For my final paper, I am planning on examining how volunteering can have positive effects on elderly populations. As one gets older, it is easy to feel as though there is no longer a purpose in your life. When you don’t have anything to do everyday, your home and minor hobbies get you through the day. However, if a person can find a daily/weekly/monthly volunteer event, it might make the difference between depression and a better life.
The audience of this piece would elderly citizens themselves, different community organizations who need more volunteers, family of elderly citizens, and doctors of elderly citizens. While I have only stated a few, this piece can be useful for many people and many educational fields of study, such as: sociology, aging studies, and psychology. For my paper, I will be focusing in on elderly citizens and their family members as my target audience.
I see my piece being less of a formal paper, and more of something that can be accessible and read by anyone. I am planning on using mainly scholarly sources, but I want to translate and use these sources in a way that people who normally won’t have access to these sources, can now have that information at their hands. In order to do this, I will draw from the quiz we took, and keep in mind that I can’t use certain scholarly words and instead should use everyday jargon. Additionally, I will draw from the readings we’ve done, in remaining aware of who I want to read my piece.
I really like your topic and I agree that it is important to think about the emotional health of elderly people because sometimes people forget to do that. I think if you are using elderly citizens and their family members then doing something very informal is important so it can be read easily. Maybe you could structure it almost as some sort of advertisement or informational magazine article that an elderly citizen or one of their family members might read.
Maybe this is already a thought of yours, but I feel like this could make for a good brochure if you think that is a format you would find effective. Im sure you have decided already. I really enjoy this topic though. It is unique and I think is something you clearly drew from your own volunteering experience. I think an important aspect of this piece will be making it appealing to the reader i.e. no jargon, easy to follow, more informal. Interested to see how it turns out…sounds like it will be awesome.