Discussion: Advocating for Social Change: Techniques and Tools

A critical part of your development as a counseling professional involves working for positive social change. In fact, your ultimate goal of becoming a clinical mental health counselor means working with clients to help them understand and work through their issues and strengthen their overall well-being. In addition to your profession and its impact in effecting social change, you are also in a position to learn about emerging issues your clients may be facing that should be addressed.

Advocating for social change often means getting the word out. Over the years, the methods for making the public aware have grown from flyers, brochures, and poster sessions at conferences to advocating online, including blogs, wikis, and social media. But the central goal of these communications remains focused on presenting the issue and the goal as clearly and succinctly as possible.

For this Discussion, you will develop skills that will help you become an agent for social change. You will create an informational product advocating change with a current issue facing a population that interests you.

To Prepare: • Review the Optional Resources and consider the possible technology tools to use for the creation of your Counselor's Role as Advocate for Social Change informational product (brochure, flyer, PowerPoint, wiki, blog, etc.).

• Select a digital tool to create your Social Change informational product. It may be in the form of a flyer, brochure, wiki, blog post, webpage, or other format of your choosing.

• Review the Learning Resources and select a current event no older than 12 months concerning a setting/population you are interested in.

• Include the following in your post:

i. Title and Introduction

ii. An attachment or link to the informational product you created

iii. An evaluation of the current event/problem area you selected that includes the following:

- A description of the setting/population you would like to work with (Mental Health, Addiction, Campus, etc.)

- A description of the problem, issue, or event that led to your interest

- An explanation of why you chose the issue you selected and why change is needed. Make sure to cite at least three scholarly resources (these may include your course text and scholarly, peer-reviewed sources from the Walden journal databases).

- A list of action steps one might take to address the problem

iv. Reference list: at least three resources