Breaking the Language Barrier

For the past weeks during internship, i always end up having to deal with many stakeholders and farmers that owns and work at the field of the palm oil plantations, its not easy because of the language barrier i faced. This is one of the hardships i'm facing, trying to understand what they are saying or asking. But fortunately everyone here already got used to the languages that has been spoken here and so i seek some help from them and soon enough i'm able to understand some of the language and be able to converse with the stakeholders and farmers properly.

On the other hand, i am now given the role of handling the paperwork of the license registration at the counter and the reason being is that my supervisor wants me to converse more with the stakeholders and farmers to learn the language they speak. I learned a lot everyday and i'm thankful for being able to serve in MPOB.

Students just don't have time… even for charity?

Today I met with Rhian who is doing the Perth Ramble with me. We met at Curtin to discuss how we are going to get more students involved in the Perth ramble, we also needed to give the Perth Ramble an update about our progress.

We decided to put flyers around campus and talk to students one on one. As we went around campus to speak with students we found to receive the same reaction from students. About 99% of the time the students would look at us as if to say “why are you interrupting my coffee” or gives their friends a little look of “im really not interested”.

It is sad to think our generation has no time to even listen to someone talk for literally 1 minute. Furthermore, its not just the fact that it is rude to the people speaking but it is also disrespectful to the charity who are trying to fundraise money for Telethon.

On the brighter side we did get a few peoples emails and we also met a man called Leo who kindly let us put flyers on his stall, he reassured us and said that we are doing a very good job.

We will be going to our own lectures to talk about the Perth Ramble and to see who would be interested to sign up there. After 2 hours of talking to students we decided to write our update report so that our marketing supervisor Anthea can present it to the committee in tomorrows meeting. 

Lastly we have started an Instagram account for the Perth ramble “perthramble” for people to follow and updated the Facebook page where we are running a competition for people to enter and win 3 nights accommodation to Margaret River.

Hopefully we will get better success with students next time, fingers crossed!

Gina Soumelidis

15612898

Be PRompt. Be PRecise. Be PRimarily Trustworthy and consistent in every aspect.

Holiday Greetings!

As in all things in life, there comes a point where they must end. My internship at PPR will be over this week, and with it comes new insights into the world of PR and how things work. The fact is this: PR is business. Ethically correct business, targeted and meaningful, but business nonetheless. Clients and accounts need to be managed and looked after, in the same way a balance sheet in Accounts must balance.

Value is a subjective idea, but in PR value is reputation and time. A strong reputation ensures a lengthy relationship, and in turn there is the upselling that inevitably occurs, leading to increased business.  The interpersonal aspects of PR are based on consistency, awareness, and the acts of servicing clients as if they were the most important people in the world, as is expected. This may seem out of place, but if I were to use one word to describe PR as it appears to me, that word would be ‘thoughtful.’ In the way business interlinks, in the way solutions are creative, and in the way clients are kept satisfied- the essential ‘thoughtful.’

There is a lot more I could say, but stealing away the veil that hides the experience would be a crime. So I will leave you all with this.

Be everything you can be. You have 86 400 seconds in each day to paint the stars on the sky of what will be your careers, and your life.

Farewell and good luck to you all.

Yours sincerely