So much outreach!
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| A fellow RESULTS leader does outreach with me at a local church |
Outreach is when you build your movement by educating your community and bringing new people in. It can be a big event with dozens of people, a group discussion with a handful of participants, or a one-on-one conversation with someone. If you spread the word about your work, that’s great. If you convince someone to take action with you, even better!
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| This church book club was learning about poverty and housing in the United States, so we came in to talk about solutions |
In the last week, I’ve performed three different kinds of outreach.
On Thursday, I presented to two seventh grade Social Studies classes for a full class period each. We talked about the importance of student activism, learned to make phone calls to Congress, and watched a video from the Sunrise movement about why advocacy matters for climate change.
My former teacher allowed me to come in and teach his classes for a day because he's passionate about climate action himself. When he taught me as a seventh grader, there was no Green New Deal, and Donald Trump was elected just three months into the school year. The national conversation has changed since then, and the conversations I had with the students were very insightful.
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| This was my textbook for several months in 7th grade. In my notes, I have the quote "Political will is a renewable resource."-- Al Gore. |
Of the twenty-six students I met on Thursday, several of them are diving right in to take action. One of them joined my school’s strike circle the very next day! Three more expressed interest in coming to future meetings and events. I even received an email from a student who told me that she made her first call to Congress the day after my presentation, all on her own. She said, “I made a script, but it was still super scary at first. The aide was really nice though! It felt great to even make a small step towards hopefully a big change one day!”
I always get nervous about speaking in front of crowds, but these stories make it completely worth it.
On Friday, we did something a little different with UNICEF Club. To collect letters to our Senators, we set up stations in two different rooms at school and gave a short announcement about it in our morning assembly. In this case, we drew people in by talking about the issue of violence against children, and the skill-building of writing letters came second.
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| A friend of mine made the prettier box on the right |
When students had free time, they wandered over to write a brief letter using a template. We collected over a dozen letters this way, without as much effort as I put into the seventh grade presentation. Different goals, different approaches! We’re asking our Senators to cosponsor S. Res. 112, the bipartisan resolution to end violence against children globally.
Finally, the third major outreach event happened at my house on Saturday. This one was actually a letter-writing party my mom put together, but since I live there I ended up “attending” or “hosting” anyway.
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| I think about 15 people came, in all |
We all wrote letters to Congress about maternal/child health. I personally liked this event because I was not in charge of it!
There was a lot of great informal discussion, and even though it was very draining for me to be around people that long, I came away from those conversations feeling more inspired than I did before. Plus, fifty letters is not bad for a few hours of folks eating snacks together!
Yesterday, my sister brought some of the leftover template letters to the kids she babysits, so they could write about child health topics they understand. This is how my sister and I became advocates, so now it’s coming full circle!
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| There really is no age limit for writing letters |
What a great way to wrap up some very busy days of outreach. There are letters that wouldn’t have been written, and people that wouldn’t be as engaged, if these events hadn’t happened. All very good things! Now, if only I could find time to take a nap after all this...
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