Changing a Community Through Rhetorical Imagination

How to use your rhetorical imagination to change a community through writing
Kristine Dietrich
Lesson 2

All of you have sent in applications for college. You have written letters to the College Board and essays for your SAT and ACT tests. You have written to a specific audience to persuade them to accept you as a student or score you well. This is in a sense using your rhetorical imagination to change a community. Granted you were the main benefactor from this and for the most part it was a pre-chosen topic however, it was audience specific.
Now here are another few questions
Have you ever:
• Run for a club officer or student council?
• Applied for a job?
• Tried to organize anything?
These are all forms of using your rhetorical skills to convince a community. If you ran for student council you probably made posters, buttons, and wrote proposals for what you would do to improve the community. If you applied for a job you wrote a resume and cover letter to convince the employer that you were the best possible candidate for the position. If you have ever volunteered for anything you have been convinced by someone who used their rhetorical skills to help whatever cause. As you can see rhetorical skills can be very powerful.
To change a community through writing you need to use your rhetorical imagination. To do this there are a few steps. When you invent public or community based research the goal is to turn the imagination into reality, to do something that is just an idea and change something.
I had the idea of making St. Louis a safer place for kids by building safe play grounds. These playgrounds would be equipped with security cameras, adequate lighting, and a place where kids and parents could get information on being healthy. To accomplish this I wrote a speech and presentation to the church members of the community where the safe playground would be built, a speech and presentation to medical school students to volunteer to work at these playgrounds, and a letter to the board of alderman detailing my proposal and asking for a meeting to discuss my project. Each of these was written using my rhetorical imagination to change a community.
Now choose a club, sports team, or organization you were involved with in High School. That organization is having a meeting to discuss possible philanthropy projects. Members are challenged to write a 1 page proposal that briefly and concretely summarizes their idea and what would be necessary to make it happen. They have $500 to work with. These ideas will be submitted to the mentor or coach in 1 week and will be reviewed by the mentor/coach and the captains or officers of the club or team. They will chose the top 3 ideas and present them to the club or team as a whole. The winner will get a $1,000 scholarship that applies all 4 years, so a total of $4,000 to the college of their choice.
Your proposal should include an original idea and be related to the club or team in some way. Make sure you take into account the manpower you have and the funds available. Good Luck!

Some ideas are:
• A sports camp for the children of the faculty of the district.
• A craft night for the children at a homeless shelter.
• A science night, complete with gold pennies, flubber, and a Volcano at an elementary school to get students excited about Science.

Remember your audience.