"Raising awareness" is a phrase that advocacy group

Advocacy group

Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...

s commonly use when promoting a particular issue, organization or event. Raising awareness refers to alerting the general public

Public

In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...

 that a certain issue exists and should be approached the way the group desires. Common subjects include certain diseases (breast cancer

Breast cancer awareness

Breast cancer awareness is an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer and reduce the disease's stigma by educating people about its symptoms and treatment options...

, AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

), conflicts (Darfur

Darfur

Darfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...

), movements (Greenpeace

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

, PETA

Peta

Peta can refer to:* peta-, an SI prefix denoting a factor of 1015* Peta, Greece, a town in Greece* Peta, the Pāli word for a Preta, or hungry ghost in Buddhism* Peta Wilson, an Australian actress and model* Peta Todd, English glamour model...

), and political parties or politicians.

The term "awareness raising" is also used in The Yogyakarta Principles against discriminatory attitudes and LGBT stereotypes

LGBT stereotypes

Stereotypes about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are conventional, formulaic generalizations, opinions, or images about persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Stereotypes and homophobia are a learned outlook, i.e...

 as well as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights instrument of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities...

 to combat stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s, prejudice

Prejudice

Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...

s and harmful practices toward people with disabilities.

Since informing the populace of a public concern is often regarded as the first step to changing how the institution

Institution

An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community...

s handle it, raising awareness is often the first activity any advocacy group engages in.