Community service in Public Relations

Name: Boikanyo Dudu William

Campus: LUCT

Hello good people today I would like to share with you the importance of community service in an organisation and my experiences of doing community service during my placement in the ministry. Community service is "Services volunteered by individuals or an organization to benefit a community or its institutions."

The ministry has a policy of doing community service every month as a way of showing the community that it cares. It is through this community services that organisation get the opportunity to show that they care and value their relationships with the community. During my placement I was a member of the community service team which was responsible for identifying a certain community in need and coming up with ideas on how to help the community.

The ministry is a government agency and its responsibility is to the people of Botswana therefore it   has to show them that they care as a way of building a good relationship with them. As the community service team we identified a certain primary school in Serinane, a village in the south west part of the country  for our community service. The school did not have an orchard which is a requirement for all primary schools to have since there is a certain module in their syllabus for the grade 6 students to learn about managing an orchard. The community service team decided to donate an orchard to the school as we had found out during our research that each primary school needs one. 

On the 10 of February 2012 the Deputy Secretary to the Minister of Finance and Development Planning Botswana, the community service team and other members of staff visited Serinane village which is about 170 kilometers from the capital city Gaborone where the ministry's offices are. When we arrived there we started planting trees for the orchard and because there was a lot of us it took a few minutes and the orchard was ready and handed over to the school head, who was very happy and thanked the ministry on behalf of the school.

Deputy Secretary to the minister watering a plant during community service

Yours truly planting a tree during the community service

Part of the orchard

I was very happy and proud to be part of the community service team, it was after this event that I realized  the importance of community service in public relations. We had done a great job in identifying a community in need and helped them to show that we care and value their relationship. I will forever be grateful to the ministry's public relations office as i have learned that there is more about public relations that i did not consider to be important before my placement.

Thank you for reading, until my next post peace!

Boikanyo