Internship At Singapore Red Cross

I am Clare, from Curtin Singapore. It is my final year and I am currently doing my internship with Singapore Red Cross. I was hired on the 12 of August, to help out with the World First Aid Day which is on the 14^th of September.

On my first day, I was introduced to the Head of Department of the  Red Cross Academy as well as the Head of Corporate Communications. I was briefed on the event and assigned tasks to do. I had to write to the Alice Lim memorial fund to ask for a grant. Thankfully, this was not too difficult as in PR Corporate and PR Consultancy we had real life clients come in, and I worked in a group to come up with a proposal for the client. The only challenge was how we should appeal to them in order to get a grant, as these funds are not looking at raising awareness for themselves but rather they come from a strictly philanthropic point of view.  

I was also to come up with ideas for a video. This video was to be shown at the World First Aid Day as well as at the start of every First Aid course for the Elderly. I had to meet up with the videographers and go along for the shoots. For the same video we had to interview our Secretary General, Mr Benjamin William. I had to prepare a briefing media kit, which consisted of questions and answers, statistics, storyline of video, and of course a summary on what the video is for and what we hope to achieve from this video.

Due to the time constraint, the video had to be filmed almost immediately. Within the first week, the videographers and I had to come up with the storyline, the fine details of the different shots, the interviews and Q&A . This had to be completed in a hurry so that I had time to brief the Secretary General as well as the other people involved in the video. This was to ensure that we could start shooting the following week, as our Sec Gen, Benjamin was going out of the country. And also given the time frame, there was less than a month to edit and produce the video.

I have heard about the PR industry being a very fast paced, and this is probably how it is going to be like when I actually start work proper. Some of the work assigned to me was not too difficult to handle as I was equipped with the skills I learnt in Curtin, but as for others, I pretty much had to learn the ropes as I went along.

During this period I also had to work closely with the Red Cross Academy as I have to understand what they wanted me to bring out in terms of awareness of the course as well as the target audience they were looking at. I am also to think up of the idea of the launch and to come up with a media plan along with another colleague of mine, Chloe. She is also new at Red Cross having joined just 2 weeks before me.

Apart from the things I had to do which are solely for the event, I had to draft letter of invites to council members, to government bodies, as well as agencies who are our target audience for the event and for the First Aid for the Elderly courses.

I had to write in asking for sponsorships as we are intending to put together a gift bag for the attendees at the event, and so I had to think up of ideas as what is to be included and what kind of sponsorship we could ask for.

The experience so far, has been fun. Apart from PR work I also went down to their campsite as a volunteer, pretending to be a casualty, so that First Aid trainees could practice on us.  I was also asked to help pose as a First Aider for the banner and flyers that are to be put up for the event.