This is where you come in. As Americans we pride ourselves on having a system that is fair and open to all no matter what their age, or income, or race. But that does not just happen by accident, and neither will prior years' victories stay won without vigilance.

Left on their own, some groups (e.g., foster children, victims of domestic violence or environmental destruction, people with Alzheimer's) tend to be voiceless. How they fare in the political process depends on the role that others are willing to play on their behalf. And when those others (i.e., you and me) fail to get involved, too often the voiceless get left out.

Fortunately, when more of us get involved, wonderful things can happen. All of the legislative victories of recent decades - civil rights for people with disabilities, electoral reforms, environmental protections, child care for working parents, cleaner air and water, nursing home reforms, food safety, and many, many more - are the direct result of advocacy. They represent a tremendous achievement through which millions of Americans have been helped to a better life, and in which millions of ordinary Americans can take pride.

Getting involved will not always yield victory, but not getting involved never does.

Besides, advocacy is fun. There is a tremendous exhilaration in winning, as well as a lot of satisfaction just in trying. But if making your corner of the world a better place and having a good time are not reason enough, here are six more.

A lot can be accomplished by caring people who offer a helping hand. It is great to volunteer at a shelter, or donate toys to the local hospital. But that will not always be enough.

Donated toys are no substitute for a way to pay the rent, and families with a disabled family member do not need a shelter nearby so much as they need affordable housing and access to home-based care. Volunteers cannot answer either of those needs unless they are also working for public policies to ensure the availability of low-cost housing or of the home-based services so many families need.

The Reverend William Sloan Coffin, long-time chaplain at Yale University, put it succinctly: "Charity," he wrote, "is a matter of personal attribute, justice a matter of public policy. Never can the first be a substitute for the second."

That is where policy advocacy comes in. Without better pubic policies, many people will lack what they need to be productive members of their communities.

It is possible to be an advocate by informing others, writing or calling a policy-maker, organizing a grassroots campaign, or helping in the background - e.g., doing some research or writing a check. (More on this topic can be found in Volume II - More Ideas For Making A Difference)

Advocates for better social policies can be found anywhere: in public agencies and private; in clinical settings and direct service projects; among volunteers and professionals; on the boards of community agencies and business roundtables; whether voted into office or just plain voting.

Sometimes individual effort is all that is needed. A Texas social worker with an irregular work schedule used to monitor the weekly City Council meetings whenever possible. One day she heard a dog owner complain to the City Council about the unfairness of making him pay a license fee while cat owners paid none (a differential the Council chose to ignore).

Some time later she heard the Council consider a proposal to cut services at a mental health clinic, for lack of what seemed a relatively modest sum. During a break she called the pound and the SPCA, collecting estimates of the number of cats in the area. Then she made a quick calculation, which she passed to one of the Council members. It showed that if the same fee required of dogs were also applied to all of the cats, there would be enough money to avoid a cut in mental health services - and dogs would win equity with cats. The Council agreed, and the services were saved.

Some issues are too big and far too complex to be easily resolved with a few phone calls and a back-of-envelope calculation. Medical research is one such case.

Diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Leukemia, or ALS, strike their human victims irrespective of income or family background. And everyone who has ever been diagnosed with a life-threatening or degenerative disease has needed help along the way - some of it provided by family members and volunteers.

But they also need hope: that such terrible diseases can be stopped, or at least slowed down. For that they need more than the help of a kindly volunteer or dedicated family member, more than the assistance available from local faith-based groups and community programs - they need sophisticated medical care and expensive, ground-breaking research. That is why there is advocacy to persuade Congress and the White House to allow the use of federal funds for stem cell and other basic research, and why such efforts routinely attract such broad, bi-partisan support.

Slowing the rate of environmental destruction offers another case in point. Small efforts are important, and individuals can play a critical role, but at some point governments, public policies, and broad citizen consensus are also required.

In 1970 environmental consciousness was chiefly the province of small, hardy bands of committed groups and their largely volunteer memberships. Most Americans did not have a clear idea that they could - or should - be involved. Then one U.S. Senator, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, called for a nationwide "teach in" on the environment. Working out of borrowed space, with a skeleton staff and energetic students everywhere, the first-ever Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. That first year an estimated 20 million people and thousands of schools participated. Congress shut down for the day, as 500 members of Congress spread out across the country to take part.

Now it is an annual event. By Earth Day 2001, it was estimated that over 200 million people were participating, in 140 countries worldwide. Public attitudes everywhere had undergone a sea change. And perhaps most significant, in the time since the first Earth Day, the U.S. Congress had adopted a Clean Air Act, a Clean Water Act, an Endangered Species Act, and created an Environmental Protection Agency. On the international front change was also visible, as multi-national agreements were being struck on global warming, energy efficiency, and the ways in which human rights and the environment are linked.

It is true that efforts on this scale require a high level of sophistication: knowledge of the laws, the efforts of organized groups, the help of professional lobbyists, and sustained activity over a period of months or even years. Some of those involved have been pressing their case for decades.

But it is also true that each step along the way meant the involvement of countless ordinary people along with the professionals, and each victory also meant a better quality of life for many - including those in poor communities and rural areas where resources are scarce.

Any time we insist on helping only through one-on-one, voluntary activity, we make others dependent on the whims and fashions of charity. And we effectively write off everyone who lives where the charity (or volunteer) that is needed is not available, or whose conditions stem from something too big for one person, one volunteer to address.

There are also self-interested reasons to get involved, whether the people needing advocacy are related to us or not. Everyone with an interest in the future, for example, has a personal stake in policies for children, as does everyone who hopes to get old. Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children's Defense Fund, once remarked that, depending on what we do now for the children, before long they will be either ... supporting us, depending on us, or shooting at us. In the same way we all have a stake in what happens to the air we breathe, the wages we earn, the products we buy, and the quality of life in our communities.

Every level of government is important and plays a part. Some examples:

• Local school boards are responsible for the schools;
  
  
• County and city governments operate hospitals, make grants for the arts, and protect the local environment;
  
  
• State governments decide whether everything from nursing homes to child care is licensed and affordable;
  
  
• Federal laws affect every aspect of our lives - agriculture, education, elder care, environmental policy - and much, much more...

Visionary members of the business community understand. They reach out to meet immediate needs, e.g., by mentoring or forming partnerships with individual schools, but they also work through the political process to improve conditions in all the schools. Business leaders in Chicago, for example, lobbied their state legislature on behalf of education reforms. Similarly, on the national scene, the business executives who make up the Committee for Economic Development have been powerful advocates for greater government investments in prenatal care, childcare, education, and the arts.

In a democracy where every voice and vote count, doing nothing is a political act; it is a vote for the status quo. Staying out of the process does not mean that laws will not get passed; it just means they will get passed without reflecting your priorities and wishes, or those of anyone you might speak for - especially those who have been disabled or abused, ill or in pain, troubled or poor.

If you feel intimidated or uncomfortable at the thought of speaking up or otherwise getting involved. if you have been thinking it is enough to be informed about the issues and cast your vote intelligently...then it is time to think again.

If you went to a restaurant just to read the menu you would be informed - but you would be missing the point. Ultimately you have to decide what you want, what you are willing to pay for it, and be willing to engage with other people to get it.

That also applies to your role as a citizen in a democracy: being informed is not enough. You have to decide what you want from your government, what you are willing to pay for it, and engage with your elected representatives so they can help you get it.

Many city, county, and state elected officials work part-time in their political roles (often for very little pay), and the rest of the time in their family/bread-winning roles. They have little or no paid staff, and no magic way of knowing what is on the voters' minds. Nor can they afford fancy polls, focus groups, or surveys. "Feeling the pulse," as a local official in Indiana said, "is often accidental." Unless constituents tell them, they do not know what people think.

Another problem arises when legislators must vote on matters outside their personal experience, and do not have any real feeling for the consequences of their votes. That is why a Utah state Senator tells advocates to expose their elected officials to their issues in very human, personal ways. Invite them to spend an hour or two with emotionally troubled children, she suggests, or to have dinner at the home of a family in subsidized housing. This is a challenge just ripe for creative solutions.

A national program called "The Walk A Mile Program" uses this approach. Working with state and local groups, they pair low-income people with a local, state, or federal elected official for a month, and ask them to participate in at least one shared activity each week. In addition, the elected officials are asked to put their families on a food budget comparable to what low-income families get from food stamps. State legislators have found themselves stranded when their "pair's" old beater car breaks down (and there is no money for AAA or towing) or spending long hours waiting for their low-income pair to be re-certified for Medicaid or food stamps. Without direct experience, it is hard for middle class legislators to appreciate the practical affect of the decisions they make (e.g., requiring frequent re-certifications, limiting the value of the cars owned by working people who use food stamps or Medicaid to supplement low wages).

A St. Louis group called ROWEL (for the sharp-pronged wheel on a stirrup that prods a horse - or Missouri mule - into action) offers a simulation that uses 15-minute time blocks to correspond to a week in the life of a low-income family. Elected officials and community members are given parts, e.g., of someone who is elderly, disabled, or just needing help (short- or long-term), while others act the parts of such community resources as a food bank, pawnshop, grocery store, the food stamp and social service agencies, the police, a landlord. During the Simulation participants are subject to all the rules governing assistance in their community and told that their job is to survive one month. The experience, however brief, reveals how hard it is to be poor in America - and how difficult it can be to get help. One local Judge who participated said he finally understood the frustration low-income people express at "the system".

Above all, advocacy is a frame of mind. As everything mentioned thus far should make clear, advocacy is first and foremost a mindset - not a job title, occupation, or role in life. Whether it involves a single individual like the woman in Texas or a group with staff like Walk A Mile, advocates see opportunities when others only see obstacles, and work to change the institutions that cause problems for everyone, rather than wait until after the damage is done or be satisfied with easing problems one-by-one.

*This article references information drawn from Part 5 of the OMB Watch publication So You Want to Make a Difference.