The health of a community can depend on the civic participation of community members in the decision-making process. There are a wide range of activities that foster community well-being, strengthen democratic institutions, and empower people to make a difference. Here are some meaningful ways to stay engaged within your community:
Participate in local government meetings
Attend public meetings like city and county councils, school boards and public comment hearings to get first-hand knowledge and stay informed about local issues, voice your concerns, and learn more about the decisions affecting your area. By attending and even speaking up, you contribute to the health of a community by informing policies, especially around community health, education, safety, and infrastructure.
Join community boards and commissions
Many cities and counties have advisory boards or commissions that provide valuable insights on areas like health, transportation, housing, and youth services. Serving on one of these groups not only deepens your knowledge but gives you a direct role in shaping the health of a community through the development lens. Civic bodies often seek people with varied perspectives to bring fresh ideas into discussions. Look for notices in your local newspaper and on social media
Volunteer for local organizations
Volunteering lets you address specific community needs through action. Whether it’s joining a local nonprofit focused on nutrition security, supporting youth programs, or advocating for healthier neighborhoods, volunteering helps communities thrive. Beyond contributing hours, volunteering builds empathy, strengthens connections, and can be a pathway to lasting relationships and the health of a community.
Engage in advocacy and policy change
If you’re passionate about an issue, consider advocating for it. Advocacy can be as simple as writing letters to elected officials, organizing petitions, or collaborating with Wholespire and others to push for policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) changes. Advocacy campaigns can help secure funding for local projects, reduce barriers for underserved groups, or create new opportunities for youth, families, and seniors.
Support local media and stay informed
Staying informed is key to understanding and addressing community needs. Subscribe to Wholespire’s newsletter and local newspapers, watch for community updates, and follow reputable local journalists and organizations on social media. When community members stay informed, they help keep local governments and institutions accountable.
Start or join a community group
Sometimes, small groups of residents can drive meaningful changes. You could start a group or join an existing coalition that advocates for safer parks, works on civic action projects, or promotes physical activity and nutritious food resources. Community groups can bring people together to create solutions-focused action plans, mobilize around shared goals, and ultimately help to make the community a healthier place for everyone.
Mentor youth or participate in youth engagement programs
Youth engagement programs that encourage civic involvement are critical for fostering long-term community health and resilience. By mentoring young people or supporting youth-led initiatives, you help shape a new generation of engaged citizens. If you work with students, engaging them in the policy change process teaches invaluable skills and brings fresh perspectives to the health of a community. Wholespire helps communities engage with youth through The HYPE Project®, coaching and technical assistance.
Get involved with community planning or visioning efforts
Many communities offer residents a chance to weigh in on their long-term vision. Public planning sessions, workshops, and surveys allow residents to give input on future projects, like new parks, affordable housing, and transportation networks. Oftentimes, state agencies, like the SC Department of Transportation, and other entities post these notices on social media. Your ideas can influence how your community develops and ensure it meets the needs of all residents.
Encourage civic engagement in your network
One of the best ways to expand civic engagement is to inspire those around you to get involved. Encourage friends, family, and neighbors to attend meetings, volunteer, or even run for local office. By building a network of active citizens, you contribute to a culture where civic participation becomes a shared, community-wide responsibility.
Civic engagement is a continuous commitment to improving our communities and creating a more inclusive, responsive society. Whether by volunteering, advocating for policy change, or mentoring youth, every action we take contributes to the health of a community and creates a lasting legacy of positive change. So, let’s get involved, stay engaged, and inspire others to join us in building a healthier South Carolina!
At Wholespire, we’re in the business of inspiring you and your neighbors to engage with each other to make South Carolina a healthier place to live. And whether we’re discussing how to do that with our family, friends, or even strangers in the grocery line, the most important time and place to make that a reality is when you vote. There are so many different ways to be engaged with your community and in the end the surest way to affect change is to show up on election day and tell ‘em what you think. Using your vote as your voice is your most important way to engage in this weird but cool thing called Democracy.
But before you show up at the voting booth, there’s a whole lot of hard work that goes on before you get there. We must have the tools to get educated on the issues, educate others if they’re willing to listen, and then make our voices heard. And that’s where Wholespire comes in!
Engagement…and Not the Wedding Kind!
There are so many ways to get involved these days but two of the most effective tools in your healthcare toolbox are civic and community engagement. Let’s talk about what those are and why you should be doing both.
Being “engaged” is a choice. It’s an active choice actually and it’s how folks from all different walks of life who care about access to healthy choices and outcomes here in South Carolina come together to make change. Civic engagement is a singular and personal approach to influencing how your local and state governments affect that change. Speaking at or attending a city council or school board meeting, advocating for issues you care about by serving on the school board or the PTA: these are ways we traditionally think about civic engagement. Then there’s that “group stuff” or community engagement where you collaborate with other community members and then collectively, you act on and propose what you want to see in your community. Common examples of this kind of engagement can include taking part in community or public meetings, focus groups, community assessments, even online surveys.
Both civic and community engagement are equally important to creating thriving, healthy communities here in South Carolina. When you exercise your right to vote and get involved with community health coalitions and other organizations like Wholespire, you are a vital, even essential, player when it comes to influencing government decisions.
Why Engagement and Voting Depend on Each Other
Being actively involved in your community by voting is often seen as your civic duty. Sadly voting is a fundamental right way too many South Carolinians take for granted. But there are actual health benefits to exercising your right to vote. Studies continue to show us individuals who vote and actively participate in community engagement tend to report better health outcomes than those who do not vote or engage with their neighbors. So how and why do voting and engagement depend on each other?
If you’re engaging with your neighbors or community leaders, you’re more apt to learn about existing community resources that can lead to opportunities for physical activity and access to nutritious food. So many folks here in South Carolina have resources nearby they don’t even know about. Older folks and/or folks with disabilities may not know there is public transportation to get them to that farmers market. How do you find out? It’s easy! Just pick up the phone and call your local elected officials (you know, the ones you voted for or against) and ask them! You’d be surprised at the resources out there. All you have to do is ask.
Or you can just hop on the web and do a search: “where can i buy fresh fruits and vegetables in my neighborhood?” And boom, you’ll have the resources. If you live in a food or medical desert and don’t have access to these resources, that’s when your engagement kicks in. Reach out to your local leaders and ask them why you don’t have the resources you need to live a healthier and more active life. You can even contact us here at Wholespire! We have huge resources to guide you into a healthier lifestyle.
So while the relationship between voting and engagement can lead to endless personal and community benefits, the key here is your level of involvement.
Your Health and Well Being are Already Being Debated…You Just Don’t Know it
Often there are healthy initiatives already on the ballot and/or being debated by elected officials at the local, county or state level. Healthier outcome proposals like multimodal transportation that provides everyone access to pedestrian walkways and bikeways or new parks or other recreation spaces like greenways and trails: these are debated everyday by city and county councils. You already have access to local officials, which means you have opportunities to develop relationships and influence local policies and development projects. You can attend council or board meetings to voice your concerns about issues that affect you and your community. The question is: are you doing that?
Civic and community engagement are based on the belief that everyone has a stake in the health of their community and that active participation can bring about significant change. Voting alone won’t do it and just being engaged but skipping election day won’t give you the quality of life you deserve. So the ball is in your court. Engage, educate, get educated, be fearless and relentless, and go vote for a healthier South Carolina!
There’s a bill in the South Carolina Senate that, if passed, would give all SC public school students free meals every day. Sponsored by Senator Katrina Shealy (R-District 23), Senator Stephen Goldfinch (R-District 34), Senator Mia McLeod (D-District 22) and Senator Marion Kimpson (D-District 42), S.148 seeks to ensure all students get free breakfast and lunch by providing guidelines for eligible schools to participate in the USDA Community Eligibility Program (CEP). It also establishes a state-level reimbursement program for those schools that are not eligible for CEP and extends the lunch period to 30 minutes.
“This bill addresses multiple issues that schools, students, and parents are facing these days,” says Meg Stanley, executive director of Wholespire. “I’m talking about school budgets, administrative workload, hunger, poor grades and behavior, school lunch debt, food shaming, social pressures and added financial stress for parents.”
74% of children are income eligible for federal nutrition programs (at or below 185% of poverty)
For the last two years, parents didn’t have to worry about paying for school meals and school administrators didn’t have to worry about tracking and collecting lunch money. During COVID-19, the USDA enacted national waivers that allowed many schools to provide free meals and get reimbursed by the federal government. Now that the waivers have ended, schools are now returning to collecting breakfast and lunch money, parents are having to decide how to pay for and prepare lunches and students with debt are being served a crusty sandwich instead of a balanced hot meal and getting picked on by their peers.
“For too many students, eating breakfast and lunch at school is the only time in their day that they get a nutritious meal,” says Stanley. “If we want to improve the quality of education in South Carolina and make it equitable, we have to start somewhere and that’s with the bellies of our students.”
Breakfast and lunch are important to every student’s health and classroom performance. Nutritious meals provide energy that fuels the brain and helps with attention span, which influences test scores and grade-level advancement. When a child is hungry, it’s difficult to pay attention to anything else.
In 2022, Wholespire published a blog called Everything you need to know about the Community Eligibility Program. It makes the case for eligible schools to apply for CEP. The same benefits of CEP can be applied to S.148. If passed, here’s how schools, families and students will benefit from receiving free meals at schools:
Benefits for Schools
Eliminates unpaid school debt. Every student gets free breakfast and lunch. Families don’t pay and administrators don’t have to worry about collecting money and managing accounts.
Reduces administrative burdens.
Improves school nutrition staff morale. Staff focuses more on nutritious meals and less on the nutrition budget.
Can generate revenue for school nutrition budgets. Oftentimes, CEP leads to an increase in breakfast and lunch participation, which increases revenue for the nutrition budget.
Can make it easier to serve meals in the classroom. Teachers only need to count the number of meals being served to students in their classroom rather than tracking free, reduced, and paid meals.
Benefits for Families and Students
Improves student attendance and advancement. A study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found significant benefits for students attending CEP schools, including higher attendance rates and more students advancing beyond 10th grade.
Fights hunger. The same study mentioned in the previous bullet also found students attending schools with CEP were nearly 3 times less likely to be food insecure.
Promotes equity and reduces stigma. CEP eliminates the out-of-pocket costs for families and reduces the stigma or embarrassment some students may feel by participating in the meals program. CEP also eliminates school lunch shaming, as no student can be turned away or given an alternative meal from failure to pay.
Reduces stress for families and students. Families with tight food budgets can rest assured that their child gets nutritious meals at school, reducing financial strain at home. Students don’t have to worry about paying for meals either.
Advocating for health in all policies is a priority for Wholespire, whose mission is to provide communities with proven and sustainable approaches that lead to increased access to healthy choices for ALL people. If you want to advocate for S.148, we encourage you to become a Wholespire advocate.
School meals are an essential part of every student’s day. Research by Tufts University shows that for many kids, the meals they eat at school are the most nutritionally balanced meals they get all day. Why is this so important now that COVID-19 lockdowns are over and people are back to their somewhat normal routines?
Because the pressure of paying for school meals, after a two-year hiatus, is back and creating a greater challenge for many parents to find room in their budgets to ante up.
According to the SC Department of Education’s 2021-2022 student enrollment report, 61% of students live in poverty. That’s based on all 74 school districts in the state, composed of 1,200 schools that serve over 777,000 students in Pre-K through 12th grade.
A solution for parents is to apply for free or reduced school meals through their school administrators. An even better solution is for school districts or schools to apply for the USDA’s Community Eligibility Program (CEP).
What is CEP?
According to No Kid Hungry, CEP is a unique school meal funding option of the National School Lunch Act that makes it possible for schools to provide free meals to all students. That means no more free or reduced lunch applications, fewer administrative burdens, and fewer social stigmas for students to deal with at school.
How does CEP impact families and students?
Improves student attendance and advancement. A study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found significant benefits for students attending CEP schools, including higher attendance rates and more students advancing beyond 10th grade.
Fights hunger. The same study mentioned in the previous bullet also found students attending schools with CEP were nearly 3 times less likely to be food insecure.
Promotes equity and reduces stigma. CEP eliminates the out-of-pocket costs for families and reduces the stigma or embarrassment some students may feel by participating in the meals program. CEP also eliminates school lunch shaming, as no student can be turned away or given an alternative meal from failure to pay.
Reduces stress for families and students. Families with tight food budgets can rest assured that their child is getting nutritious meals at school, reducing financial strain at home. Students don’t have to worry about paying for meals either.
What are the benefits for schools?
Eliminates unpaid school debt. Every student gets free breakfast and lunch. Families don’t pay and administrators don’t have to worry about collecting money and managing accounts.
Reduces administrative burdens. Administrators apply for CEP once every four years.
Improves school nutrition staff morale. Staff focus more on nutritious meals and less on the nutrition budget.
Can generate revenue for school nutrition budgets. Oftentimes, CEP leads to an increase in breakfast and lunch participation, which increases revenue for the nutrition budget.
Can make it easier to serve meals in the classroom. Teachers only need to count the number of meals being served to students in their classroom rather than tracking free, reduced, and paid meals.
Who is eligible for CEP?
School districts or individual schools with at least 40% of “Identified Students” are eligible. The Identified Student Percentage are students who are approved for free meals without an application because they are:
Enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), or Medicaid,
Living in a household where another student is enrolled in one of the previously mentioned programs, or
Homeless, migrant, runaway, in foster care, or enrolled in Head Start or Early Head Start.
What if my school district says it doesn’t qualify?
Some school districts may not qualify for CEP because the total enrollment of all the schools in the district does not meet the Identified Student Percentage of at least 40 percent. In this case, individual schools can apply for CEP if they meet the required percentage. Contact your school principal or school nutrition administrator and ask them about CEP.
Why don’t all school districts in a single county qualify for CEP?
In some cases where there are multiple school districts in one county, district-wide eligibility for CEP varies because CEP is based on household income. In Richland County, Richland One participates in CEP, so all students get free breakfast and lunch. In Richland School District Two, the district is not eligible for CEP because its Identified Student Percentage is less than 40 percent. Richland One is composed of more low-income families as opposed to Richland Two. This is an unfortunate fact that negatively impacts struggling families, school equity, and student mental health.
Are there alternatives for school districts, schools, and families that don’t qualify?
Provision 2 of the National School Lunch Act enables any school to provide free meals to students. There are no eligibility requirements under Provision 2 as there are with CEP, and also unlike CEP, you can choose to offer universal breakfast and/or lunch.
Non-pricing is another funding option for universal free school meals where schools have funding support from the local government, school board, or private sources. Meals are served free to all students, and meals are counted and claimed by fee category. The difference between federal reimbursement and program costs would have to come from non-federal funding.
It’s safe to say that most of us would like to see some sort of change in our communities and the world at large, but maybe most of us don’t know how to make that change happen.
While community betterment work may seem daunting, who will do it if you and your neighbors don’t? Plus, making a change where you live is one of the most fulfilling things any person can do.
There is a famous quote about change. Margaret Mead reminds us to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
If you’re looking to make a difference and create change in your community, read on for some inspiring ideas.
The Best Ways to Give Back
There are many ways for you to give back to your community and help to improve it, and all of them involve one or more of the following three things: Time, effort, and generosity.
Whichever you feel you have or can give the most of, start there. For example, if you’re able to, donate money or resources to a local charitable cause. If you have extra time on your hands, get involved in grassroots advocacy or volunteer your time to help influence policy and create systemic change. Below are some more ideas for getting active in your community.
Youth Engagement Programs
Perhaps the best way to create positive change in your community is by reaching out to its youngest members and offering your knowledge, skills, and experience. If you can influence the youth of your community, you can influence the future of your community.
Community Health Initiatives
Nutrition and physical health have a direct impact on mental and emotional health. The consequences affect all the individuals in your community as well as your community as a whole. Seek better community funding for health initiatives, engage in food insecurity advocacy, or advocate for better community training. These are just three examples of how you can address systemic issues in your community and help make a difference.
Community Celebrations
Few things bring people closer together than tradition and celebration. If you can help organize a celebratory event for your community, you may open the door for more serious work to get done.
No one way of giving back to your community is necessarily greater or more effective than another. What’s important is that whatever you choose to do speaks to you.
The Ripple Effect of Trying to Make a Difference
When you take the time to engage with your community and make a difference, you inspire other people to do the same. Those people will then aim to “pay it forward” and make a difference themselves, and so on and so forth.
You may only be one person with limited time and resources, but the ripple effect of the good you do will reach far beyond yourself. Start that ripple effect today and get involved in community initiatives.
If you’re ready to get involved, contact us today and we can connect you with a community leader!
Have you attended an Eat Smart Move More South Carolina (ESMMSC) meeting or event and felt annoyed that your only beverage options were water and unsweetened tea? Or that your only food options were salads, wraps, or grilled chicken? There’s a reason for that! ESMMSC has a Healthy Meetings and Wellness Policy that supports its mission and work: to advance community-led change to reduce obesity, by making the healthy choice the easy choice for every South Carolinian.
Many organizations and businesses are implementing healthy meetings and events practices. To send the message that health is important to them, to help support the health of the employees, members, and partners, and to have more energized and engaged participants, organizations and businesses should adopt healthy meetings and events policies too.
“If we served sugar-sweetened beverages, fried foods, and went heavy on refined carbs at our meetings and events where food is served, it would completely go against everything our organization stands for,” said Meg Stanley, executive director at ESMMSC. “We care about the health of everyone we come in contact with, so it just makes sense to have these types of policies in place and to implement them.”
Far too often, organizations and businesses serve unhealthy breakfast, lunch, and snack foods at conferences and meetings. And that’s easy to do when there aren’t policies in place that provide guidelines.
“For example, if you’re a health insurance company and your mission, in part, is to keep healthcare costs down, serving fried chicken at a meeting makes it hard to say you’re staying true to your mission,” says Stanley. “The same is true for any business, small or large. If you care about employee health and wellness, you should have a policy in place and enforce that policy.”
Since its inception in 2007, ESMMSC has maintained and implemented a Healthy Meetings and Wellness Policy: Given our mission to make the healthy choice the easy choice for every South Carolinian, ESMMSC aims to create a workplace that promotes and supports healthy lifestyles for both employees and partners. As such, ESMMSC has adopted the following wellness policies: Healthy Meetings and Catering, Movement Meetings, Physical Activity Opportunities, Sharing Food, and Staff Wellness.
Each of these policies provides opportunities to those who attend ESMMSC meetings and events, as well as staff, to eat healthy foods and to engage in healthy activities. Download the ESMMSC policy.
“I’ll be honest, when I started working at ESMMSC eight years ago, I wasn’t thrilled about the policies, but I’ve come to appreciate them. They make me accountable for my health and wellness,” says Brandie Freeman, communications and marketing manager at ESMMSC. “With these policies in place, I drink more water, snack on fruits instead of chips and candy, and have managed to eat more vegetables with my meals. I mean, I’m not perfect. I still indulge, but I don’t do it quite so often.”
If your organization or business would like to adopt a Healthy Meetings and Wellness Policy, there are a couple of reputable resources available online. You can also contact ESMMSC.
Adopting a Healthy Meetings and Wellness Policy is a great way to highlight the culture of health within your organization or business and be part of the growing movement around health and wellness. For more information, contact Executive Director Meg Stanley at meg@eatsmartmovemoresc.org or Manager of Policy and Advocacy Phil Ford at phil@eatsmartmovemoresc.org.
Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably been advocating for things throughout your life. Did you ask your parents for a pet and give them reasons why you deserve one? Have you ever asked your boss for a raise and explained why you deserve it? What about raising concerns about your loved one’s healthcare with their provider? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are an advocate.
Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group that aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions. Advocacy is presenting a problem or a need to elected officials, and it’s almost always accompanied by a solution.
“One thing my mom used to tell me growing up: don’t just come to me with a problem. Come to me with a solution as well,” says Phil Ford, manager of policy and advocacy. “It’s important for legislators to be made aware of the problem but it’s even more important to let them know that you want to work with them to find an appropriate solution.”
Advocacy is, perhaps, the most effective way to make change happen on any level of government because the issues directly impact the day to day lives of every citizen in a town or county – not to mention the state.
Communicating with your elected officials is important. They often only hear from constituents when they need something. It’s just as important to thank them for a vote on a bill or resolution, or for standing with you on the issues.
“Don’t be afraid to contact your decision-makers. They often hear from constituents only when something is needed, but they’re not recognized when they do the “right” thing. So, when you notice a decision-maker who’s done the “right” thing, thank them and let them know,” says Ford.
Everyone can advocate. Whether it’s asking your own legislator for support or only distributing facts to elected officials, every individual has the right to advocate. Use our Steps to Effective Advocacy handout to guide you through your next advocacy campaign. For a further explanation of advocacy, download our What is Advocacy handout.
