Do you ever imagine a virtual community, a group of people, who may or may not meet one another face to face? An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. A news journal that I researched talks about the beginning of online community, “About 31 years ago, back in February 1985, one of the first virtual communities and now the oldest, continually run virtual community launched. It was called the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, otherwise known as The WELL. The website was, and still is, very basic partly because it was still the area of dial-up and slow processing computers with no images or advertisements. When exploring it today, it feels like a time portal back to the ’80s or ’90s.” (The Well – Where Online Community Began, 2021) This online community was the pioneer of online communities. This was the beginning when people started joining online communities. Online’s communities have had a great impact on people’s lives and communities in general. Around the world, people that are otherwise voiceless in physical space are becoming powerful leaders of groups that confer a real sense of meaning and belonging for their members. As we were learning about this topic in class I decided to begin research about an online community that has been around for a while, contributing to the life of others and the Development of society. The Dominican Day Parade.

The National Dominican Day Parade in New York City is a parade organized by Americans of Dominican origin. The event started in 1982 as a local celebration with concerts and cultural events in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Organized by Dominican American community leaders, the parade is held annually each August on 6th Avenue. (National Dominican Day Parade, 2021) Many people only know The National Dominican Day Parade as an annual in person event. What many people don’t know is that The National Dominican Parade

is also an online community. This online community has many platforms where people can engage and access the events this community holds online. They conduct many workshops, leadership workshops, empowerment workshops, Self-Care & Mental Health workshops, brain power workshops and many other workshops for their members.

This online community is most known for their annual scholarship. This scholarship is awarded to Dominican college students who participate. They promote this scholarship through their social media, Instagram and Facebook. This community organized cocktail parties, galas and education initiatives that promote the richness of the culture, folklore and also other fundraising events. The money raised on these events goes to these students and also to support

the lower class and most poor people in the Dominican Republic.

As I was working on this research I had the opportunity to assist one of their Leadership workshops. This workshop was conducted by Lisette Camilo-DCAS Commissioner (Commissioner of the department of citywide administrative services). Raquel Batista-MOIA Commissioner (Mayor’s office of immigrants affairs). These commissioners started this workshop talking about their journey and roles. They discuss some dynamics of their leadership within the administration, goals and objectives. They also teach how to build skills to solve problems creatively and collaboratively & help drive culture change. These leaders want to influence the behavior of these people by describing a better vision of the future. They shared their stories to create optimism in other people. The main platform of this community is Facebook. The members address each other in a respectful manner, they also support each other and work together for the wellbeing of everyone part of this community. They use a professional tone while they address others but also they make some jokes and tell stories to break the ice. Some of my observations include some of their rituals, one of them is that every year they open the contest for the scholarship in which hundreds of students participate. They select their finalist based on the requirements and they post their finalist on Instagram so their family and friends can support them and also donate money for the scholarship program. The main value in this community is Leadership, these leaders are helping young people and young students to become leaders to go out there and help other communities to engage themselves in the most vulnerable areas of this country. A pattern of this community is that the winners of these scholarships when they commit to receive this scholarship they also commit to do volunteer work with this community. They are also asked to attend some of their personal events to share their personal experience in college life to inspire other young people. This is a bilingual community where they speak English and Spanish. People of all genders are welcome to join this community there’s no judgement allowed on this community. Most of the members of this community are Dominican or descendants of Dominican but I also realized that some Puerto Ricans are part and engage themselves in this community. Some of my thoughts and feelings while I was making observations was that even though it is hard times there are people out there trying to make the best of everything. Trying to help others. Pushing the younger generation to be a better version

of themselves. These online communities even though they don’t reach people face to face they make a big impact on society and everyone on society.

Reflection

The process of selecting the online community for this assignment was hard because I didn’t have any idea of which community to observe. I spent two days on facebook looking for online communities and observing them when I found a post about a workshop that The National Dominican Day Parade was going to conduct during those days. Some of the adjustment that I made along this process was my involvement in this community. I had to involve myself in the activities and workshops of this community and as a result of this I had an awesome outcome. I’m really educated about the process of this community and I can pass this information to other people. The most interesting discovery that I made while working with this community was how even people from a different geography and other cultures get themselves involved in this community. Some of the learning outcomes achieved during the process of writing this essay were to acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility. Practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects and develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes. Engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond. I intended in this essay to educate people on a community that they may never have known existed. The purpose for my essay was to show that this community is not only a parade in august where people meet once a year, this is a year around community and it’s mostly online most of the important events of this community are conducted online. The process for this online community essay was to observe the community make notes and observe everything they do, their behavior, their language. Some of the changes made in this process was basically adding more specific information to my essay because based on the requirements for the essay I was missing some specific information. Some of the guidance I received throughout this process was my professor’s advice and reviews. One thing I would like to improve upon is my writing and the way I express myself because most of the time my ideas are not complete or I do not provide specific details.

Citation

“Homepage Dominican Parade – 2021 National Dominican Day Parade Aug. 8th @NATDDP. Uplift, Empower & Elevate the Dominican Spirit.” 2021 National Dominican Day Parade, 14 Oct. 2021, https://natddp.org/.

“The Well – Where Online Community Began.” Higher Logic, 5 Aug. 2021,https://www.higherlogic.com/blog/the-well-where-online-community-began/.