Civic Activism Essay

1) Civic activism can help students in many ways. An example of this is learning more about people different from you. There are plenty of ways that separate us such as, social class, wealth, religion, race, and many more (Schaefer, 2012). One type of civic activism is volunteering and volunteering can get you interacting with people completely different from your own. As someone who grew up in a predominantly white town I volunteered over the summer at a kids camp. While there I helped and worked with people from vastly different backgrounds and grew as a person. I feel like a much more well-rounded person and am more comfortable around those different than me. As a college student myself, civic activism such as volunteering can help you

Assimilation is forgoing your cultural identity to fit in with the more popular one and minority groups are and groups that have significantly less power in society than others (Schaefer, 2012). Volunteering your time with those less fortunate in America means you will tend to meet with many minority groups. In America the minority groups of African-Americans and Hispanics tend to be far less fortunate or as stated above Homeless people are also a minority group. While volunteering you can learn about what makes them different, and why they have less power. You also learn about those who chose to assimilate into the larger groups. Many people left these minority groups to fit into larger society. An example where this is very clear is when you would volunteer to help new immigrants, another minority group. It is not uncommon for immigrants to drop part of their original culture to fit in. I have family who have changed last names so they would fit in better as they were too hard to pronounce. Volunteering with minority groups will help someone gain a better understanding of them, and assimilation as

Civic activism can be both online or in person as well. Political civic activism can be voting, protesting, voicing your opinions online, newspaper articles and more (Fiorino, 2019). Any way of getting your voice out there to be heard is a type of civic activism. This type has a far more direct effect as you are striving for a direct change within the government. An overall definition for this type of civic activism would be; people in society speaking up for something they believe in. The second type of civic activism is the non political type. This type is often within your own community or helping another. The most common way is through volunteering, or working with a volunteer group (Hustinx, 2021). This type is very grass-roots, working from the ground up. Other types of this would be donating blood, blog posts, or other types of internet posts to help your community (Fiorino, 2019). Any way of helping a community at the local level can fall under non political civic activism. An overall definition for this type would be any type of activism that helps out the