50 Campaigns to Shout About by Ellie Levenson is a true call to action!

The book highlights memorable campaigns that have succeeded in delivering change, as well as provides tools and resources to those planning and hoping to effectively make the leap “from issue to action.”

Ellie is familiar with, and a friend of, SURF having written previously an article on our education work in the Guardian:  Teaching the Rwandan genocide in schools. As such, Survivors Fund (SURF) features in her new book, with an overview of the classic rules of organising, as set out by the father of community organising, Saul Alinsky, in his seminal text: Rules for Radicals. One of the key principles that we highlight is that persistence does pay.

As SURF embarks on launching new campaigns, we will endeavour to keep this in mind.

Our most successful campaign to date has been the call to secure antiretroviral treatment for HIV+ women survivors in Rwanda which we launched in the lead-up to the 10th Anniversary of the genocide, and resulted in a £4.25 million grant from the British government to support 2,500 women survivors.

That campaign took nearly three years to come to fruition.

For that reason, we are planning now to launch a new campaign to call for funding to support orphaned survivors in Rwanda to access post-secondary education, critical for sustainable employment. We will announce further details on the campaign here in due course, but with persistence we hope to secure international funding by the time of the 20th Anniversary of the genocide in 2014.

50 Campaigns to Shout About will be a useful guide for the campaigning ahead!