So long, Farewell, Goodbye

This shall be my final blogpost. My internship ended on the 30^th of October. On that very night, we held a media appreciation night where we invited all the reporters of the local newspapers in Miri, and on that very night, my supervisor and friend Ms. Agnes Nyelang announced that she would be resigning from her position as Interhill Group of Companies’ Corporate Communications Manager. I can’t help but feel that this was, in a sense, a poetic ending to a wonderful experience as I got to say goodbye to everyone that had made that experience unforgettable.

I would like to leave my final words of parting here, for those who are also leaving their internships soon or perhaps are just about to begin.

I would like to say that in this industry, we must be brave and we must be honest, and those two things are often inseparable. In whatever situation that you may be in, these two things will most likely see you through.

To be brave does not mean to be without fear, it means to conquer that fear and do the best you can under those circumstances. Speak in public, talk to strangers, defend your case passionately, do this all with a brave heart and conviction, because people will recognise that bravery and they will trust it.

To be honest doesn’t mean to speak any way you wish. I am not advising you to spill everything that’s on your mind regardless of how it may reflect upon yourself as a person or upon the organisation you represent. I mean be earnest and genuine in what you do, believe in the message you are trying to portray and have integrity in all that you do and represent. Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you.

Thank you, and I wish everyone all the best in their future.

So Long, Farewell, and Good Bye.

You Can’t Help Them All

I have some sad news today.

For those that have read my previous blogpost, I Saw You in the Newspaper! , there has been some development in the case of RumahAmpik. To recap, in my previous post I mentioned that our Corporate Communications office was contacted by a man called Mr. William concerning including his children into our After School Project (ASP). 

Today, after a meeting with one of our board of directors, it was decided that RumahAmpik, at this time, is not a feasible community to foster due to the need for trained mentors with more experiences in dealing with problematic children as well as the fact that we have three other communities in our care.

I had suspected for a while that this would be the outcome of the case, but it does not change the sadness in my heart. Perhaps when the ASP is more established, and the mentors more well trained or rather if ASP has the ability to train the mentors that are already dedicated to the project, we can attempt such a thing with RumahAmpik. Till then, RumahAmpik has to stand and face this alone.

This situation, however, has taught me a little something in balancing the good of the company with the good of the community. CSR is never the priority of an organization, it is simply an obligation they have to cater to in order to continue their businesses as they please. In our case, the ASP has never been a priority in time or funding from our organization. I understand that in this specific case, ASP was truly unequipped to handle more problematic children under its care, and had to cede the opportunity to a later date, if at all.

I maintain, however, that in fulfilling an organizations corporate social responsibility the end goal of doing ‘just enough’ just isn’t enough. One day, people will look back and realize a company has done the bare minimum for their community and then they will demand compensation. One day, that organization they will be forced to realize that while they can’t help them all, they can certainly try.

I Saw You in the Newspaper!

Good old traditional media!

Yesterday we were contacted by a man called William, to inform us that he had been observing the progress of the After School Project over the local newspapers and he wanted us to take the children of his longhouse (RumahAmpik) into our program!

The After School Project is an educational program where we ‘foster’ groups of children from the community and carry out various educational activities with them, to teach them that learning can be a fun and rewarding experience. We currently have three groups of children under our charge, which are the Kompleks Hamidah Yakub orphanage, Rumah Anak Amal Kesayangan Kami orphanage and the children of the nearby community in Kampung Wireless.

We were invited today Mr. William’s longhouse to meet with the village chief and his assistant and during our meeting they told us of the high dropout rate of their village, as well as the high marriage rate, especially of those under 18-years-old. These marriages were usually due to unplanned teen pregnancy and are legal in Malaysia, as the parents of the under-aged individuals gave their consent. Something Mr. William said really shocked me and made me realise that the After School Project and the education it brings really is important.

“Parents protect our children, saying ‘don’t scare them, let them be!’ but when they get older, they get wilder. They say ‘help them, but don’t scare them, let them be!’ and later when they’re young adults, they are set in their ways and cannot be changed. They are poor and will always be poor because they are uneducated, all they can do is mix cement and sit in guardhouses. They are poor, so they drink, which makes them more poor; this makes them sadder, so they drink some more. Their parents say ‘help them!’

How? It’s too late.”

Traditional media has a way of reaching the local communities that the internet can’t, not just because they might now have internet connections where they are but because there is something about an article in the newspaper that says something about an organisation’s reliability. Aside from that, it doesn’t take any effort or commitment to comment on a post on Facebook, but it takes a certain amount of conviction and investment in a situation to call a phone number on a newspaper article, talk to a receptionist and wait to be transferred before asking for help from a complete stranger.

Hopefully, after meeting with him and discussing the situation with him, we can help him and his people in the future.

There’s No Shame in Being Shameless

My first experience with the media in a completely professional capacity could have gone slightly better, in my opinion. I’ve already brushed shoulders with a few members of the press from various newspapers, be it reporters or camera-people. However, those experiences have been informal at best, and these experiences I am about to share have to do with being professional and perhaps the shamelessness that comes with it.

After the Global Goals Health: and Wellbeing Workout on the 23^rd of September (please read my previous blogpost, *Feel the Burn* to read up on the details of the event) we’ve had to monitor the publications of our media releases, as per usual. Only the Borneo Post had confirmed they would publish us, due to the reporter herself attending the event, however the others were reliant on the media releases we had sent to them via fax and email. And the event was held on a Wednesday evening, leaving only Friday for the newspapers to publish my article.

Therein lay my first challenge.

Let me explain. On weekends, local newspapers in Miri have a tendency to publish paraphrased articles found online, oftentimes trending in the Miri Community Facebook community. This is usually because they are short on staff, who take the weekend off. This leads to two days where my press release would be ignored at the fax machine, buried in a pile of other such press releases from other people, till the translators and senior reporters came in on Monday. I had to call around 4.40 pm on Sunday to ensure that my media release was on the top of the pile, much to the chagrin of the office boy who was in the newsroom at the time.

Now here comes my second challenge. I had to be shameless.

My supervisor informed me that she didn’t quite care how, but my article had to be in at least 3 newspapers within that week. No pressure, right? The heat was on the moment she didn’t care how.

So for the next day I was calling the different newspapers and pitching my event to them as calmly or frantically as the situation required. English speaking newspapers required more decorum, while the Mandarin newspapers seemed to be more responsive when I spoke passionately about the article. With the risk of sounding slightly unprofessional, me and my fellow intern, Chen Hau Yung, managed to get most of the Mandarin newspapers to publish simply by calling them three to four times that day, assuring them that they were ‘missing out on an internationally trending event’ and gave the vague allusion that their readers would think they were out of date for missing said opportunity.

It worked, they agreed to publish it.

My joy was short lived, as I realised that in my desperation to get my newspapers published, I had behaved in what I considered to be an unprofessional manner, or rather, a manner of the wrong profession. I had behaved like a door-to-door salesperson, if any profession at all.

However, to my relief, my supervisor then explained to me that while Public Relations may be done differently elsewhere, this was exactly how to talk to a reporter here in Miri. At the end of the day, it came down to the same two things. Confidence, and one solid fact.

While we were embarrassed when calling, we didn’t let it show, so we had managed to portray ourselves as confident when we felt anything but. We pressed on in the faith that the Global Goals that we were representing, specifically the third global goal, would be a famous enough incident that would speak for itself and get the newspapers to publish our involvement in it. In this case, our mission was a success.

Sometimes what we aren’t comfortable in doing or consider unprofessional is really all that is required in Public Relations. Basically, be shameless in asking for coverage and promoting our organisation’s beneficial activities. I believe it was a lesson well learnt.

All I can hope is the next time, I see these reporters, they won’t hold that shamelessness against me. Here’s to hoping.

Feel the burn!

Well folks, I’ve just had my first experience in organising an event!

On the 23^rd of September, I was charged with holding an employee relations event, which was the Global Goals: Health and Wellbeing Workout. This event consisted of a cardio workout for the staff members within Interhill Headquarters, and was inspired and held in conjunction with the Global Goals #3, which was Health and Wellbeing. In this event, we encouraged our staff to adopt a healthier and more active lifestyle in their daily lives.

There were, of course, quite a few challenges and lessons learned in the organising of this event. I’ll just jump straight to them.

Challenges:

1. Talking to people outside of the organisation

-          I had to talk to ACE Fitness Gym, in Miri, and somehow confirm with them that we would be using their gym and attending a cardio class for FREE. It took persuasion and a formal proposal letter but we managed to assure them that the amount of publicity they would receive from the media coverage of our event would be more than enough.

2.   I had to convince employees to attend.

You would think this wouldn’t be a challenge…but you would be wrong. Employee cooperation is a hard thing to come by, and I had to market this event to many employees simply to get a handful of people to attend the event, that was designed entirely for them. No one tells you how complicated and redundant this can seem, but really it is a necessary evil because without events like these, employees feel less included in the company.

Lessons learned:

1. Be confident in yourself, and others will be confident in you. For those people within ACE Fitness Gym, I wasn’t ‘the intern’, I was a public relations officer, not because I misrepresented myself but because I behaved in a way that showed that I wasn’t scared to be frank with them and to do my duty for the organisation without being pushed around by my ‘elders’.

2. Be friendly! The whole reason for the event was for employee relations, and though I am only temporary asset to the group, I still felt as though I was a part of them. Employees want to feel like they are accepted within their organisation, not simply utilized. Therefore we helped to bridge the gap between departments and employees with this event, where we all got together and practiced healthier lifestyle habits together.

At the end of the day, we really DID feel the burn of that cardio workout, but we walked away better and closer together as an organisation, so it truly was a worthwhile experience for me.

My First Week and the Hurricane.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm Daniella Lupi Balan and I am interning in the Interhill Group of Companies Public Relations Department, which is a group of companies involved in logging, construction and land development.

I began my internship on the 1st of September and it will be ongoing till the 31st of October. I'm hoping that within that time-span of two months I will learn enough about the public relations industry to enter that field myself when I graduate, fully prepared for what awaits me. Before then, however, I will be documenting my two-month journey to the best of my abilities on this blog. I hope you can all bear with me.

Now...lets talk about my first week 'on the job', and how it turned into a roller-coaster of first-times that nearly swept me off my feet.

There were a lot of things I had anticipated when I first started my internship. I had a preconceived notion that I would be shown the ropes gradually, while probably not being given any important tasks where I might fall short publicly; I thought I would be given responsibilities as I earned them.

I was grateful (and shocked) to find that this never happened. As soon as I stepped foot in the Public Relations office I was informed that there would an event within the week, and I would be given responsibilities I had never expected to receive so soon.

As I stated above, I started my internship at Interhill on the 1st of September and on the 8th of September the Interhill-PETIPUN Financial Grant Ceremony. The Interhill-PETIPUN scholarship/grant program has been held by Interhill yearly since 2008 and has since aided 83 Penan students in furthering their educations with monetary aid; the grant is a part of Interhill's CSR program called the 'Education Initiative', something that I am increasingly getting involved in during this internship. For those reading this who are unaware of what race the Penan are, they are a nomadic aboriginal race living in Sarawak, Malaysia. The race is very well known in Sarawak, because they are the only remaining race that continues to live as hunter-gatherers and are considered protected by our government because of their low numbers and their way of life. They are the 'children' of Sarawak, and are quite protected.

Due to this, any efforts to aid them educationally or industrially gains a lot of news coverage.

The reason I'm mentioning this? Because my first task within that week would be to write the formal speech for the Corporate Communications Manager, Miss Agnes Nyelang.

To say that I was taken aback by the opportunity so quickly given to me would be an understatement. Aside from that, I was given other responsibilities such as contacting the grantees who would be receiving their financial grants during the ceremony, writing the media release for the event as well as writing the press advisory. By the time the 5th of September had rolled by, I had handed in the speech to Miss Nyelang and was then told that due to my aptitude in speaking English, I would also be emceeing the event. This first week was proving to be turbulent, and I wasn't sure if I was prepared to handle the pressure, but I tried my best.

Finally, when the day arrived, everything went off without a hitch, thanks to the preparations of my fellow interns and I. I learned so many things, and I faced so many challenges within this week, that I was sure that even if I should walk away from my internship the very next week, I'd be walking away wiser than when I had first walked in.

Allow me a moment to share them with you.

CHALLENGES FACED

The Speech

I had to dredge every bit of my knowledge about speech writing from our previous PR units to finish this speech within a few days, keeping in mind the proper amount of formality to be used, the 'verbal personality' of Miss Nyelang including her vernacular tendencies and talking speed, the proper 'quote worthy' sentences that should be applied and finally the 'length without repetition'. When the speech was done, I had to edit it once before choosing two quotes to later be inserted into the media release which was to be handed to the press when (or if) they arrived at the event. This all took a lot of focus and preparation, and though I was assured that eventually this would come to me as easily as breathing, at this time it was one of the greatest challenges I faced.

The Media Releases

I was also tasked with writing the media releases and press advisories for the event, and I had to edit what I had prepared two times before we released it. Miss Nyelang, who oversaw my progress, was very helpful in giving tips on what to emphasize and what to ignore entirely within the press release, but at the end of the day I found that the main challenge in writing press releases is knowing the newspaper you are sending the release to, and what they respectively find as newsworthy. I had to figure this out by reading the articles from the different newspapers or (in the case of Chinese newspapers) asking the opinions on those who often read those newspapers.

Phone calls

I have a confession to make...my largest drawback, and my worst fear, is talking on the phone with someone and being awkward about it. During this first week I had to continuously call and contact the different grantees and in the case of us being unable to contact them, I had to contact their Universities and institutes, and inquire information through them. In the case of the Penan students, most of them could only speak the Bahasa Melayu language, while others required me to speak in Sarawakian, the local slang/dialect. I have never been more grateful to have picked up a slang before in my life. This had to be the most nerve-wracking challenge I faced, mostly due to my own social anxieties, and I'm glad I've faced that challenge even if I may have gained a few grey hairs in return.

Public Speaking

This was the first time I would be emceeing and I had never been more nervous in my life, mostly due to the fact that it is well known in Sarawak that if you get a VIP's name or position wrong, it is a grave insult. It is also a well known fact here that everyone who is anyone has a name and position at least ten words long. The person I had to introduce was "Yang Berbahagia Datuk Temenggung Hasan Sui, president of the Sarawak Tipun Penan Development Association" and it had to be said perfectly while maintaining eye contact with the person in question. Also, I had to introduce Datin Lau Ngok Yung, a member of the Board of Directors of Interhill Group of Companies. Pronouncing her name was a huge challenge as well, mostly because I've never been very good at pronouncing Chinese names, as well as because (and I really do hate to say this) her name when mispronounced can mean something negative in Sarawakian slang. The last thing I needed was making the grantees chuckle at one of the members of the Board of Directors. I was a nervous wreck and practiced constantly in front of the mirror before the day came around.

LESSONS LEARNED

It's all in your head

Considering that most of my challenges involved nerves or anxiety when it came to either public speaking or writing something that was going to be published, I found that one of the main things I learned was that everything was all in my head, including the risk and imagined 'consequences' that might arise. That isn't to say that you can simply write or say anything you want at all, absolutely not. What I found was simply that I have a tendency to overreact to any mistakes I make, and honestly, no one else gives those mistakes that much scrutiny. A typo here, a misplaced adjective there, the use of one adjective when another one would be more impactful, all of these mistakes aren't the end of the world. Also being awkward on the telephone, or having a slight language barrier that causes you to have to repeat yourself, this doesn't mean you've failed in communicating. It simply means you had to try a little harder in getting the message across this time around, and when you've succeeded it makes the success just that more sweet.

Asking for help isn't a weakness

It took me all of 3 hours before I realised I had to ask for help from staff members, be it in finding the location of a printer or asking how to use a fax machine, or even any advice in how I should go about finishing one task or another. I discovered early on that no one is intentionally cruel when someone asks for help, and getting help cuts off the panic and stops you from wasting time. Whatever isn't common sense or google-able, should simply be inquired. Don't worry about it, just go for it, and be polite when you ask. You might even get an ally or two out of it. I myself was able to form a good relationship with the main secretaries in two departments, and even the HR manager.

If you know a language, chances are you'll need it, and more

I myself know two languages, English and Bahasa Melayu, and if Sarawakian can be considered a language or dialect I'd be trilingual. I have since high school grown rusty in Bahasa Melayu and Sarawakian, and this event showed that I should always be prepared to use whatever language I know. I found that everyone within the company was at least trilingual or quadrilingual. When I spoke to the Chinese newspaper reporters, I found that English was not a language we could converse comfortably in. We found a middle ground in Bahasa Melayu, and though both parties were a little lacking in practice, it was the knowledge of this language that saved the day. Any language is useful, so try to learn as many as you can.

Practice makes perfect

I had a stressful time (once more, due to my own anxiety) when it came to writing media releases and speeches, mostly because the idea of my words being immortalized on print or video was frightening. I have since learned that it really does get easier, like riding a bicycle, when it comes to writing. You get used to knowing what each media organisation wants to hear, and you learn how to give it to them. Soon the act of writing a media release becomes familiar enough that it becomes second nature. Though I haven't reached that point yet, I am optimistic that sooner rather than later, I will. Also, I honestly believe I would have broken down into tears and died of embarrassment if I hadn't practiced my script before emceeing on the day of the event. Practice, in that sense, also saves lives.

Speak Out

When you have an idea, don't be afraid to speak about it. When we were writing the media releases for this PETIPUN event, we were brainstorming on how to solidify the chances that our efforts would be published. I spoke out during a meeting concerning the fact that it coincided with International Literacy Day, and the Communications Manager decided that this would be our main point, because most of the newspapers we were targeting had a tendency to publish things that had international significance. Therefore, we were able to get published in all the newspapers in the city, including specific newspapers that often were uninterested in our releases. It was a small contribution, a tiny fun-fact, but it made a difference in the reach of our event and we were able to communicate with a larger target audience than we had previously predicted. Small things make a difference. Share what you know.

My first week was a hurricane of new experiences and challenges, and I discovered new things not only about PR but also about myself. Despite the stress and anxiety, I regret nothing and I believe I'll remember this first week and the lessons I've learned for the rest of my life. 

Me emceeing for the Interhill-PETIPUN Scholarship/Grant Ceremony

Thanks for taking the time to share my experience with me. Till next time.

Daniella Lupi Balan,

Curtin University, Miri Campus.

PS: For those interested in knowing a bit more about the event that took place, about Interhill's education initiative or perhaps want to see some more pictures, please go to this link.