Planning a Protest

While this step may seem easy and obvious, it is the most important step of what you are doing! Look at the community around you; what are some issues that you see that you want to help make a change with? Food insecurity? Lack of education? Climate change effects? Once you identify the community issue you can start planning. Research is your friend here. Make sure you look to reliable sources (often .org or .gov shows that it can be trusted) to help find information to build urgency on this problem!

There are lots of resources out there to find organizations that are looking for volunteers. Some websites that can help you find a community partner can be found here. Or if you want to create your own event (such as a fundraiser) get planning! What are you trying to do? Ask yourself the following questions: 1. Do I need equipment? If the answer is yes, where can I get that equipment? 2. Is this safe and legal? 3. Maybe try contacting some of your local representatives to get their input before starting. Will I need a budget? How will I get that money? Start thinking about who you could contact for donations or think about setting up a donation page. A lot goes into planning an event like this and at times it may seem impossible, but remember that in the end you’ll have a wonderful event that will do a lot of good for the people in your community and make a big impact!

Whether you are a part of a club or organization, want to do community service with your friends, or want to recruit a whole bunch of people there is one key thing to remember: there is power in numbers. As Gen Z-er’s we have a lot of connections and we can spread information to a lot of people through social media. Use that to your advantage. Create a twitter or instagram page where you can post updates about your project. Create a facebook group if you want to recruit people of all ages. Post it everywhere! The more people that see it the better. This is what is so great about our generation, we have the ability to spread information quickly. So take that to your advantage and recruit, recruit, RECRUIT!

The day is finally here for your trip/event! You’ve done so much hard work and you are about to see the outcome of all that work. Make sure you have a detailed plan on what you are doing at each point during the day and make sure that all of your volunteers that you have recruited know what they have to do. Finally make sure you enjoy your trip! Like I said, you worked hard to plan this so make sure you really enjoy every moment of it. What you are doing is important, so document it. Take pictures! You’ll want to share with the world what you have done through the social media page you have created.

Congratulations, you did it! After all of your hard work you are done and now you have helped the world become a better place. While you can relax because your service project is done, make sure that you are reflecting on what you did. What did you do to make an impact? Did you see the change you wanted to see? What can you improve? Also make sure to get feedback from your volunteers on how they think things went and send thank yous to people that helped!