Section 25.4 Working for Community Health Objectives Examine two keys to building a sense of community. Identify three steps to getting more involved in your community.

Health Stats What impact do teen volunteers make? Why do you think so many teens volunteer? What benefits do the volunteers get from doing so?

A Sense of Community • Building healthy communities requires that people work together. When people believe that they are part of a community, they have a stake in making their community function as well as it can. Two keys to building a sense of community are civic engagement and a shared vision of the future.

Civic Engagement The level of involvement that average citizens have in the planning and decision-making that affects their community is called civic engagement. Some examples of civic engagement include participating in community government registering to vote when you turn 18 volunteering during a political campaign attending public hearings or school board meetings

A Shared Vision For communities to make progress and bring about positive changes, members need to share common goals. Consensus-building is the process by which a community arrives at an agreed-upon vision for the future. Consensus-building requires strong leadership and give-and-take among citizens.

Getting Involved in Your Community • There are three steps to getting involved: become informed volunteer your time be an advocate By following these steps, you can help bring about changes to improve the quality of life, or even save lives, in your community.

Become Informed By asking questions, you can gain insight into what people are thinking about. You can learn about the scope of a problem, how people view the problem, and any possible solutions that have been proposed.

Volunteer Your Time Once you’ve become informed, the next step is to reach out, plan a strategy, and get more involved. There are lots of ways that volunteering improves community health. Volunteering helps the community at large, but it also helps the volunteers themselves.

Be an Advocate Speak out about an issue at public meetings. Write a letter to the editor of your local or school newspaper. Recruit your peers to meet with a government official or other decision makers. Organize a “Teen Summit” to empower others to become advocates. Establish an electronic listserv, Web blog, or Web site where you can keep other concerned teens updated on developments.

Vocabulary civic engagement The level of involvement that average citizens have in the planning and decision-making that affects their community consensus-building The process by which a community arrives at an agreed-upon vision for the future.

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For: Chapter 25 self test Click above to go online.

End of Section 25.4 Click on this slide to end this presentation.