Oxfam International

The Big Noise to Make Trade Fair – Evaluation of the Big Noise as a popular campaigning vehicle to collect signatures from around the world. This was a comprehensive review of Oxfam’s Big Noise, the popular mobilisation element of the Make Trade Fair campaign, which by December 2005, at the time of the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong had been signed by 17.8 million people around the world, making it one of the world’s largest ever petitions. The aim of the review was to assess the outcomes and impact of the Big Noise, to learn what worked best and to make this information available for the future development of the trade campaign and for the future planning of Oxfam’s global popular mobilisation work.

The review adopted a primarily qualitative approach, with the main source of information being a series of interviews with staff, volunteers, partners, signatories and decision makers around the world, based on twenty five key review questions developed jointly by Oxfam and dpevaluation. This was supported by a document review and by a piece of quantitative work in the form of an online survey for signatories in the North. The review focussed on Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines in the South and on the UK and Spain in the North but also used evidence from other countries.

“The evaluation of Oxfam’s Big Noise to Make Trade Fair was excellent in its design, planning and implementation. The findings and recommendations in the report are proving very useful to us and are already informing our strategic thinking about future global campaigns.”

Richard English, Trade Campaign Manager, Oxfam GB.

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