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
