Organize a community forum
February 23, 2021
This article is part of Advocacy Basics: Working with the Community.
Ideas for Community Meetings & Forums
- Citizen Empowerment: Engage people in your community about the role they can play in ending hunger and poverty and how they can become trained citizen activists using tools from Working with the Community Activist: Build a Coalition of Community Allies.
- Issues Forums: Use any one of our issues to host a community forum. Hold quarterly forums and cover all of our issues plus a finale on how to become trained citizen activists.
- Coalition Building: Join other organizations’ community forums and begin to build long lasting organizational alliances.
- Hold a RESULTS Fundraiser: Educate your community about our successes and how they can play a vital role in ending hunger by investing in the long-term sustainable solutions to get us there.
Great Times to Organize a Community Forum or Event
| January | Martin Luther King Day Influencing the President’s Budget |
| March | World TB Day (March 24) |
| April | Global Action for Education Week |
| May | Cover the Uninsured Week Mother’s Day Release of the Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers Report |
| July | Independence Day |
| April or August/September | Education for All month / Back to School |
| October | International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (October 17) |
| December/January | World AIDS Day (December 1) Release of UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children report |
For other ideas, see the RESULTS Events.
Organize a Community Forum on a RESULTS Issue
- Invite members of Congress to attend and speak in order to bring them on board.
- Contact news and editorial writers to cover the events and/or to be guest speakers.
- Make it an annual event that community members can count on.
- Include people directly affected by the issues who can tell stories and bring the issues home in a personal way.
- Include DVDs or videos that will inform the discussion.
- Give attendees an opportunity to take action, whether writing post cards, writing letters or making phone calls.