Lifeline WA

With my fancy new suit jacket and my sling back heels (which I quickly changed into just before entering the office after the long walk from the train station) I felt the part of a public relations intern and knew it was going to be a day filed with fun and learning many new things as well as putting everything I had learnt in my last three years as a student into action.

My internship is at Lifeline WA which is located on Murray St in the city. For those of you who don’t know much about Lifeline, it is a not for profit organisation who specialise in suicide prevention and community wellbeing.

Lifeline WA aim to generate community wellbeing through telephone counsellors, providing a service that supports fathers and their children after separation or bereavement, education and training programs and the HelpMe Campaign which addresses the negative stigma associated with mental illness.

After a quick introduction to the CEO Amanda Wheeler and all the other employees for Lifeline the work started. Lifeline WA have an annual ball at the start of the year which raises vital funds, so almost all the work I would be doing would lead up to this massive event.

So during my first week I was working alongside Ros Worthington who started the HelpMe campaing, Ros is an inspirational woman who made it into the women’s hall of fame and is the founder of the Breast Cancer Care WA. I worked with her on a social media campaign that linked her with the outside world and linked the outside world with her. We started accounts on LinkedIn and updated the already existing Facebook account and I showed her how to use her accounts and write information about herself on her profiles.

For those of you interested in looking at these accounts here is a hyperlink http://au.linkedin.com/pub/dr-ros-worthington-oam/16/458/6b7.

During my first week I also had meetings with Ros about auction items for the ball and started calling around to verify auction items and collection times as well as cold calling businesses to see if they wanted to donate something to our ball.

At first I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be doing enough public relations with all the planning and fundraising going into the ball. However as the first week ended and I reflected back on my time, I realised that out in the real world you will sometimes be expected to cross over into other sectors and use your expertise in public relations to help you in whatever work you undertake.
As you can see there has been a lot going on in the first week alone and it is awesome to have responsibility thrown at me from day dot.

I would love to hear from other people who are working for a not for profit organisation and how they are finding the public relations sector and if it is linked in with other sectors such as fundraising, marketing and events.

Hope you’re all having a wonderful time.
Jessica Dreier
14270952 Bentley Campus