First Blog for Seen and Heard

Hey Everyone, I’m Caitlin from Bentley and this is my first Blog post!

I started my internship about a week ago with Seen and Heard in Mundaring. I doubt any of you would have heard of it before but basically Seen and Heard is a Not for Profit Youth Organization that works in Mundaring and the Hills area putting on youth events for the 12 – 20 year olds in these areas, it promotes social networking and volunteering in the community and provides general support for Youth in the area.

Because these areas are around an hour away from Perth the youth out here have nothing to do on the weekends as most often live on farms and blocks of land and there are no shopping centres, bars/clubs, cinemas or even local places for them to hang out after school or on the weekends. There are only a few schools and there is one school bus which drops them in the centre of town where their parents will then pick them up from. Seen and Heard put on events such as pool parties, BBQs, Skate Jams, Battle of the Bands Competitions, Dances, school holiday events and whole community events, all free of charge and drug/alcohol free. We also have this group of youth called “the CREW” who volunteer to help out and come up with ideas for events, they meet up once a week and help us out.

In this past week I have been learning about the type of events that go on and have been helping to promote them through their facebook, contacts and by creating posters and flyers. We are currently working on events for the upcoming school holidays which include skate jams, a hip hop dance class and this holiday’s major event “Ride the Rails”. Ride the Rails is an event created to focus on the whole community which will involve parents, friends and children to get on their bikes and ride the railway track from Chidlow to Rockypool and basically absorb in the nature and scenery of the area they live in. We have been doing liaison with other local community groups to get them all involved such as “Men’s Shed” which is a group of men who get together once a week and do handy work for free, as well as the rotary club and Second-hand shops to donate all sorts of things and lend their assistance on the day.

I have also been helping out with the Health Expo which is held on from 9am – 2pm on a school day later in the month and will involve students coming from school to attend workshops and stalls from various health organizations to teach the kids about healthy living, sex ed etc. this has involved me calling various organizations for sponsorship or any kind of donations to help the students learn as well as making the PowerPoint presentation for gaining sponsorship.

This week has taught me a lot about the difficulties of working for a not for profit organization. Obviously all of our events are free and they’re all running on a very low budget so basically everything we do has to be able to be done for cheap or for free, which heavily relies on donations and volunteers. I also attended the Mundaring Youth Peak Body Meeting on Friday afternoon which involved representatives from schools and youth organizations in the area who all collaborate to make sure their events don’t clash and help each other out with referrals, ideas etc. and basically just letting each organization know what’s going on over the next few months. It was good to attend this and see that the various organizations are helping each other out and aren’t in competition with each other.

I also helped throw a free sausage sizzle on Friday afternoon for the Youth in Kalamunda at the skate park which is where they all go after school to hang out. It was good to meet up with some of the people who attend the events and who we are throwing the events for.

Other stuff I’ve been doing include help writing a media release, creating promotional material, Online networking, heaps of brainstorming with the rest of the team at Seen and Heard and doing research for events.

Until my next blog!

Caitlin
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