Martin 1 Megan Martin 800805418 Suzanne Ingram 30 April 2014 Multi Genre Reflection Several childrens charities and

organizations, such as March of Dimes and St. Judes Childrens Research Hospital, receive year round donations from many corporations, businesses, and anonymous donators. These organization are nonprofit and all proceeds go towards benefiting the children in which the programs intend. My Annotated Bibliography focuses primarily on exactly where these helpful donations come from and whether or not anyone else, including local businesses and those who help fund the childrens charities, receive any profit whatsoever from the programs. The focused audience for my Annotated Bibliography deals with the board and chairmen of such organizations, the bosses of businesses who promote donations, and of course the donators themselves. However, both of my multi genre pieces mainly focus on the donators and what they can do to help support children who are ill and seek medical attention. My first genre piece is a combination of Visual mode and Linguistic mode in the multimodal category, but with more of a visual aspect. It is a creative flyer promoting a childrens carnival to raise awareness and donations to help support (in this case a made up cause) A Hope and a Future- Childrens Medical Research. The flyers target audience is the general public and to anyone who is interested in making a difference in a childs life. The good thing about having a carnival, is that people of all ages can come and enjoy the fun. However, I was thinking while designing this specific piece that carnivals attract kids, and to me theres no better way to

Martin 2 make todays generation of youth more alert and cautious of what can happen to your health, and also about children who are different than they are. It also proves that there is a community of outstretched hands willing to help if need be. If families come to events such as this one, they are all learning about the different types of disease and illness that can occur in a childs life. The flyer also points out that donations are 100% benefiting the intended program, which I think is important in this day and time. While working in retail for nearly three years, we have scheduled donation times for different charities with each season. Right now, we are supporting March of Dimes, which is a lifesaving organization orchestrated to help premature children, babies born with birth defects, and also the infant mortality rate among the nation. Ive had many experiences when I would ask a customer if they would like to donate to the cause, and a few of their responses were, I really would love to, but nowadays we dont know where this money is going. No thank you. This statement to me just proves how generations have changed over time. The trust that people have when they give to these beneficial and life changing causes is starting to decrease. Thats why I found it very important to make the statement of all proceeds go towards A Hope and a Future- Childrens Medical Research. For my second genre piece, which is the narrative written to donators/non-donators, I did more of a linguistic mode with a little bit of visual mode added into it. This genre is a piece of writing that has a purpose to target the public. Specifically those who dont usually donate to charities, but prospected donators nonetheless. The piece has a bit of a persuasive writing style, suggesting that everyone donate a fraction of what they have to these innocent children who are fighting to live every day. It kind of reminds me of the animal commercials with Sarah McLachlan. Everyone has seen those, and most everyone gets saddened by them. The narrative that I wrote has the same effect. Beside it is the form of a handprint made up of words from the

Martin 3 narrative itself. I found this idea on Tagxuedo.com and I thought it was neat. It bolds the important words and it is colorful, so maybe if a mother and her son happen to see it in a grocery store when they are checking out, it can appeal to both of them. Which as previously stated helps to raise awareness to our future generations. Who knows, perhaps they will be inspired to reach out and help the same way the project has made me want to. I wouldnt mind starting my own fund for children one day in the future, and perhaps many others will feel the same. Overall, the entire genre project has pathos or emotional appeals under Aristotles Appeals. Having a pathos appeal isnt necessarily the emotion a writer puts into the work: its how the writer appeals to the readers emotions, which is what both of my genres are intended to do. When writers and speakers can find the words and images to evoke certain emotions in people, they might also move their audiences to sympathize with ideas they connect to those feelings, and even to act on them (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 49). This was the intent of my flyers. As the goal of most charities, its important to tug at the heartstrings of the donators if you will. Sometimes the facts alone wont carry the argument, and sometimes eliciting emotion from readers will help the writer fulfill his or her purpose (Ingram). This type of appeal is something I always connect with when I run across fundraisers ad charity events, which is common amongst most donators. The strongest emotional appeals, in my opinion, come from the second genre piece. Which is the flyer with the handprint and the narrative. It is intended to make people want to reach out and help these kids, and I believe I did a good job getting that point across. Many people in this day and time are extremely hesitant when it comes to giving their hard earned money to charities. I, myself, have a hard time trusting certain places that collect because, believe it or not, there are in fact greedy organizations. An example of a charity that is

Martin 4 untrustworthy is the Childrens Charitable Fund. The Childrens Charitable Fund, an organization that roughly resembles the Make-A-Wish foundation, was given a poor rating by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau. It spends only 10% of its revenues on charitable programs, and has not shown itself to be either forthcoming or transparent with its finances. In addition, nearly 2% of revenues are given over to pay that CEOs salary (Business Pundit). This type of behavior from charities such as this one is what gives legitimate charities a hard time. And those who truly want to help children are in a tough position when it comes to giving. However, since 100% of proceeds do, in fact, benefit the child recipients in some way, people and businesses should feel more comfortable giving to March of Dimes and St.Judes.

Martin 5 Works Cited Page Ingram, Suzanne. More on Aristotles Appeals. PowerPoint presentation for English 1102. Spring 2014. Lunsford, Andrea A. and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Everythings An Argument 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. Print. "Business Pundit." Business Pundit RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.