Theme	Illustration
Credibility	‘We were the outsiders so we had to establish ourselves and people had to find value in what we had to offer; but once that developed and they test you to see if you're going to come through, once you're over that stage then it became quite easy’.
Scaling up	‘What is the role of advocacy in scaling up? To engage all those partners and people and forces at those intermediate and closer to the ground levels. You can't reach tens of millions of people yourself so you have to give it away to others. But then you make strategic decisions about how many people, how fast, and how easily and affordably can somebody take it forward for you; and then marketing and promoting that so they'll pick it up has been really where most of the advocacy has gone’.
National and cultural differences	Transparency: ‘A lot of stuff is going on at every meeting, they are not necessarily sharing information, lack of transparency, people holding things close to their chest, so you know, not necessarily wanting to share.’
	Taking Credit: ‘The other thing in this region is that the less you take credit, the more credit you get. And if you say “We did this work” and we put our logo on it, it's a loser. You have to do the opposite. You have to go out of your way to say, “I didn't do this. This is all your work. Remember? It was your idea!” All the time. In other countries, yeah, they can be much more straightforward and open: if you do it, you get credit. What the heck? You know? Don't be shy. And some donors demand credit.’
	Scientific credibility: ‘Having the scientific and technical side correct is very important. People here are very nitpicky and if they find any flaw in your science or findings they will rip you to pieces. In other places I've worked people don't care so much; it just has to make sense, it has to be down to earth and practical’.
Building government ownership and capacity; handing over	‘We very carefully cultivated a small core group that included the government focal point and institute director. [S/he could] call everybody together to develop harmonized messages, so people are not saying different things. [Before that] we always were being asked to present in meetings and conferences and so on. [But now] it is being led by the Director. And now this director with whom we've been working for 2 years has emerged as the front runner for higher leadership’. ‘At the last meeting we said we are not going to host these meetings. We are not even going to write the letter of invitation for the director. So we handed it over to another NGO. They are another one of our close core allies, so they took it over, they funded it, they put together this banner, they created the agenda, they issued the letters, did the follow up, all that stuff. So, we're trying to sort of get out of it more and more.’
The work: Meetings, visitors, transitions, vigilance, dynamic, opportunistic	‘It's meeting with people who are either coming to our office or going to somebody's place or to any of the other group meetings going on around town. And a lot of time in the field now, more and more out in rural areas, east, west, north and south. So that takes up quite a bit of time. We get a lot of people coming from overseas, a lot of traffic, a lot of people come here from various organizations. So it is chaos in that there are so many people who are doing something related to our area, or should be at any given time, and we're always finding some new group that's doing something else somewhere or who is interested, but maybe not producing correct materials or messages, so we have to deal with that. There's also a lot of transition. There are several people who came when I joined who have already left. Their replacements are coming in and now we have to start all over again with them. And then there will be a new issue suddenly surfacing and you don't know how real it is or how widespread, so you need to go out and try to figure that out and the strategy to deal with it. It's just being terribly opportunistic and you have to be on point and the message has to be very clear. So that's where most of the energy or effort in advocacy has gone.’
Stable goals with nimble strategies	‘The thing that doesn't change is at the end of 5 years we have to be at scale, we have to produce, and it has to be in a sustainable way. You have to always look for targets of opportunity but it is really very specific objectives and goals. The end point doesn't change’.