Community engagement, especially for a political office, is a peculiar beast. A long time staffer once tried to sum up the situation, he said: “People come to political offices for one reason; they want something,” and while that is true in so many ways, I don't believe it give credence to the scope of what people actually want.
In my experience there are two kinds of people who go to politicians for help. The first are lobbyists of one kind or another, and the second are people who are at their wits-ends with no where else to turn. The latter, the people who are at their wits-ends, are the reason I went into politics.
During my internship there have been several cases where people have come into the office desperate for help having no where else to turn. Some people cannot be helped but others you can help untangle the bureaucracy that is Government and have them walk out the door with a smile on their face and their problem solved, and that is incredibly rewarding. Form helping someone with an immigration problem to assisting with a Centrelink quandary sometimes people just need a leg-up.
Do I think any aspect of my Public Relations degree is able to assist with this kind of community engagement? No. Not really. You can’t teach empathy.
But Community Engagement isn’t just about inbound calls, outbound is, as we’ve been told often enough, just as important, and keeping good relationships with sporting groups, community advocacy groups, residents, schools etc. is another key aspect of what I do and an aspect in which the skills taught in Curtin's PR degree have helped.
This week we did a mail out outlining the Government’s new dental health scheme for kids and lower income Australians. This went out to several thousand houses and is a great example of the kind of outbound communications tactics we use. But of course, as any PR101 lecturer will tell you, outbound doesn’t work effectively by itself, which brings me to the final two important aspect of Community Engagement in my job.
The first is face-to-face ‘open air offices’ whereby people are given the opportunity to meet with the Member at a predetermined time and location and ask questions or seek advise. These are always hit and miss and often depend on the level of apathy in the community, but they are none the less an important part of the democratic process, politicians do represent 'the people'.
Finally, I want to touch briefly on social media and specifically Facebook. One of the first things I did when I started this job was create a social media presence for my boss because it creates those very important symmetrical lines of communication, which has worked quite well but is still in its infancy.
So, that’s me for today. All the best with your own experiences - Ron.
14302350.
No comments:
Post a Comment