First Day on the Job

Well welcome to my first blog about my internship at Telethon Speech and Hearing. I heard about this organisation when I first went to Artitude, an art fundraiser held at the Burswood Casino. I attended in 2007 with a friedn who is one of TSH’s sponsors and had a fantastic time! Ironically enough, my project while I am there is to work on the wine wall and school campaigns for Artitude, made all the more easier because I am familiar with the event itself.

I started by having a tour of the facility and looking at what they do. The centre currently works with about 50 family’s with a child who has a hearing or speech impairment. The various programs that run from the centre rang from support for family’s carers, to testing of a childs hearing, paediatrics services and a specialised kindy. The centre is alot bigger than it first appears and they are currently having a new school area built behind the current complex, as most of the classrooms are currently in demountables.

I then spoke to my supervisor and boss and met the other intern, Cassy, who I have seen around uni. She worked on Artitude last year and has finished her degree, now working part time for TSH on another one of their events, Loud Shirt Day. I began my day with fairly mediocre tasks, but they allowed me to become familiar with some of the sponsors. I did a mail merge and sent out sponsorship letters to last year Artitude sponsors, along with a pledge form to be completed with what ever they were prepared to sponsor the event with. Whilst this was fairly menial, I was really quite happy working and talking to people that came by and become familiar with the work space I would be working in.

After a break, Christine and Natasha took me through the wine wall and how they approach their sponsors. First, they use the Ray Jordan Wine Guide to source local WA wine makers in the various regions. It provides them with addresses, owners, contact details and email addresses. I had to go through last years spreadsheet and cross reference the current wine makers with last years and add new ones and delete old ones. Again, though menial, I realized that all of these tasks that don’t seem as snazzy and exciting are all a part of organising and event.

Next week, the printer sends back concepts for the tickets, booklets and brochures for the even and hopefully I’ll get to sit in on the meeting and see how that works. I really enjoyed the first day at prac, I think I will get a bit of a taste of something that I am interested in and have seen from the outside, but never behind the scenes.