Advocacy and service delivery

This chapter is concerned with the main activities undertaken by development NGOs. As the preceding chapters illustrate, there is an immense diversity of such activity, and this needs to be understood in relation to the wider policy context in which NGOs operate. Najam (1999) makes the case for seeing NGOs – or ‘citizen organizations’ as he prefers to call them – as ‘policy entrepreneurs’ seeking to influence and change policy in innovative ways in support of poverty reduction.