** YOU MUST USE THE ATTACHED TEMPLATE**

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Many individuals face challenges in career decision-making due to sociocultural factors that limit or otherwise negatively influence their ability to make self-directed career choices. Discrimination, economic constraints, and social supports are just a few of these factors that are highlighted in this Week’s Learning Resources,. In this assignment, you will build on your discussion post considering how these and other factors might influence the career development of your future clients or students, focusing on your role in addressing these factors. 

To Prepare for Activity

• Review this Week’s discussion posts about the factors that might influence the the career development or access to decent work for marginalized groups.
• Research the Walden Library for peer-reviewed articles about how to address factors that influence career development of marginalized populations.
• Read through the template that is located in the Learning Resources for this assignment. 

By Day 7

Develop an advocacy statement that addresses the importance of diversity and advocacy as it relates to career counseling. When creating your advocacy statement, be sure to address the key components of advocacy, including a discussion of how you might advocate for clients and students across micro, meso, and macro levels of society. Much like a theoretical orientation statement, your goal is to describe your commitment to social change and advocacy for all clients and students in a fair and safe manner.

• Note: Your advocacy statement should be one to two paragraphs in length. A meaningful statement requires more than a simple sentence stating your beliefs or aspirations. Your advocacy statement should be a tool to begin dialogue between you and your clients/students to explain the ways you work in your role as a counselor to address the needs of clients/students who may be marginalized on the basis of some aspect of their social identity.

Describe how your clients or students might be challenged by various sociocultural factors on their career development. Then, in at least 2 pages,

• Describe three culturally sensitive ways in which you might apply career development theories while also addressing these socioculural factors.
• Include specific advocacy strategies to address the client’s/student’s needs at the appropriate levels.

You must cite at least 2 peer-reviewed articles to justify how you are addressing the sociocultural factors and the specific advocacy strategies you selected.