Politically correct.

My first day at SUPP, the Sarawak United People's Party was not really my first day. The youth of SUPP formed a group under them called waSUPP. As the youth age ranged from 19-40 years old, waSUPP was made as a platform for the youth to carry out events to reach out to the younger youth and also do community work in Miri. waSUPP stands for We Are Sarawak United People's Party and I was already taking part in the event planning since it first started during our first meeting on the 24th of February. I have been working with SUPP since the beginning of March as they accepted me to start even though my intern ship would only officially started today.

waSUPP held a 3 weekend event:
Weekend 1 - Reach in
The reach in event was for the members of the youth of SUPP to bring one friend each to the event. Where the youth would have a chance to play beach games and interact over barbecue food with the current leaders of SUPP, such as SUPP president Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr. George Chan Hong Nam, Datuk Lee Kim Shin, YB Andy Chia and Dato' Sebastian Ting. This event was held on the 6th of March.

Weekend 2 - Out reach
The out reach event was programmed so that a community would profit from it. waSUPP team chose PDK (Pemulihan Dalam Komunity) an association which deals with special children. We chose to help this association in funds and held games for the youth of SUPP to be able to interact with the children. This event was held on the 12 of March.

Weekend 3 - Celebration Party
The celebration party was planned as an event for the youth to celebrate the past 2 weekends, and a time for them to bring the past 2 weekends to a close. It was also a time to give an opportunity to those who are interested to join the youth membership party.

When I came in today to work officially, Weekend 1 & 2 had already happened. Today was the last day of planning with the team as the last weekend was already coming up 2 days later, Sunday the 27th of March. The waSUPP team has been working hard for the past few weeks to get things together, and today was the day that we called up the people who attended the first and second weekend to come for the Celebration party.

Since the past few weeks, I find that the biggest lesson learnt was that it is not enough to depend on word of mouth or social networking publicity to have the attendance that you hope for especially when the event is linked to a political party. The best way to confirm attendance is by calling them one by one and confirming their attendance and if they had transportation problems we would be able to cater to their needs. Publicity also plays a crucial role in events, if the publicity did not manage well than we can expect to have a low number of turn-ups during the event.

Blessings to all,
Rachel K. Bulan
PR practitioner in practice with SUPP
CURTIN MIRI CAMPUS