Hi everyone!

I am Kath. This is my first post after working at my placement for three weeks. I am doing my internship with World Vision in WA state office. My placement is going good so far, I have been designed to work in a lot of different areas.

I remembered on my first day of placement, I have to do phone screening for potential interviewee for World Vision. I was excited but also nervous. As I called on behalf of the organisation, I have to be careful on the words I used, bascially, be professional. Fortuntely, the phone screening was not as hard as I thought and it improves my communication skills.

World Vision WA office has around 12 staff in the office, working in a small environment allows me to get involve in a lot of different projects. I am currently doing a public relations plan for the "Race to save the World " campaign. It is one of the advocacy event from WV and the event is happening on the 29th Sep next Tuesday.

Last week, my supervisor asked me to engage with the media about the event. He passed on a draft media release to me and asked for proof-reading. The first thing I came out with was "there is no quote on the third paragraph!" I am heavily influenced by the structure of writing a media release from PR 200 (techniques). Luckily, my supervisor liked my suggestion and asked for approval to use the direct quote from WV. It was just a little encouragement for myself to see how I can help to get the work done. And we ended up sending the release to the community newspapers and the West Australians. My supervisor told me he got some positive responses from the local newspapers and he secured a photo opportunity with them.

I realized communication is so important in public relations. There could be lots of phone calls to make in order to get ONE response. I called nearly all the radio stations the other day just to find out if they have community service announcement. Some of you may know what is CSA, but I DONT! At least, now I know what is community service announcement for and it is FREE.

This week, the office is running like crazy. Because there are so many events happening in World Vision. WV has a stand in the Perth Royal Show. The stand is mainly to engage with the pubic about World Vision's works. I will be assisted on the Child Sponsorship Stand and hopefully can gain more experience about events. If any of you are going to the Royal show, swing by to the Farm Animal Kingdom and say hi! I will be there on Wednesday !

Bye for now, will keep you all updated!
Kath