Third week into my Internship

This is the end of my third week interning at Singapore Red Cross, leaving me with another 14 days to go, which also means I am two weeks away from the actual event, the World First Aid Day.

The whole experience has been very enriching for me and I have learnt a lot. Not just about PR work, but also about the organisation I am with and World First Aid Day.

The office building also known as the Red Cross House has been around since pre war times, meaning before World War II and it was designed by Singapore’s very first architect. The staff actually requested to have a lift built, unfortunately as it is a heritage building, no modifications to the building was allowed.

Singapore Red Cross has 2 separate campsites and I actually had the opportunity to visit both. One is a campsite with dormitories is meant for overseas First Aid trainees as mentioned previously. Another is more for corporate purposes. This other campsite is located in town, and was opened by our Emeritus Senior Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong. This is the International Involvement Hub specially for organisations that are involved in humanitarian efforts. These organisations are the Singapore International Foundation (SIF), Temasek Holdings (TH) and the Singapore Institute of Internal Affairs (SIIA). It was heartening to know that our ministers are giving these organisations more recognition.

Anyways, moving on to actual internship experience, I met with some producers from our local television station this week. They wanted to host a variety show starring one of our local celebrities. Some of the things we had to do was to find out information for the producers we well as take them to various locations, to show them where they could have the actual shooting. I was rather nervous when I thought about having to meet the producers, but it was a pleasant experience. They were not stuck up or bossy like what I had expected. In fact, they were extremely down to earth and humorous.

We had to keep very quiet during the filming and make as little movement as possible so as to not distract people, but I managed to sneak in a photo of the filming in progress.

I had to follow up on the invitees of the event, and call them up individually to remind them to RSVP to us by the given date.

I contacted our designers to make urgent changes to our banners and posters so that they would be up in time for the event. Seeing how technology is so advanced these days, I had to ensure that the website with information on the event and the course was up and working, before providing the designers with the QR code that is to be printed on the banner and flyers. Personally I am not the most tech savvy person and this posed a bit of a challenge to me. Fortunately, my colleagues were nice and taught me what I needed to know. Here is a photo of my colleague Chloe and I during our lunch break, after half a day of hard work. Though we look nothing alike, people in our workplace often have us confused.

As time is running out for us, I had to help do the transcribing for the video since we needed to get the first cut by Monday. What I never imagined was for a 10 minute speech to take more than an hour to transcribe.

My boss also had me write in to several free platforms to gain more publicity for the event. These platforms includes a public service announcement on Mediacorp’s Advertising Sponsorship scheme as well as the National Council of Social Services (NCSS)’s event calendar. It is good to know that not everything is solely about money, and that people are slowly recognizing charity work. 

My next update will be after World First Aid Day, which will also be my last day at work. Hopefully there will be more things to blog about!