Events, Events, Events...

This week I was given a new task in addition to the project management for vendor of the month profiles. The Big Issue will be having a stall at Tropfest to raise awareness in an attempt to recruit new volunteers. As part of the plan for Tropfest – a competition is being run with the benefits including increased sales, exposure for the vendors and hopefully recruitment of volunteers. I was required to make a promotional flyer and was exposed to desktop publishing, copywriting, and aspects of advertising.

Additionally, I was lucky enough to attend the QANTAS and OzHarvest CEO cookout, which involved CEO’s, and celebrity chefs cooking dinner for homeless individuals in a bid to raise more awareness about the issue. Although I was not involved in organising the event, it was interesting to attend and see how it ran and the necessary work involved for such a large occasion to succeed.

Every fortnight The Big Issue Sydney hosts a ‘vendor café’ for the vendors. This involves the staff at the Sydney office providing breakfast, tea and coffee and officially releasing the next edition of the magazine. It also gives the vendors an opportunity to socialise and see if they met sales targets for the issue. Although a small-scale event this involved assisting in catering for roughly thirty people and buying all necessary food for the event and ensuring everything was ready to go first thing in the morning. I had also arranged media packs to hand out to the vendors who I will be writing profiles on for the newspaper which included a basic invitation, a media consent form and a copy of the newspaper so they could get an idea of what the end product would be like. In the end I was only able to give out a few and still need to follow up with some vendors. All in all, it has been a good week and I was able to experience the way low-budget events can function within a not-for-profit organisation.  

Kate