Saying Goodbye

Well today was my last day at the Starlight Children's foundation, and what a roller-coaster it has been the last four months. There was never a dull moment in the office and never a second wasted. This week alone I have assisted in the organisation of and running of the Peruginos "Lunch with friends" Fundraising event on Sunday, A Melbourne Cup Lunch on Tuesday, A Volunteer Appreciation event last night, A CEO Corporate Breakfast this morning and supported two pitches to NIB Bank and The WA Police respectively in the hope of achieving a Corporate Partnership relationship with Starlight this afternoon.

It has been a fun few months and the amount I have learnt has been astronomical. I have learnt there is a huge deal of time and attention that goes into planning events, how to churn out press releases at the drop of a hat, contact making, media management, how to ask companies for donations and support and primarily exactly how the worlds of Non Government Organisations and the corporate sector intertwine.

Now this seems like an entry of lists, so let me go into a little more detail. Throughout my time at Starlight I have learnt so much about Public relations yes, but also about the human spirit. Both through my own experiences and through the eyes of others. During my time at Starlight I have been fortunate to witness exactly what the fundraising of the charity goes towards and to meet with people that's lives have been transformed through what Starlight does every single day. One of Starlight's major Partners in WA is KFC and they had their leadership training day about four weeks ago. As a part of this day staff from around the state were divided into teams and were required to build a children's bike as a competition. My Supervisor Karen, one of our team Members Kelly and myself attended this event as representatives of Starlight along with Ten Starlight families. Each bike that was made was given to a Starlight Child as a gift, the gratitude and excitement of these children and their parents is something i will never forget.  The parents that I had the opportunity to meet were all inspiring with some never thinking the day would come where they would see their children ride a bike. The day I met them one particular family was getting ready to go on their "Wish Holiday" granted by Starlight - an all expenses paid holiday to the Goldcoast. This particular family had spent virtually the whole life of their six year old daughter in Princess Margaret Hospital and had never left perth little own gone on a real family holiday. To see the excitement and gratitude of the children and the parents was enough to make all the time and hard work that has gone into this internship worth it, one hundred times over.

My time at Starlight truly has been a wonderful experience and one I will cherish for the rest of my life.

I hope everyone reading has had an equally fulfilling Internship Journey.

You are all Stars!

Shine On!

A Magical Evening - The 2013 WA Five Chefs Dinner

Songstress Katie Noonan Performs

The evening of the 12^th September was where all our hard work culminated in the form of the 2013 Five Chefs Gala Dinner for the Starlight Children’s foundation. It was an absolutely magical evening and we were lucky enough to raise more than half a million dollars to go towards Starlight’s “in hospital programs” – the most successful Starlight WA event in its history.

The whole day was an eye opening and educational experience, if I thought I had learnt a lot in the weeks leading up to the event, this 18-hour crash course in event coordination was something I will never forget. We began our day meeting with Starlight’s hierarchy who had flown in from all around the country. The day was then filled with setting up rooms, coordinating volunteers, picking up last minute items, re-setting rooms, contacting last minute media, assisting in stage management and product placement for our sponsors (breath!). It was a full on 6 hours. I then had an hour to go home and get ready and look presentable and refined and be back at the venue.

We had final briefings and learnt every minuet detail of our event run sheet. On the evening I was required to coordinate all media in attendance as well as assist and direct two in house photographers. These elements required me to ensure the media were present at the event at the correct time and left when required. I had to make sure these individuals stuck to their delegated area as they were only permitted to shoot and film during our pre dinner drinks and at our media wall. When the guests retired to the ballroom for their meal the media were asked to leave and were not able to access the area.

 Our Five Chefs, From Left: Guy Jefferys, Todd Stuart,
Jonathan Rohnan, Hadleigh Troy and Kurt Sampson

 As well as this I was responsible for all the social media throughout the day and night including blog posts, twitter and facebook posts and sending press release styled event alerts to media. Generally this job is completed by Starlight’s head of Public Relations but unfortunately she was unable to make it to Perth for the event so with her long distance assistance the responsibility was placed in my hands.

I was one of two coordinating the live and silent auctions and we were required to ensure people kept bidding on the items as well as instructing volunteers associated with the auction to ensure each bidder received their item and we received payment.

On top of all of this I was part of our “talent wrangling” team as we ensured all of our celebrities and performers for the evening were where they were meant to be at the right time. This in particular was a more complex job than expected. At one point three of our five chefs disappeared from the kitchen without a trace (and they were expected on stage within the preceding 10 minutes). I frantically scaled every nook and cranny of the Pan Pacific Hotel and eventually found the guilty chefs in the loading dock of the hotel having an unplanned break of cigarettes and flask swigs. These particular chefs will not be named. But not to worry! We got them all on stage at the appropriate time!

Todd Stuart places the finishing touches
on the first course in the kitchen

Our event manager was amazing, with the entire evening run to the minute. No dish was late to the table, no presenter late to the stage and no lighting cue missed.

We were constantly running for a good 10 hours – minimum but it was worth it to ensure the night was an absolute success. This was a wonderful experience and I learnt so much about event planning and coordination, media management and publicity. 

This was an excellent experience and whilst I don’t believe Public Relations is where I am headed for my future career – I think this experience will ready me for the journalism world. On the other hand I must admit the excitement and adrenaline of this evening has actually made me reconsider my public relations prospects – should I head into the events and media coordination elements of public relations rather than the “dark side” that is Journalism? 

Tune in to the rest of my life to find out! 

Building relationships takes time and personal sacrifice

Over the last few weeks I have become less like my Supervisors “Intern” and more of a fellow work mate. I have found that I spend a great deal of time in the office than my allocated two days a week, 9am-5pm. Often I am there until at least 6pm at night and it is not unusual for me to be following up on different things for Starlight on my days off. This has made me feel more involved as an employee of Starlight and it is with going this extra mile I have developed close relationships with those in the office and have gained their trust and respect. This means I have the capability to go above and beyond the role of a basic intern.

Over theses weeks I have discovered my Supervisor struggles when pressure is placed upon her. This is nothing against her capabilities; her work is constantly immaculate, no matter the time frame. Simply when she realizes she is close to a deadline (of which there are a huge amount in event coordination and planning, who knew four revisions would be required for a dinner menu! – but I digress) She struggles. She will begin to “stress out” and often will begin hyperventilating. I believe my commitment to going above and beyond at Starlight has assisted in calming these situations. I know she trusts me and therefore my presence and reassurance has a great deal of impact in calming her.

I have found I have been trusted to do a great deal of activities that generally interns would not be provided with. Last week for example I spent two days driving around Perth by myself meeting with our generous benefactors. This was in order to strengthen Starlight’s relationship with our contacts and collect donations for the upcoming event. I was trusted to not only collect thousands of dollars worth of donated goods. I was a representative of Starlight, promoting exactly what we do, conversing with the donors and encouraging them to maintain their commitment to Starlight.  This was an interesting concept as I was expected to “have a chat” with our donors (something I have never shyed away from!). Starlight believes the core of their work is to make people smile and to ensure everyone who engages with Starlight has a unique and personal experience. It was my responsibility to make sure this occurred.

I was very proud to have this opportunity and I believe it has re-enforced the PR ideal of two-way communication. I now realize this is the very core of what public relations is all about. It is engaging the public and our stakeholders face to face, it is having a conversation and responding to feedback. I feel that this is the best form of Public Relations for any company – whether or not they are “not for profit”, that engaging with our associates on a personal level is the best way to maintain relationships. 

Stars, Sick Kids and Schmoozing

Hi!

My name is Stephanie Mathews and I am in my final year of completing a Journalism and Public relations Double major. I have spent a great deal of time pondering where I would like to do my internship. I have an obvious, almost tunnel vision interest in the media and journalism and I wanted to force myself to see what else is out there, what other opportunities exist for me as a result of my degree. I thought the greatest opposition to the “Glitz and Glamour” of the media would be a not for profit organisation and so I started to look around at what Perth had to offer.

The Starlight Children’s foundation caught my attention as I currently work at Princess Margaret Hospital. This means I have witnessed many a time the wonderful work Starlight does to transform the lives of sick kids. Between the “Captain Starlights” that run around the hospital in their crazy costumes making kids laugh, to the awesome fun that seems to be had in the Starlight rooms, I decided of all charities, this was the one I wanted to be a part of. This is the one that I felt I could make the most difference.

I have just completed my first week at Starlight and it has certainly been interesting. When I began I had hardly a clue of what I was walking into – only that I was going to be one of two responsible for creating the foundations primary fundraising event for the year – the Five Chefs gala Dinner. This means being responsible for the event planning, publicity and media control and absolutely everything in between

My first day was confusing and fast paced as I was immediately launched into facilitating not only the Western Australian 5 Chefs Dinner event but also helping put the finishing touches on the South Australian event. It turns out the Western Australian branch of Starlight is responsible for South Australia’s events and activities too. The office all has varied public relations based roles with no specific “public relations department”. Instead everyone works together on different PR based elements in order to keep our benefactors and partnerships happy, to create events, generate publicity and of course complete our primary aim which is to grant wishes to transform the lives of sick children in hospital.

As yet I have been primarily responsible for calling businesses with “asks”. Basically I am required to "cold call" various businesses that Starlight already has a relationship with (or Starlight wishes to build a relationship with), build this relationship further and ultimately convince them they would like to donate some items or experiences to the silent auction component of our 5 Chefs event in order to raise money for the foundation. I have found this a great challenge, as I have never been one to ask for anything. I am just not comfortable with asking people to do things for me and more often than not I will go out of my way to avoid asking others for things. It sounds trivial, I know, I am working for a not-for-profit organisation that relies on donations constantly. I know consciously that these donated goods are not for me, they are being used to help “transform the lives of seriously sick children in hospital” but still, calling people I don’t know and asking them for things directly is something I will take a while to get my head around.

Aside from getting over the awkwardness of asking people for things I have thoroughly enjoyed my start at Starlight. Everyone in the office is lovely and welcoming and I am so excited by the fact that I will get to see the Five Chefs event start to finish. I will be attending the event on the night and will get to see what my hard work has resulted in. This is so exciting and is true incentive to make me work as hard as I can to make this event spectacular! 

Steph