To me, advocacy is taking a stand for any sort of cause, and trying to make a difference in society as well. It means trying to influence the general public, or policy in some way.
I feel like what I have planned for the advocacy project fits into this definition really well. Not using the r-word is something that I have personally decided to do, and it’s a worthy cause to me, because I think that it’s really hurtful to those with intellectual disabilities, and it’s really rude and stereotypical of society to use the term in a derogatory way. In terms of how I plan to influence society as a whole, I would like the end goal of my project to be that people become more aware of the harmful effects of the r-word, and that they themselves pledge to not use it. Hopefully, some sort of larger campaign will gain the attention of students at Penn State and motivate them to look into the issue more, which will hopefully motivate people to take the pledge to stop using the r-word. I think it’d be really cool to see the “Spread the Word to End the Word” movement become a huge thing here at PSU!