Video 1:
Question: What do advocacy and civic engagement mean to you?

Speaker: Jean Accius, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor, UMUC
Director, Health & LTSS, AARP Office of Policy Integration

Advocacy is about influence. It’s about trying to think about the issues and the problems that we face as society, and what are the ways in which we can influence that discourse in order to seek meaningful change. I think that as social sciences and gerontology students, we need to think "What are the different ways as our society evolve(s) and as our culture continue(s) to change, how are we as social scientists and gerontologists thinking about new ways of responding to today’s issues?" And advocacy provides us with that mechanism to frame the issue, to participate in the public discourse, and to seek that meaningful change that we want to see. All of us are advocates, and it could be an issue in my case of older adults. Or it can be an issue of how do we ensure that adequate music is played across the country. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. You find that sense of passion, and you say "Why am I so passionate about this, why am I so excited about this, or why do I get so emotional about this?" And that is an area where you as an advocate say, "What can I do about this to make it better?"

Speaker: Megan Deaton
UMUC Honor Society President, Pi Gamma Mu
Maryland Theta Chapter

Most people see civic engagement as being something to do more with activism. So most people think of it as fund drives and doing different runs to raise money for charities, and doing food drives and good drives for people who need help who have been experiencing like when the tsunamis hit, there was a lot of food drives going out to help the people. And also sending care packages to the troops overseas. So I think that’s what most people think of. But as a president of an international honor society, I see a different side. An example would be the food desert in urban areas. This is something that I just recently learned about in my psychology courses. There are areas in cities where there [are] no fresh fruits and vegetables; people just cannot get them, and they're living in a major city. And the reason behind that is because the more wealthy people have moved out, and the need isn’t there because it is so costly. Now we're trying to get those fresh fruits and vegetables into the urban deserts so people can have it. Whether or not they get it for free or a lower cost, it's something that we're working on. Being involved is a little bit different now. Like before, you just wanted to be involved to say "I’m being part of something more," but now you realize that you are making a difference. That’s what I see being a president of the international honor society is the difference that you can actually make.

Speaker: David Hale, JD
Adjunct Assistant Professor, UMUC
Vice President for External Relations, Planned Parenthood

This is Minka. She is my dog. She is also trained and registered as a service animal, which means that she went through some special schooling to know how to provide a particular service to people with disabilities—in this case, me and one of my disabilities. And it’s interesting because she doesn’t look like a typical service animal, maybe. She's not a black lab and she's not wearing a blue vest, and I’m also not using a wheelchair. So the optics of it, the visuals of it are different than what you might expect of a service animal. But I look at it as an opportunity. It really is an advocacy opportunity every time Minka comes with me somewhere that you don’t often see animals, because people do ask questions, and we're often challenged about whether or not she can be there. And that’s a teachable moment to talk about the Americans with Disabilities Act, and all it does to provide supports for people with disabilities and to talk about Minka and the services that she provides. And of course she's a pretty good self-advocate, because who could say no to that face?

I think of advocacy as being willing to put your personal energy and passion behind a social justice cause. And it can really be any cause as long as you feel it. There are a lot of ways to express advocacy, certainly taking action, whether it's political action or social action to create change, organizing others in the pursuit of social change, raising money to help fund causes, or support candidates that represent the type of change that you want to create. All of that goes into being an advocate and taking advocacy steps to create the kind of change that you want to manifest in the world.

I think advocacy is important because we live in a democracy in the United States of America. Every democracy requires political participation from all of its citizens in order to be truly functioning. Whenever we are missing even one person’s voice or vote, we are lacking a particular insight that we could otherwise have to help guide our society. And that’s a shame, because democracy is only as good as much as it represents the people that make it up. And so we have an obligation in this country to be political participants, and I think that means we have an obligation to be advocates.

Speaker: Megan Deaton
UMUC Honor Society President, Pi Gamma Mu
Maryland Theta Chapter

I think civic engagement is important because some of us are really lucky and we don’t have it hard at all. And other people for whatever reason they’re just struggling. They may have been born into it, or it could just be the region that they live in. And if we could just reach out and help people who want the help, I think that’s a good thing. You feel good and the other person feels good, and I just think that’s important.