things people in citizen advocacy relationships actually do together.
The manual can be used in at least three ways: as a sourcebook for designers of external evaluations of CA programs:2 as the basis of a CA program self assessment; and as a collection of resources for program board and staff. It has not been written as a book to be read but as a set of questions to consider and activities to be done. The text supports and clarifies the suggested description and evaluation actvities.
