On Monday I commenced my internship at The
Big Issue in Sydney, which I will be undertaking for the duration of four
consecutive weeks. By the end of the first week, I had been given all relevant
information on the social enterprise by the marketing officer and was also
assigned my major project for the month by my supervisor and State operations
manager.
For those of you who are not familiar with
The Big Issue, it is a social enterprise, which sells magazines to vendors for
$3, who then re-sell at $6 and keep the profit. They also have a women’s
subscription, street soccer and Big Issue classroom – all with similar aims at
helping marginalised or homeless individuals to positively improve their lives.
In collaboration with local newspaper The
South Sydney Herald – The Big Issue has been given an opportunity to feature a
Vendor of the month profile in each publication. My task was to liaise with the
editor of the newspaper and determine exactly what was required for these
vendor profiles. The next step was to gather information already available on
the vendors and seek information, which was not already available through
previous interviews with the vendors. So, the first step was research. This
involved going through the archives and finding previously published vendor
profiles and documenting, which vendors were in what issue. For the project,
there were ten vendors selected based on newspaper distribution in their pitch
area.
The idea of this project is so that as each
month approaches, The Big Issue staff can forward the vendor of the month
information to the South Sydney Herald. By having it all in advance, operations
can run smoothly throughout the year. The extra media coverage will benefit
both the vendors and the bottom line of the company by having increased sales
from increased media coverage in the suburbs.
In relation to PR theory I have already
been exposed to project management, archiving, spreadsheets, and testing my
organisational skills.
I feel I’ve settled in nicely and have a
few events to look forward to in the coming weeks!
Kate
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