The Center for Community-Based Learning and Civic Engagement believes civic engagement involves...
"...individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.
Civic engagement can take many forms, from individual volunteerism to organizational involvement to
electoral participation.It can include efforts to directly address an issue, work with others in the
community to solve a problem or interact with the institutions of representative democracy. Civic engagement
encompasses a range of specific activities such as working in a soup kitchen, serving on a neighborhood association,
writing a letter to an elected official or voting. Indeed, an underlying principle of our approach is
that an engaged citizen should have the ability, agency, and opportunity to move comfortably among these
various types of civic acts." (The Pew Charitable Trusts, emphasis added)
