My very first days were on the field directly involved in fund-raising activities where we had to teach the volunteers what messages to send to the people they meet so as to create awareness. I work as a trainee in an organisation which does prevention and contraception so as to fight against HIV/AIDS. However in my section, we are more on the communication part of the organisation. PILS (Prevention Information Lutte contre le Sida) is an organisation which was created in 1996 by Nicolas Ritter who is among the small amount of person in Mauritius who have public announced that he was HIV positive.
The organisation is one of a kind as the people around here are more like a team than mere workers. That is they are aware that working together as a team has more outcome and no one is bossy. My very first experience was really interesting and made me realise how wonder the world of communication could be. On my first day in the office, I had my very first meeting with all the members of the communication section. My first task was to make a debriefing of the meeting. By the same time I had contributed in sharing ideas on how to make the next fund-raising campaign more appealing and more interesting for the people. We should not forget that PILS is mostly here to send the message about HIV/AIDS; however the fun part of the campaigns makes people more at ease to approach us and learn about this virus and how to protect themselves.
PILS communication section is here to increase awareness among the people while showing them that there should be no discrimination against HIV/AIDS patience. This is achieve through different processes like through their Sida Info Mauritius hotline, you can have all sorts of information about Sexually-transmitted diseases and thus helping people to accept their illnesses but also others to understand that there is no risk of being infection if following the precautions. Pamphlet are shared or articles posted online regularly or in the newspapers.
I have been appointed for the internship as there will be an event scheduled for the 29 August 2012, which will be a fund-raising event. I have been assigned with the task to call different companies and have as much gifts as possible for the event. Remember that we must do the maximum with the minimum tool we have as the resources are limited.
This is a very interesting experience to work at PILS.
