My name is Debra and I just started my placement last Tuesday with the Keep Australia Beautiful Council (KAB) under the Department of Environment and Conservation of Western Australia. KAB's main purpose is to encourage and inspire all Australians to strive for a sustainable and litter free environment. KAB offers many environmental programs open to the public to participate such as the Adopt A Spot, Clean Beaches, Tidy Towns, Litter Reporting Scheme and many more so please do be part of one of the exciting programs that they have to offer if you have the time to!
Did You Know?
-Littering is a serious issue and can result in a fine of $200 or more!
So guys, please spread out the stop littering message to your family and friends to avoid a fine and to help make Australia a clean and better place to live in.
As for my placement, I will mainly be working on a research project on communicating with English as a Second Language groups in Western Australia where I will have to establish who these major groups are, how to reach out to them and make recommendations on the communication channels and ways to involve them in environmental programs to play their part in making Australia a litter free country. So far, I have carried out phone interviews and interviews with people from different companies who deal with different ethnic groups in WA and will be carrying out interviews every week as part of the qualitative research for this project. Other than that, I usually carry out academic and desktop research in the office for the purpose of the report that I will be required to submit at the end of the placement.
I am very honored to be chosen to complete this project as one of the projects in the State Government Internship Program and have found the people working with the department to be very friendly and helpful especially my supervisor who have been giving me useful guidance for the project. However, I find this placement to be rather challenging and a truly good opportunity to brush up on my research skills and to really apply practical public relations knowledge in order to achieve the goal of the project, which is to communicate environmental messages to these people in the most effective way.
I am looking forward to learn as much as I can from this placement and to indirectly contribute to a litter free Australia. Till then, stay tuned for more upcoming posts and thanks for reading!
Debra Tan
Curtin Bentley
2 comments:
Saving the environment must be something you hold close to heart.
Well done on getting such an interesting placement where you get to feel like you're making a difference!
I think that litter is a huge problem in Australia. Even more so than highly populated Asian countries as we do not have street cleaners that keep all the streets litter free on a daily basis.
It will be interesting to see your research results.
Congratulations on being chosen for your internship, Debra!
Have you worked in a State Government office before? I'd be interested to hear of any differences you've encountered in working at a State Government PR office vs. an independant corporate of consultancy office.
Niki
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