2004

Raise Your Voice - A Month of Action is sponsored by Campus Compact to increase, celebrate, and deepen the student civic engagement efforts on college campuses around the country. During this month, students will speak in a collective voice about the importance of promoting student civic engagement. Events that galvanize students will be planned and organized on over 250 campuses around the country that attempt to creatively activate students in the democratic and community-building process.

Although the specific activities and events taking place during this month will vary from campus to campus, all will facilitate opportunities for students to speak out and act to create a more vibrant democracy. Activities vary and have included campus-wide discussions on public issues and civic responsibility, on-line forums, a speaker series, celebrations of student civic engagement, teach-ins, voter registration drives, policy issue discussions, non-profit fairs, or public officials meeting with students on campus. These events could also be connected with festivals, sporting events, concerts, cookouts, or other attention grabbing activities that attract students not previously engaged. (For a list of activities from a Week of Action in February 2003, see www.actionforchange.org/week/.)

With these events during Raise Your Voice - A Month of Action, Campus Compact hopes to reach students who have not necessarily been engaged in public life, and who might connect service learning, politics, and civic engagement for the first time. The Compact also hopes to support capacity building for students and activities that promote institutional and sustained support for student voice.