This booklet aims to help women who want to get involved in their own local, national, and regional governance to get started to take on the challenge of elections. The START strategy has been developed as a quick reference point to help women remember some of the key issues they will need to consider and key activities they need to undertake when running in elections. The booklet has been designed to help individual women work through the issues in a systematic way. It is based on the experiences of Pacific women themselves who have stood for election, drawing on their successes and the lessons they learned along the way.

The document contains advice and process information for signing up to run for office or supporting a candidate to sign up, tips on developing a strategy and talking to supporters in the planning stages, communication-based actions for campaigning 4 - 6 weeks prior to elections, fundraising and resource-base development for the campaign, election day specifics such as getting out the vote and monitoring for fair election processes, and post-election planning for inauguration and continued contact with constituencies.

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United Nation Development Programme Pacific Centre website accessed on May 1 2009.