Vision Values Voice: Messaging for Lasting Change

To be effective in moving hearts, minds, and policy over the long term, we need integrated values-based messaging and narrative strategies that mobilize our base and expand our constituencies. When our campaigns and other communications efforts begin to add up to a larger, more cohesive story about values and a positive vision, individual victories lead to transformative societal change. Key to this process is including the voices of those directly-affected, who often have the solutions.

On September 18, 2019, The Opportunity Agenda hosted a webinar on how to craft effective messaging by identifying and evoking shared values and vision to start changing the national conversation, shift the culture, and make lasting change. In this webinar, Julie Fisher-Rowe, director of narrative and engagement at The Opportunity Agenda, discussed the principles of values-based messaging. Guest speaker Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), shared DWN’s vision for a world without detention; and Aseante Renee, director of communications for Common Justice, shared how Common Justice amplifies the voices of people with lived experience to advance solutions to violence.