Getting Involved with Policy

Policy-based work is incredibly helpful when you want to enact change on a larger scale. Policy-based work leads to community change rather than individual change. If you want to see a positive change in your community as a whole, advocating for policies would be an effective way to guide your community toward that change.

First, it is important to plan out the change that you want to see made. It is especially important to construct a specific goal. For example, if you are looking to enact a sustainability policy, you should indicate what it would mean for your community to be sustainable, and outline specific actions that should be taken.

Then you should decide whether getting involved in policy-based work is the best approach to fulfilling your goal. There are so many ways of enacting change, and policy making is just one of them.

It is also important to research the problem that you are tackling and the benefits that would come if your proposed policy is enacted. This is helpful when you are backing up your claim and advocating for the implementation of your policy to those responsible for enacting it.

Then you should reach out to those who are responsible for implementing your proposed policy. This may be school principals, committees, or other leadership groups. It is helpful to send them an email with many included facts from your research. It can also be beneficial to offer to set up a meeting to talk through any questions or concerns that they may have.

• There are two ways to go about this kind of campaign: expanding plant-based options, and restricting animal-based options. At the end of the day, they have the same effect because the school isn't going to start serving more food. If they're serving more plant-based options, they're going to serve less animal-based options and vice versa. But, FRAMING MATTERS.

• In the eyes of a food services director, expanding plant-based options caters to a new market without taking away from an existing market, while restricting animal-based options, even though it still expands plant-based options, is viewed as taking away from the students who want to eat animals. It's seen as trying to limit the food program as opposed to expanding it.

• Yes, it's all about framing, but it still makes a difference. 

• It can also help with the way the campaign is received by students. People don't like to feel like they're having something taken away from them, but they might be excited about new, expanded lunch options. Many students will opt for the plant-based option, even when there is also an animal-based option available. Especially if the plant-based option isn't labeled plant-based.

• Always frame your campaign as a campaign to EXPAND the available options.