BLOC: BE LOCAL

Young adults who want to positively impact their community may lack a centralized way to find resources and awareness of issues. This leads to barriers to effecting practical change. Issues within communities include: potholes, food insecurity, lack of awareness of events occurring, policy changes, and other community-based challenges. This creates an opportunity to help connect young adults closer to their communities by making it easier for them to be aware of the issues and events happening in their local community.

Many young adults want to positively impact their communities but lack a clear, centralized way to discover local issues, resources, and opportunities to get involved. At the same time, communities face ongoing challenges such as: food insecurity, infrastructure concerns, and low awareness of local events or policy changes, which often go unaddressed. Research shows that many youth feel disconnected from their communities, which is associated with lower civic participation and engagement (The Promise of Adolescence – Youth Engagement). Studies also suggest that when young people have accessible opportunities to participate—through volunteering, community initiatives, or technology-enabled activism—they are more likely to contribute to meaningful social change (Promoting Civic and Political Engagement Among Marginalized Urban Youth in Three Cities; Young People as Competent Community Builders; Digital Activism to Achieve Meaningful Institutional Change; Using Crowdsourcing to Support Pro-Environmental Community Activism). Together, this highlights the need for a well-designed platform that helps young people easily find, understand, and engage with issues in their local communities.