Social Issues
Telling your story or the story of someone else is one of the most effective ways to advocate for people experiencing social issues. For this application, you will choose a social issue that you learned about in this topic and then interview someone who has experience in this area, either because he or she has been personally affected or because he or she knows someone who has been affected.
Your interview should reveal answers to the following questions.
- How has this social issue impacted your life?
- What challenges arose as a result of this social issue?
- What kinds of support do you find helpful when trying to cope with this social issue?
- How have you overcome this social issue, or how are you working to solve your issue?
- What do you wish others knew about this social issue?
You may instead prefer to tell your own story that relates to a chosen social issue. In this case, please make sure your story also addresses the questions above.
Once you have answers to each of the five questions, create a postcard that can be mailed to your community members to serve as advocacy material for the social issue you investigated. The postcard should include at least one paragraph that tells the story of your interviewee and effectively educates others about the issue. Your postcard should include at least one image, such as:
- an image of the person focused on in the story (with his or her consent) or
- an original image that symbolizes your chosen cause.
Before you begin, access the Advocacy Story Checklist to make sure you include all of the items required for full credit. You may need to use resources outside of this course to complete this assignment. If so, please submit a Works Cited document. If you need assistance, visit the Developmental Module for information on citing resources.
Once you have completed your interview and advocacy postcard, please submit your postcard to the dropbox.