The document discusses potential social action project ideas focused on animal abuse, mental health awareness, anti-smoking, and alcohol abuse. For animal abuse, the author proposes a poster using photos of pets in abusive settings with statistics to raise awareness. For mental health, the focus would be on bullying as a cause of depression in youth. An anti-smoking campaign would highlight secondhand smoke and peer pressure. For alcohol abuse, the author suggests a campaign bringing attention to deaths from liver failure and drink driving, as well as underexplored links to depression.

1. Social Action Project
Exploring Ideas

2. Animal Abuse
I would like to make a poster that will draw everyone’s attention to this cause. With the knowledge that 1 in 2
UK households are homes to pets, it should be easy to get people on board when fighting against animal
abuse. The best way to approach this is to use a household pet e.g. cat, dog, hamster etc. and express the way
that they might feel having been abused or abandoned. I could also take a standard photograph of a pet from
the internet and throw it into a bad setting, then use stats to explain the issue in more depth. It would also be
a good idea to use a before and after technique to show people how beneficial it can be to rehabilitate a pet.

3. Mental Health Awareness
I would like to consider working with mental health awareness as it is becoming a larger issue amongst the
youth of the UK. A lot of mental health problems come from stress and being under pressure. However, there
are other causes which are overlooked, such as bullying. Bullying is a very common cause of depression which
can be easily concealed by children who don’t want their parent’s to know for various reasons. I feel that if I do
choose to do something with mental health, I can include information and statistics about how bullying can
come into affect when it concerns a child’s health and therefore making people more aware. I will also include
other information and stats, of course.

4. Anti-Smoking
With the knowledge that 15.8% (7.6 million) of the UK’s population smoke, I would like to change this. I believe
I can do this by using different circumstances to make people aware. For example, people surrounding who
face second hand smoke, children or babies exposed and influenced, peer pressure etc. There are many
different causes of which I could promote to bring a stop to smoking and make friends/families aware so that
they can offer support to others. I could also show that there is other support from the NHS for example, and
show the packs that smokers can get access to to help them to stop.

5. Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol abuse causes a large number of deaths, across the UK, each year. The best course of action I can take,
to make a national change, is to start a social action campaign and hope to bring attention to the cause. There
are lots of different causes of death, when it concerns alcohol. However, the two most common causes of
death are liver failiure due to massive amounts of consumption and drink driving in which deaths can occur
within or even outside of the car. I wouldn’t want to make my campaign purely about death, however, because
there is a lot to do with depression and life problems that link in with alcoholism but maybe aren’t discussed as
much as they should be.