Just over half way..

Hi all,

I am just over half way through my internship now. The last blog I po

sted, I was just settling in and learning all about the Women’s Information Service (WIS) operated by the Department for Communities and how I could help to promote volunteering for this free information and telephone referral service.

Since then, we have been busy advertising the service and promoting an information session for potential volunteers, which took place Sep 15th. Ads were placed in various print media in addition to the DfC web page and an Intranet story that I had to write (below) that was a call out to staff and anyone they might know who may be interested in volunteering.

Working on this project has been very beneficial and has exposed me to a lot of tasks undertaken within the PR industry. Not only have I had a chance to write media releases and other stories, I have also been exposed to the event management side of things through this information session. Some of my tasks for the event included getting quotes and organising the catering, registering known attendees, notifying security, helping to set up the venue, and other little things such as creating sticky labels.

From this little taste of event management, I have realised that even though the little tasks seemed a bit meaningless in the wider scope of things, every little thing needs to be done in order for an event to run smoothly. No matter how insignificant they may seem at the time. Probably my most important lesson learnt was that you can definitely not plan for everything! Not everything will go the way you expect and things WILL go wrong! For this sake good improvisation skills and quick decision-making are very valuable attributes. I learnt this fast when I myself and no one else on the team considered to even organise milk for the tea/coffee or napkins. Such a small thing… But such a BIG point to forget when holding a morning tea!! Luckily quick thinking and a dash to the staff kitchen solved the problem… and the impending coffee crisis.

The information session went really well. It was open to the public and around 40 people attended, with the Director General, Jenni Perkins opening the event. A presentation by the Volunteer Support Officer Judith Andrews was given, followed by Q&A time and a morning tea. Out of those who attended, 29 expressed interest to attend the training sessions that are to be held later this month, which will qualify them to become volunteers and offer their services. We were not expecting to get these numbers, so the amount that have showed interest and since then signed up to attend these training sessions is great!

Since the event, I have been doing other odd jobs related to my project. Such as writing more stories to be placed on the staff Intranet as well as editing an 80 page-training manual to be used throughout the training sessions, to act as a volunteer handbook.

Even though this task was very tedious and boring to say the least, it is still very important to this project. Not only does it affect the learning of future volunteers, it also impacts on the service they provide to callers. Undertaking this task, has made me appreciate the boring tasks that people do take on in the workplace and once again taught me a valuable lesson that not every day is fun in the office and these things DO have to get done by someone!

We are now organising things for the training sessions and hopefully next time I blog, I will be able to share more lessons learnt that may be of help to you too. Or at least reminders of what to think about i.e. milk!

Hoping you are all learning as much as I am.

Averil