Kennedy

McKenzie Kennedy
ENC 2135
Brandi Bradley
1 September 2015
Life is Best with a Buddy-Draft 3
An individual community is a group of people that have a common interest or goal. One
particular community that is prevalent in some middle schools, high schools, and even colleges is
Best Buddies. Best Buddies is a nonprofit, international organization that fosters one-to-one
friendships between students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and students
without (Best Buddies International). Passion is the heart of this organization, without it, Best
Buddies would cease to exist. It has spread internationally and is growing exponentially,
impacting nearly 900,000 lives across the globe (Best Buddies International). Even with its large
size, the Best Buddies community as a whole remains tight knit and connected to one another
through the common aspiration of building inclusion worldwide. Best Buddies truly changes
lives and alters the way members perceive the world around them.
Since it is an international program, the organization is widespread and often faces
challenges when communicating with this vast amount of people. Best Buddies International
attempts to mitigate this problem using a variety of genres to send announcements and
information out to its members. Genre is simply defined as a category of writing or of
communication (Brazeiller and Kleinfield 5). The most prominent genre that Best Buddies
International utilizes is social media. This caters to the fact that most members of the
organization are a part of the technological generation. There are Twitter, Instagram, and
multiple Facebook pages all solely devoted to Best Buddies. Social media is an integral part of

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the International level of the organization. It is one of the only modes of communication that can
reach thousands of people with the click of a button. Each social media outlet has its positives
and negatives which affects the way Best Buddies employs them. Twitter is extremely helpful in
blasting out short announcements and reminders but is not the best method when attempting to
send more detailed updates due to the one-hundred forty-character limit. Instagram is extremely
useful in sharing personal stories and highlighting some of the friendships within the
organization. Passion can be explained through words but pictures convey emotions that cannot
always fully be captured within a character limit. Laughter, smiles, and excitement for this
organization and its mission are better conveyed in pictures on Instagram than in a quick tweet.
Facebook is also a helpful mode of communication within the organization. Announcements and
updates can be organized into pages and groups on Facebook where members can receive
information specific to their sector of Best Buddies. This is more efficient than members
attempting to sift through the massive amount of updates that get blasted out every day.
Another mode of communication that is used by Best Buddies International is email. The
majority of the technological generation have an email account that they check regularly. This
genre is one of the earliest forms of internet communication and while some say it is diminishing
due to the increased following of social media, others believe that it will remain prevalent for
some time. Especially in situations like this where it may be the only means of communication
common to every member of a community. Email is also a better form of communication when
staying in touch with the older population of a community as they sometimes do not participate
in the social media movement that has taken the world by storm. In Best Buddies the older
population consists of the parents of both the buddies and the peer buddies. Most middle school,
high school and college students still rely heavily on their parents for transportation and financial

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support, so parents must be kept in the loop. Important information is sent from Anthony
Kennedy Shriver, the founder of Best Buddies, through email to members and their parents. He
regularly sends out reminders of campaigns, activities, and holidays that members of the
organization have the opportunity to partake in. This mode of communication is extremely
effective as it caters to the parents whose moral and financial support is vital to the
organizations survival.
The next branch of Best Buddies is the regional and state offices which every state or
country will have. There are a few thousand members in each region and about ten staff
members that are in charge of facilitating the clubs at each school. They communicate in many
of the same ways that are used on the international level such as social media and email. Social
media is a huge communication factor to get updates or reminders. The regional level utilizes
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. They use Twitter to send out update blasts and Instagram as a
way to post pictures from each event. The primary social media outlet they use are pages on
Facebook as they can separate each school into its own separate page. When they send
information out via social media, the updates are casual and concise as the audience is typically
teenagers who prefer quick and easily accessible updates.
The regional offices also maintain strong email conversations between the staff members
and the leaders of the clubs. They send out a Monday Memo which is a newsletter style email
that contains all the updates and deadlines for each president, who is a student leader, at each
school. The president must then respond and forward the memo to all the other student leaders
and members of the club at their respective school. The emails are more formal than the social
media blasts as they are professional in style and language. This ensures that the student leaders
gain respect from their respective staff member that communicates with them on a weekly basis.

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These emails teach the presidents of each club to respond in a professional and timely manner
and helps them manage the many paperwork and payment deadlines. The use of this particular
style of email is beneficial to young students because teaching proper email structure during their
schooling years will help them later in life.
The final mode of communication that is utilized by the regional and state offices is the
face-to-face genre. Due to the decreased number of people involved on this level of the
organization it is possible to have a few face-to-face meetings which is an integral genre of
communication at this level of the organization. The staff members schedule meetings with the
president of each club at least once a month to complete the logistical aspects of the position.
These meetings are not just about the practical issues but they also tend to be extremely
motivational. Leaders like to know that there is someone supporting them and willing to help
them solve problems and craft unique, feasible solutions to each situation that arises. These
meetings foster personal relationships and friendships between the student leaders and the
regional staff which is vital to keeping all the gears turning in the machine that is Best Buddies.
These meetings are casual yet professional as leaders dress appropriately and cut the slang from
their vocabulary out of respect for the staff member.
Best Buddies has an even smaller subset that is the individual chapter at each school. This
subset typically consists of about a hundred to a few hundred students. The goals of the
individual chapters are to spread the message of inclusion not only in their school but in their
community as well. There are various campaigns members participate in such as Spread the
Word to End the Word which is a movement to eliminate the word retarded from everyones
vocabulary (Spread the Word to End the Word). The word is offensive to many and counteracts
Best Buddies mission of inclusion and acceptance. These campaigns and other general Best

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Buddies events are promoted through various modes of multi-media. For instance, at Plant High
School in Tampa, Florida, there is a hallway bulletin board in the front of the school that allows
students to post Best Buddies events and have flyers attached for people to rip off and take with
them. This particular mode expands the audience and provides the entire school with the
opportunity to get involved with the organization.
Flyers and announcements around school are just one way that leaders recruit new
members to the organization. The face-to-face genre is also a prominent way of recruiting new
members. At the beginning of every year, leaders set up an information table with a sign up sheet
in the cafeteria during the first week of school or during open house in order to introduce people
to the organization. The face-to-face genre is extremely helpful in recruiting as ones passion for
the organization is exuded through their facial expression and pure joy when recounting stories
of their involvement in the program.
Recruiting is a vital aspect of each individual chapter as the Best Buddies mission is to
increase acceptance and this is only done by spreading inclusion to others. However, other
modes of communication are used to communicate with the already existing members of the
organization in each school. These modes include social media and face-to-face chapter meetings
and training sessions. Social media is just as prominent of a genre at the individual chapter level
as it is at the regional and international levels. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are all used as a
way to spread meeting times, location, and other important deadlines.
The face-to-face genre is much more prominent in this sector of Best Buddies as it is a
smaller number of people. Every month, each chapter must hold a meeting or training session
and a fun event for members. The meetings are in school events that happen on a designated club
day each month and is where calendars of events are distributed and where most announcements

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are made on a regular basis. The training sessions are either during the assigned meeting time or
after school if more time is required. These training sessions are used to teach the particular
conventions that members must accept to be a part of this organization. Members are not allowed
to refer to the students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) as disabled kids
or refer to them by their specific disability such as using the term autistic kid because both of
those are offensive and degrade the individual. These conventions are extremely important and it
is vital that Best Buddies members follow them in order to comply with the mission of inclusion.
The smallest subset in a Best Buddies chapter is the one-to-one friendship that is formed
between two students, one with IDD (the buddy) and one without (the peer buddy). This
community must be altered for each individual friendship as some buddies are unable to
communicate in ways that society would deem normal. For example, some buddies are unable
to verbally communicate and have to use an iPad to type or click images to convey what they are
attempting to say. These friendships may look different because they communicate through
technology but that does not make their friendship any less valuable.
There are other buddies who can neither use the iPad nor verbally communicate. These
students are typically overlooked by society as people do not want to put the effort in to
communicate with them. Peer buddies who are paired with buddies who have these severe
communication problems can only communicate with them using the face-to-face genre as their
facial expressions are vital in understanding their emotions and needs. Simply seeing one of
these buddies light up when their peer buddy walks into the room is truly a heartwarming
experience. Their smiles radiate pure joy and their infectious laughter are the most beautiful
thing some people ever encounter. It is situations like these that really make one stop and think
about the forms of communication taken for granted in twenty-first century society. Not

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everyone can conceptually understand a text message or a tweet but almost everyone can smile
and portray their feelings through the face-to-face genre.
Another component of friendship that goes along with communication is time
commitment. Throughout the various Best Buddies clubs, it is seen that the buddies that hang out
on a regular basis and communicate via phone or email consistently have a stronger friendship.
There is one buddy pair at Plant High School in particular that is a true example of this, Jake and
Daniel have been friends and buddies since the ninth grade. They eat lunch together, play
basketball all the time, and they hang out and watch movies and just have real conversation
about life. They are the best of friends and this relationship only exists due to the amount of true,
personal interaction in which they participate in.
While social media, email, text-messages, and phone calls are all wonderful methods of
communication at other levels of this organization, they are not the most effective
communication technique when building a one-to-one friendship. Emotions get lost in tweets,
texts, emojis, and phone calls. This theory rang true with some of the buddies in the program as
some pairs would solely have a friendship based on quick conversations in between classes and
the occasional text now and then. These genres were effective in getting a point across to one
another, but were incredibly ineffective in growing a friendship. The Best Buddies community is
a unique rhetorical situation as peer buddies must be mindful of their specific audience of the
buddies when communicating (Anderson 6). The peer buddies who took the time and effort into
seeing their buddies at least a few times every month were the ones who truly learned how to
alter their communication methods and techniques to their buddys personal needs.
The Best Buddies organization focuses on building relationships between two people, one
of whom has difficulty communicating in some shape or form. The heart of this organization

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rests in the belief that every individual is worth the time and energy it takes to form a friendship
with someone who would normally be overlooked. It may be hard to communicate at times, but
in the end the reward of a truly wonderful friendship with an individual like no other outweighs
the communication costs. This organization illuminates the importance of having different genres
to choose from in order to connect with the special needs of different audiences and facilitate the
building of friendships in communities similar to Best Buddies.
Societal norms can either be embraced or dismissed by a particular community. Best
Buddies prides itself in creating new norms and integrating those who are typically left out and
abandoned into a community that is built on mutual respect and kindness. There are many modes
of communication that help make this dream into a reality. Through the genres of social media,
email, phone-calls, and face-to-face interaction; Best Buddies is able to impact thousands of
people and foster friendships founded on the fundamental belief that every human being deserves
to have a friend who truly loves and cares for them.

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Works Cited Page

Anderson, Daniel. Write Now. Boston: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012. Print.

Braziller, Amy, and Kleinfeld, Elizabeth. The Bedford Book of Genres: a guide and reader.
Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Print.
Best Buddies International. Best Buddies International. 2015. Web. 19 September 2015.
Spread the Word to End the Word. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and Special Olympics.
2015.Web.19 September 2015