Awareness raising (also called consciousness raising) often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition. Common issues include diseases (e.g. breast cancer, AIDS), conflicts, movements and many others. Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institutions handle it, raising awareness is often the first activity in which any advocacy group engages.
However, in practice, raising awareness is often combined with other activities, such as fundraising, membership drives, or advocacy, in order to harness and or sustain the motivation of new supporters, which may be at its highest just after they have learned and digested the new information.
