Essay:-part 1
:Project 1: Profile of your Nonprofit Organization as an agent of civic engagement
According to the University of southern california journal, There are approximately 1 million nonprofits large enough to register with the federal government. Add churches, foundations, and nonprofits too small to register and the number is more than twice that. For every new business that forms, more than two new nonprofits start up. The potential of nonprofits to engage their clients and members in community affairs and public policymaking is, in theory, enormous. et,perversely,nonprofits are regulated by the federal government in such a way so as to discourage the involvement of their followers in the public policymaking process. For example,grassroots campaigns designed to mobilize members or clients to communicate with legislators runs up against restrictions inthe law on public charities and, consequently,are utilized by nonprofits only infrequently.This is a problem not simply because we social scientists think civic engagement is a good thing and being a couch potato is a bad thing, but because these regulatory standards sharply skew public participation. While middle and upper class individuals have many organizations that engage them and mobilize them,nonprofits are the only organizations that work on behalf of the poor, those without health insurance,immigrants, the disabled, and most other marginalized constituencies put more bluntly,federal law works against the participation of the most disadvantaged in society.My paper will focus on three specific topics. It will first present civic engagement and an example of a non profit company participating in civic engagement.It will then ,present the profile of that particular Nonprofit Organization and its involvement as an agent of civic engagement in society and will finally present my argument which will discuss how the concept of identification as rhetoric dicussed in chapter 6 of the book Rhetoric in civic life by Catherine Palczewski push individuals to pursuit civic engagement activities such as building a nonprofit company.
Civic engagement or civic participation has been defined as "Individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.Living in Philadelphia education has been an issue of public concern widely discussed in the media.The poverty in large swaths of North and West Philadelphia, the Great Recession only made life harder.The overall poverty rate in the city dipped slightly in 2012 to 28 percent. But the number of Philadelphians needing food stamps rose last year, and the child poverty rate in the city still hovers near 40 percent.According to a article on the daily news,The public school situation in Philadelphia is grim. The district is broke. The governor cut more than $1 billion from the state's K-12 budget, which hit the state-controlled Philadelphia district hardest.At the school year's start, the district laid off thousands of employees, cut programs and services, and kept 23 underpopulated city schools closed this year. De Burgos just absorbed some 250 kids, an upheaval that's still in progress. That's put enormous strain on students, parents and teachers - especially when you throw in persistent poverty. Therefore a need for education help is a must.Mighty Writers a non profit orgaization is a perfect example of individuals assembling their effort to solve this problem in society.Having the chance to interview the program director of this amazing non profit oragnaization, i had an insight into how amazing , good hearted and dedicated its members are.
Let me introduce mighty writer and talk about its governance organization's values, mission, stakeholders, governance, means of support and the way it reaches its target market.
- Mission:Mighty writers is an organization that helps kids between 7 and 17 to improve their writing skills by offering free service to any low income families that could not afford tutoring in order to do so.
- Governance: The mighty writers was created by the executive director of the company,Tim Whitaker.Under Mr Whitaker are RACHEL LOEPER the education director, ANNETTE JOHN-HALL the program director ,MAYA FRANCIS and James owk who are youth coordinator.All of those keys people are professional that are retired and worked as journalists or writers at some point in their lives.Those individuals give their time to improve the community education in philadelphia.
- Stakeholders:The organization represent a big relieve for stakeholders such as parents who cannot afford extra educational helps for their kids and the philadlephia school district who financially cannot provide this extra help.They have volunteer from high school, retired professor and college students around philadelphia (around 300 individuals)that are willing to help and give their time to teach and mentor some 2,000 kids annually receiving writting experience or fulfilment of having halped the community in return.
- Means of support:The mighty writers includes two location one in south philly and one in west philly.Funding mainly come from foundations, corporation and generous peole donating.
- Values:The values of the company is best describes by their slogan stated which state the fac that they are a company designed to combat Philadelphia's literacy crisis.
- Reach public:digital technology which was a concept discussed in chapter 8 of the book highly contribute to Mighty writers marketing purposes.Not only Mighty writers is marketed through social media such as twitter, facebook but it s also marketed through email blast.
The concept of identity as rhetorical discussed in chapter 6 of the book rhetorical in civil life is one of the reason civic engagement is conducted and Mighty writers is a perfect example of it.Identity is defined in the book as the physical and/ or behavorial attributes that make a person recognizable as a member of a group.The next part of the definition is even more interesting,Identity ingredients include and but are not limited to race, sex ,sexual orientation, veteran status, religion, nationality, citizen status, ability or disability, education and profesision.Having had an interview with the program director who is close to the executive director of mighty writers who build this organization from the ground up, i have learnt what motivated him to build Mighty writers.Tim Whitaker , the creator of Mighty writers, was described in his young years as a problem child, a troublemaker.In high school, his future was even questioned by the guidance couselor.However,Writing which was pretty much the only subject in which he excelled helps him figure out who he was and ultimately saved him from total academic disaster. Therefore identifying with this academic path and discovering with some research the lack of educational helps in public school in philadelphia due to financial reasons, he hadthe urge to help others with academic difficulties in this departement.
Therefore when his career as a newspaper and magazine editor came to a predictable halt he decided to follow this path of helping others in solving academic writing defeciencies.
Civic engagement is a really honorable cause.The fact taht the public are willing to help its community out of free will to make its community advance is an intriguing sight for social scientist such as myself.Idnetifying with an issue due to events happening in your lifetime is a big motivator in pushing individual to get out there and help others and our organization creation is a perfect example of it.
part 2:
Hybrid reality games (HRGs) employ mobile technologies and GPS devices as tools for transforming physical spaces into interactive game boards. Rather than situating participants in simulated environments, which mimic the physical world, HRGs make use of physical world immersion by merging physical and digital spaces. Online multiuser environments already connect users who do not share contiguous spaces. With mobile devices, players may additionally incorporate interactions with the surrounding physical space. My project will be a study about the effect of HRGs as an activities responsible for reiinventing the way humans currently socialize and interact with each other. Adopting the framework of sociocultural learning theory, I will analyze design elements of an existing HRGs, such as mobility and location awareness, collaboration/sociability, and the configuration of the game space, with the aim of reframing these games into an social context to foresee how future games might contribute to reiventing the socialization aspect of humans. Pac-Manhattan an game and really interesting HRG will be use as an example of how games (a) create a new logic of game space, (b) transform the relationship between serious life and playful spaces, and (c) transform the perception of urban spaces and patterns of mobility through the city and most importantly reinvent social interaction between individuals.