Half way through...

Hello Bloggers

This is my second post about my internship at Amnesty International Mauritius Section. I actually have to say that am learning a lot in the PR field in an NGO.

In my first blog, I stated that I recently got to work on an article to be published in the Defi Quotidien. Indeed, this was an opportunity for me to put into practice what I have learnt at university in my PR classes. The article was about the instruments of the Human Rights namely Declarations and Conventions among others. A lot of research has been conducted before writing the article. It was actually a challenge for me to write the article as it was to be written in French and that for a young target audience. In that context, I had to use very basic French words along with nice pictures so as the targeted audience could understand the topic well. The article was titled “Un oeil sur les instruments des Droits de l’Homme” and was published on the 12th August 2011. What I have noted and learnt is that proper consideration should be given to target audiences, age groups as well as language and pictures while writing an article so as to be able to really capture the audience’s attention on a particular subject.

Half way through my internship, I got the opportunity to work on different tasks. One of them was to promote the Human Rights Education (HRE) courses to actual, new and potential members and other persons as well. For that, I had to use my ability to persuade people and let them know about the benefits of the courses and about Amnesty itself so as to get them to enrol for the courses. I have to point out that this resulted in a number of people enrolling for the courses.

As an intern, I also had the chance to assist and work on a meeting for the amnesty clubs in different colleges around the island. The meeting took place at Amnesty and members of the clubs were invited to come, discuss and share the different activities that took place in their respective colleges. I got to propose and share with them some pretty good ideas about how to organise events, create eye-catching banners and develop messages for their own little campaigns. This was indeed an enriching experience for me to work with youngsters and this has also helped me to discover new ideas and proposals from students’ point of view.

During my internship, I have taken a lot of initiative that had benefited my organisation. DIMEs are monthly newsletter of Amnesty International Mauritian Section. One of the my initiative was to create a special folder for all the DIMEs issued till date. This was well appreciated by my fellow colleague with whom I worked.

Articles, workshops, promotion as well as events are all part of the work of a public relations practitioner. I am extremely lucky to have got to work on each one of them during my internship at Amnesty. The PR tasks in an NGO may have been different from the actual corporate world and what we learnt in class but it is the experience that counts at the end.

Just stay tuned and I will keep you updated about my experience!!!

Darla SEEVATHIAN
14212763
CTI