IREX’s advocacy strategy focuses on county libraries as the link between local libraries and national and local policy makers. By increasing the capacity of county librarians to promote libraries and to advocate for their policy issues, IREX creates the support structures necessary to address long-term sustainability.

The training on communication, networking, and advocacy includes topics such as:
• Communication: barriers in the communication with the community; the collaboration with the media; how to write a correct press release.
• Networking: benefits of forming and maintaining advocacy networks, roles of leaders and people on successful teams, the decision-making process, stages of group development.
• Advocacy: the concept of advocacy, steps in the advocacy process, defining problems, goals and objectives, analyzing target groups – designing a power map, developing messages, exercising the one-minute message, making successful presentations, and starting an advocacy implementation plan for the community issue identified.