Dreams to Reality

The first thing that comes to my mind when trying to figure out the discourse communities that I belong to is Dreams to Reality (DTR). This is the program that I worked for during my last coop in South Africa. I spent this time working at a primary school in a township outside of Cape Town. I was there for 21 weeks but other volunteers stays ranged from 1 week to 24 weeks. This meant that I ended up meeting over 200 volunteers. Despite the fact that I obviously did not become best friends with all of these individuals, I can definitely say we were all part of a discourse community.

            The first part of a discourse community is a broadly agreed set of common public goals. This to me is the most obvious and easily definable part of this particular discourse community. Every volunteer who joined DTR was there to donate a certain amount of time and effort to help children less fortunate then themselves. We all wanted to experience all that South Africa has to offer, but in doing so we wanted to do our part to help the community. There are various programs that one could choose to work for (child care, surf outreach, teaching and sports) but all of them involved a goal of helping those in need.

            The second part of a discourse community involves communication. This was an easily obtainable goal because we all lived in one of three houses throughout Muizenberg. Despite the fact that most of us did not have phones, work became a common ground in which we could all communicate. There was also the local “pub”. Due to the fact that it was the only one in the town, you could always find at least a handful of volunteers in there. Now to be fair they were not always talking about work but it was a way for us to all bond with each other on a more personal level.

            The third part of a discourse community is using its members for information and feedback. This was crucial to the survival of DTR. The program was constantly changing and evolving and this was due to volunteer feedback. Every time a new set of volunteers would come we would get a whole new set of ideas and criticism that helped to make the programs better and more functional. While I was working there be created a physical education system in the school, built a new surf shack, added a day care center into our program, and completely changed and improved the tutoring room in the primary school. All of this happened because of ideas, donations and feedback from previous and current volunteers.

            The fourth part of a discourse community is utilizing and possessing one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. Considering the fact that we worked in two different schools, had our own surf shack for the surf outreach program, and worked with 3 day care centers I would say that we had plenty of different genres to further our aims. We aimed and ultimately were striving to better the lives of as many people around us as possible. By working in multiple places, creating websites to help increase donations and often holding fundraisers, we were able to achieve this aim through various means.

            The fifth part of a discourse community is having specific lexis. This can be true for this discourse community on both a personal and professional level. If you look inside the local Muizenberg pub you will notice writing all over the tables by volunteers. Some of these saying have been carried on for years, despite the fact that the volunteers who started them are no longer in South Africa. “Cheers to the pole”, “Let’s have a Jol”, “Ceers chunts” and many more were commonly said by all of us. Now despite the fact that some of those do not seem to make any sense to you just proves the fact that they were part of our discourse community.

            The sixth, and final, part of a discourse community is having a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content. This applies to our discourse community because you have to apply and be accepted in order to work for the program. Despite the fact that you do not need to be a certified teacher or surf instructor does not mean that one’s skills were not taken into account. DTR will only accept those who they believe are qualified enough to work with children.

            All of these reasons make me believe that DTR is a discourse community. It satisfies all six requirements, but more importantly we felt like a community. Despite the fact that I am not there anymore does not change the fact that I feel like I am part of that community. I still keep in contact with teachers from my school, other volunteers that I became friends with, and the leaders of our program.