Taking It Slow

Communicare is one big non-for-profit organisation broken into different sectors to help different parts of society. There is disability services, children services, physcology services etc. The marketing and media team, then has the task to ensure that, these services events or different promotional ideas are made ready for prior.

This week, my tasks included me to prep and get everything ready for the Children's Services part of Communicare. I had to get all the promotional items ready for the day. Being an event for children in a non- for- profit sector, no one exactly knew how many individuals were going to turn up, which is a dilemma when getting things ready. We decided that fifty was a good number, and I am guessing Cass (My manager) , has come up with this number from previous years.

The promotional packs I had to put together consisted of

• 50  A5 colouring booklets, which I had to print out and put together 
• Set up a selection of brochures that Communicare has in the Children services 
• Print of a variety of different colouring pages of the mascots of Children Services 
• Get the tattoos and balloons ready as well 

I was not putting the event together, just getting some bits and pieces ready for when the day came but I seemed to be enjoying it for some reason. 

The most exciting part of my day, was putting together a postcard type flyer for the staff that worked at Communicare. When it was time for me to do this task, I dived straight in, I looked at previous examples, but my managers were happy for me make it my own. It took me about two hours, through indesign to put the flyer together for it to look all perfect and it was something I was really proud of and trust me I am the most uncreative person on the planet. Indesign is an amazing program, I had never used it prior to working at Communicare, but it seems to be better than photoshop. The different elements you are able to change and put together. 

This was the first day at Communicare which was a little more "crusisy" for me, I was not pulling my hair out and the end of the day or running out like a headless chicken to meet deadlines. 

Till next time  :) 

The bits and pieces

I don't think I have ever walked into work or any of my classes, as excited as I was today to go into Communicare, it was like something had taken over and all I wanted to do was start my day.

Why you may ask! and the reason for this was today I had to make sure everything was going to be ready for the event being thrown on Thursday. I had the whole responsibility upon me, I knew the individuals I was working with were amazing and would have taken care of certain elements, but it was left to me to do the rest.

Walking in at my usual 8:30 time,  I once again checked my emails to see what was going on. One of my main tasks of planning the event was putting numbers together, once participants had paid to attend the event. This was the first thing I did in order to be aware of how many packs etc I needed to get ready for the day. As I compiled the list etc and got all the elements ready to make the little Communicare packs for the event, which consisted about information of the different services, a pen and notepad, I was once again surprised at the amounts of work that went into an event, it was no walk into the park. I also had to get name badges ready, which needed to be made, printed cut into size etc. At a non-for-profit organisation, most things are encouraged to be done in house rather than getting the printer to do it etc because of the costs attached.

Doing everything in house, it let me to think do big organisations also do everything in house, or rather because they are so large, they have the luxury of getting all their printing and cutting done by a printer whenever they desired. Prior to coming to do my work placement at Communicare, I had only even used a cutter maybe once, and my cutting had be quite disturbing, I never understood why I could never cut straight and now I use the cutter at every shift sometimes twice and I am so pedantic that I have to make sure everything I am cutting is straight and perfect, if not I start again.

I understand that at times big profit organisations make the huge amounts of  money and they can afford to pay for simple things like making of folders etc off site, but I dare to ask do individuals working in non-for-profit do more than them? Are individuals in a non - for- profit organisations have more technical skills, that is putting together folders, laminating etc more than those working in a profitable organisation?

These questions are not questions I would have previously thought about, but putting together this event, I wondered; may the work was getting to me, the cutting of 50 pages, of the compiling of so many folders but I had a good time doing it and everything seemed to be going fine. I secretly think I did a good job (if not I do not think they would ask me to help them out with the next event coming up!)

The 1st day

In my last semester at university this semester, as a final year student, a couple weeks ago I began my journey of taking part in work experience at Communicare. Communicare is a non for profit organisation, helping the community, in different ways the organisation can.

 Walking into Communicare, for the first day of my internship, was a little daunting. Having only ever done work experiences at small organisations, i began thinking to myself, what happens if my PR skills are not up to scratch and not that great.

Walking in to the Marketing and Media office, I was met by Aimee and Cassandra my two supervisors, and they were lovely, I immediately felt as ease and comfortable i. I was shown to my desk and here is when the work began, setting up email, meeting other individuals who work at Communicare , that I would be interacting with.

The first day at Communicare, it was almost like learning PR from the basics. I was explained to about media releases, the news letter as well as the different events Communicare were involved in. I was made familiar to "Indesign" a program that the organisations uses to get their posters, newsletter etc done. I did online courses and at the end of it I was still confused on how to use it,having never used it before.

During the day, I also had to go and update the address book that Communicare had, correcting phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, since it has not been done since the 2011, making it very outdated. I did this through checking the different companies websites as well as ringing them up and making sure their details were right. This was my first Pr task and I was slightly excited to be doing something Public Relations related

Reaching the end of the day, my supervisor Aimee, informed me that she was leaving Communicare in two weeks, this was quite sad, seeing as she has been wonderful to me on my first day and supportive and along with that, during my interview she was just as lovely to have me on board.

My frist week at Communicare had been interesting and I was enjoying it and I was glad that the choice I had made to study Public Relations was  the right one.

At the end of the day, I was already looking forward to my shift at Communicare :)