The end.

Hey again, I hope everyone is coping well with the end of semester.

So far, I have worked 21 days in Diabetes WA. As much as I would like to continue on with this placement, I think that it would be better for me to provide leeway for other interns to experience working with Diabetes WA.

I will be coming in to Diabetes WA for the last time next week. I am grateful that I did my placement at such a well-established organisation. My supervisor has been great in guiding me through my job and providing me with valuable advice throughout the entirety of my placement.

This placement has enhanced my understanding of public relations. I managed to view the real PR setting. In comparison to what I have learnt in university, I personally think that executing a real PR strategy is much more exciting and challenging than just getting good grades for university. This experience has also altered my understanding of PR, especially in the non-profit sector.

I didn’t think that I would enjoy my placement this much, can’t believe I almost skipped this unit!

I hope that all of you had an awesome semester.

PS: Publicity never ends!

Cheers,

In.

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National Diabetes Week

Hey guys,

Recently, my workload in Diabetes WA mainly comprise around research and planning for the upcoming National Diabetes Week that will commence on 10^th July 2011.

All nationwide diabetes related organisations will be holding different set of events and programs during the National Diabetes Week in hopes to raise awareness on the seriousness of diabetes.

Here in Diabetes WA, we have decided to focus on foot complications that may occur as a result of improper management of diabetes. I thought that the decision to focus on foot complication is a smart move from the organisation because diabetes is such a broad condition.

I cannot emphasise enough on the importance of focusing on just one type of a diabetes condition because we would then have a specific target audience for our events and programs. Although we are still targeting a much broader audience to raise awareness on diabetes in general, we would now have a specific condition to focus on so that it would be less confusing for our staff in general, for the preparation of National Diabetes Week. From a PR perspective as well, we can approach specific people who are directly related to foot complication to be a spokesperson at our events and/or press conference, (ie: people whose limbs were amputated, people who are suffering from foot complication and/or public figure who believes in this cause)

Themes, programs and press events will also be circling around the issue of foot complication

Other news, the HBF Run for a Reason is coming up this weekend here in Perth. Diabetes WA is one of the participating organisations for this event. So far we have raised around AUD 12,000. Hopefully the number will keep increasing over the week.

Cheers!

In

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First blog entry – Hello from Diabetes WA!

Hey everyone,

I’m In from Bentley Campus. As the title suggest, this is actually my first entry in the PR Reflective Blog. I am looking forward to sharing my internship experience and reading all your exciting blog entries ;)

I am pretty sure that now, everyone is either done with their internship or halfway through, I heard some of you are even done with your report; champions!

I managed to secure an internship with a non-profit organisation, Diabetes WA at the start of the semester. I am fortunate enough that the process of applying for this internship was quite straight forward. I had Diabetes WA as my real life client last semester for PR Consultancy 300, so I contacted my tutor, Katharina Wolf to ask for the public relations officer’s contacts. My current supervisor, Candice Phillips was nice enough to accommodate me for this working experience ;)

First day on the job, I realised how important it is to know your organisation and understand their vision, mission, goals, policies and key objectives, etc. With the existing knowledge I have gained on Diabetes WA from PR Consultancy 300 and my own research, I learn that this knowledge has prepared me well to actually start doing work straight away. However, I realised that my understanding on Diabetes WA are all based on external research. Hence, I was glad when my supervisor gave me a quick introduction on what was going on internally in Diabetes WA. I was grant access to a few documents detailing on the internal structure of the organisation as well to further understand about the organisation I am working for.

Although I was fully equipped with all these information in hand, I then realise that I had made my first mistake as an intern (on the very first day itself!). The most major thing, which is to research on the disease itself completely, slipped my mind. I guess I was too excited to start my internship and get going with my research on the organisation that I totally forgot how important it is to actually know about the disease that the organisation is advocating about before I begin work.

And so my I spent countless hours in office and back home, reading and researching on the disease itself to fully understand the purpose of the organisation. Just a quick run through with you guys; diabetes is a lifelong disease that affects people with high level of sugar in their blood. It can occur to people of any ages and if not managed well, could be a precursor to a bigger health complication like kidney disease, amputation and heart failure. The three major roles of Diabetes WA are; to help prevent, manage and advocate for this disease that affects 7% of all Australians.

I cannot emphasise enough on the importance of this research, especially as a public relations intern where my job encompasses around writing media releases, articles for magazines, etc. It took me a while to understand about the complications of diabetes. Up to till this day, I am still continually reading on hopes to achieve a better insight.

Other than that, for the past month or so, I have been doing different things for Diabetes WA that includes, writing media releases, media monitoring, event planning, etc. I guess I will talk more about what I have been doing in another entry.

So far, I am enjoying my time in Diabetes WA. My supervisor and everyone in the office are friendly and always helpful. I am glad that there is always something that is PR-related for me to do in office.

Hope everyone is enjoying their internship.

Update you guys soon!

In
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