Hey everyone,
I'm Clo! I'm currently half way through my internship at Shelter WA, a peak housing body that represents and lobbies on behalf of housing consumers and community groups. I started at the beginning of April. I started quite late due to an enrolment's mistake as I thought I enrolled in this unit for the second semester. So I didn't really look at any internship until I found out that I was actually doing this unit in Semester 1.
I wanted to look at an internship that would allow me to organize events and more contact with the public. However, as I was running late, I didn't have many options left and eventually found an internship at Shelter WA. My main tasks are to write media releases, update their website, assisting them to write a newsletter, and create a Facebook account for the organization.
Despite the fact that it wasn't what I was looking foward to do, I'm actually surprised that I'm really enjoying completing these tasks. Everyone in the office is very friendly and very generous when it comes to share their knowledge and experiences with me. The office is quite small but there is a very good atmosphere. Shelter WA has only four staff members, the executive officer, the community development and policy officer, the research officer and the administration and finance officer.
What I found interesting in this office is that there is not a specific public relations person, but the executive officer and the public officer policy who are in charge of the role of a PR person. They deal with their jobs but also deal with organizing events (forums, presentations etc), writing newsletters, getting in contact with the public etc.
Despite the fact that the hail storm damaged their office and caused an overload of work to do, they manage to welcome me very friendly and organised a desk for me.
There is a good team work in the office, we all worked and contributed on a newsletter together and finally finished it today. I also started to store information of past events,forums they participated or contributed to into a folder in order to create a Facebook profile for Shelter WA. By doing this, my main objective is to increase the awareness of Shelter WA among West Australians. As they don't have a lot of publicity or media release done lately I thought Facebook was a good idea as almost everyone has a Facebook account. It's also a free and quick way to raise Shelter WA's profile.
I guess that's all I'm going to write for now. Will give update really soon.
Goodluck to everyone! and hope you are enjoying your internship as much as I do!
Clo
2 comments:
Hi Clo,
Your placement seems like a very unique one as opposed to most of the comments that i have been reading. im glad to hear you have been enjoying yourself despite your intial feelings towards it. I have to admit that when i approached ANZ for my placement i was not overly excited about doing PR for a bank, especially in the current economic times. However i have been pleasantly suprised and have discovered that coporate PR appears to be just as exciting as working for a consultancy. The structure of the Shelter seems quite similar to ANZ in that staff take on additional roles, Ivana the pr co-ordinator at ANZ is also the Chairman's executive assistant and the community relations person. it really shows the importance of being able to multitask in this competitive industry, doesnt it?
That was a great idea creating a facebook, like you said pretty much everyone has an account hence its a great way for a small organisation to promote itself and gain support.
Hope you continue to enjoy yourself! look forward to reading more of your posts!
Charlotte :)
Hi clo,
I think I agree with Charlotte here, your internship was very unique one, I think you really have a good time of exposure I wish I had that opportunity. Anyway, mine also was fine but the problem was that the company was not fully Public Relation Company, that is why I didn't have much exposure. Well though the company was more on marketing the fact that Public Relation and marketing normally collaborates still there was a room for Public Relation. The other thing is I had a new different experience of viral marketing, it was an advantage to me.
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