First Week @ Association for the Blind of WA, Guide Dog WA

Hi everyone, today ticked off my first week of internship with Association for the Blind of WA, Guide Dog WA. Began my internship on Monday , that was my first job ever working in a NGO and sit in for a "9-5" job, I was being placed in Community Relations (CR) department and I have nine others colleague to work with. CR team has to look over ways to improve the funds that are going into the organisation, and everyone of us are being assigned to look after each of the program that are currently running in the association.

Association for the Blind of WA, Guide Dog WA's income are mainly depending on the donations from Corporate partners and general public, CR team had to work on the following channel to try to get as much help as possible:

1. Telesales- There will be a team of ladies that sit in the office and make phone calls to people in our database, encouraging them buying our Association's product, encouraging them to donate.

2. Direct Mail- One of CR team member is in-charge of this program, which is to send out 4 mails annually to those that has been donating to association, and 2 mails annually to those that are potential to be a donor.

3. Bequest- Another lady in our CR team is managing this program, this program is encouraging people to leave a gift for our association in their WILL.

4. Puppy Pals (known as puppy club last time) - This program is encouraging people to sponsor our puppies's breeding , while puppies are undergoing training to be Guide Dog.

5. Mini-Dog- This section of fund-raising is having the association's "plastic" dogs to be out in shops and supermarkets, encouraging publics to leave some coins into the mini-dogs.

6. Sponsors from Corporate- My supervisor is looking after this part of the fund-raising program in the association, allias with corporates to source for any possible sponsorship or funding to our association. I am currently working in this section.

There are major fund-raising events which the CR team will get involve throughout.

My work load for this first week were pretty easy-going, mainly doing on some admin work. At the same time, I was being asked by my supervisor to plan a fund-raising event through movie. I am now still at the planning phase, I will announce the details of the event if it is successful at any time soon.

There are some facts that I would like to share with regarding Association for the Blind of WA, Guide Dog WA.

• People may be unaware that our association does not only provide Guide Dogs to people who are blind, we still provide a whole range of different services; Education, "Vocal" library, skill classes (sewing, pottery), Counselling and etc.
• Association for the Blind does not only provide services and care to those who are legally blind, but also those that are vision-impaired.

NEXT BIG EVENT COMING-UP :

INTERNATIONAL GUIDE-DOG DAY (25th APRIL)

STREET-APPEAL (27th APRIL) -

Association's staff will be out on CBD streets at 7-9(am) with mini-dogs collecting money.

As a uni-student, you can help the association even by donating $2 monthly.

Philoemina Lee (14347681)

Curtin Bently

The small army

Hello I am Visha and I am currently doing an internship at PILS. Prévention Information Lutte contre le Sida (PILS) is a non-governmental organisation that works mostly in the field of prevention and sensitization about HIV/AIDS as well as care of patients suffering of HIV/AIDS. The communication department of this organisation is solid and I can happily say that I have been learning a lot since I started my internship two weeks ago.

This is actually my first time in an office and at first I was pretty sure that office work always meant boredom and routine. But I guess that is the exact reason why I chose to work in the Public Relations field. Since I am here, I have learnt about office etiquette and the importance of a PR person to grasp the organisation’s internal culture as soon as possible. I had to know how to deal with externals, how to give the same image of the organisation as the other employees when I talk and express myself.

Last week, PILS had a press conference to launch a book on sexual education and I had to call journalists to confirm their presence at the press conference. I already knew from my PR classes that it is essential to show to the journalists that you are serious about your work by sending them reminders about the invites. It is also important to know when to call them, because sometimes it depends on the chief editor who has to assign the articles to be covered.

Well, I think that would be all for now. I am just trying to say yes to every task I am offered to do bearing in mind that this is real life. As an intern I get to ask many questions so that is why for the next post, I will be interviewing someone from PILS and write about CSR in Mauritius and how this affects the funding of NGOs.

Don't Get Fooled by Your Own PR!

What price are you willing to pay to succeed in your PR activity? What actually is success anyway?

Speaking in terms of PR, success I believe is achieving objectives. Then with whose ruler are we supposed to measure our achievements? The answer is that the executive in charge of the plan will draw some evaluation guideline and those parameters are the criteria. That means you plan, you execute and you evaluate from the beginning to the end, all by yourself & your organization. “Oh! Okay! I knew this, fine! So what’s the problem?”...Well, I would like to bring forward an ethical dilemma that would challenge the basis of this close system of ‘evaluating ourselves by ourselves’. The dilemma is a real case study of what I have observed in the non profit organization that I am working in.

But one quick reminder before I get into the story that at least in the non-profit world, there is a pervasive belief among decision-makers based of which overall performance of the organization is often rated as acceptable and sometimes outstanding.That is because the ‘not for profit’ is always on the tow. Now the story:

When food manufacturers clear out their stock out of the old cans, they hand over near-expired food cans to INGOs as donations. Then we as the non-profit organizations hand over them in a pack with combination of some other stuff to single mothers, poor and sometimes disabled communities of which we visit. This creates for the media the opportunity to make some ‘success stories’ out of our efforts and also it provides our handsome product sponsors! some socially responsible images and a clean stock!…Therefore media wins, non-profit body (we) wins, food manufacturers win but what about the poor and single mothers? Well they also win! They receive some near-expired/expired products! How lovely!

This routine does not only belong to this international body. All other humanitarian organizations WORLDWIDE, precisely, follow the same to donate the poor and in needs. Now…

Imagine yourself in the shoes of the receiver! When he receives ‘Mickey mouse’ stuff (BTW ask yourself who really wants our old shoes?) of worth nothing and yet he has to hold that pack -usually despite of his will- until media do all the photography and cameras shoot enough footage for tonight’s television news feed. Yeah…He is only a fish, a fish for us, for them and for everyone who can use him as a fish. He was not born as a fish; we- PR people- turned him into our fish in exchange of a promotion or a handful of money. His picture, then, gets published in magazines, bulletins, catalogues, papers and on television of people watch, as our ‘PR success story’, as our PR achievement. And we yet celebrate when the television shows his face, since that fishy face is a major ‘evaluation’ parameter now, a gauge to measure what is known in this kind of PR as ‘success’.

I, personally, don’t believe in achieving objectives with any price. It seems that without considering a solid moral and ethical structure, ‘success’ not only in communications but in any other kind of activity is not achievable. But with whose moral or ethical codes shall we proceed? Ours or our organizations? Neither of them of course.

Therefore for an authentic and real ‘success’ measurement, the presence of a comprehensible & objective third perspective is a necessity to undertake the measurement. Unfortunately western post-enlightenment philosophy does not have much to say in this regard, whereas Holy Scriptures already has provided us with detailed strategies in ‘social situations’ as mentioned above. Here is what Holy Quran cites in (2:267) a precise and exact solution to our ethical dilemma:

‘Do not donate something that you would never take it yourselves, except with closed eyes’

I emailed the same verse to my colleagues and asked them to encourage our product sponsors to donate fresh stuff, not near expired reduced cans.

But nobody took it seriously.

Best regards,
Ali (LUCT)

A Recipe for Failure: Absence of Professional Etiquette

Hello everybody. As I have mentioned before I work for this INGO in Malaysia and I had a remarkable week, since I learned a lot, but I will focus on one point here which is as follow:

"If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at YOURSELF and then make the change."

YES! I work in this remarkable ‘professional environment’ where colleagues don’t even bother to greet each other in any ways. That is to say, there neither is a simple ‘Hi’ nor a plain ‘Bye’ going on in the beginning or end of any day. And if you do so- I mean greet your colleagues-, they will stare at you like a dead soul really.

That’s not the end of story: Forgive me but burping openly in the public is not a matter of concern here and it is not uncommon in Malaysia to ‘burp’ in the middle of discussion with someone, even if that person is a representative of a famous media outlet chatting with you in the refreshment area of a media conference- personally observed BTW. Now thinking about other side of the story… imagine how much my colleagues are proud of themselves and their NGO’s CSR code in providing ‘us’ the chance to work in this ‘professional’ environment! The truth is that they are not aware of the impressions, the negativity and the bad memories which they can bring on for their international interns simply because most of these fellows are not even graduated in social science or anything even close to PR or any sort of these combinations and yet they are so confident doing it!

“You are a sensitive boy, Ali” someone may say after reading all this, but let me bring forward an excerpt of a book called Global business etiquette: a guide to international communication and customs to show the importance of the issue:

“Many international guests in united states find the question “how are you?” to be insincere. As one Israeli women observed “no matter if your children are on drugs, you spouse is leaving you, and you have just declared bankruptcy, you are expected to smile and say ‘everything is great!’ Why do Americans ask if they don’t really want to know?” Americans do not mean to be insincere. The question “how are you?” is simply a pleasantry and an example of the greeting rituals typical of people in the United States. (p.25)“

The truth of matter is, business etiquette is not a marginal issue in global communications. It is a crucial one indeed and it can turn communications into grave crises in a blink of an eye. I suggest you to check out this online book where you can find superb examples of wonderful opportunities that turned into nightmares, due to the lack of PR etiquette.

PR, like all communication activities, is a sensitive activity and etiquette is a part of PR’s ‘adaptation’ principle. In other words, etiquette is a gauge or I would call ‘a motif’ towards harmony between an organization and its internal or external publics and it shows how successful your organization has been in making hits. No global PR etiquette, no hit, no outcome. Above all etiquette is part of professionalism too.

This week’s experience proved to me that if Int’l organizations can’t establish effective communications with their own staff and their internal desks, they should not expect to see success in other aspects of their communication activities. And my future post would be a case study of such failure.

Best regards,

Ali (LUCT)

FATHER I'VE LIED!

(Courtesy of NBC News)

Hi everybody, my name is Ali and I have started my internship with this well-established branch of an international humanitarian relief NGO in Malaysia, which I am not intending to disclose its name here. So what did I really learn in my first week?

Upon the first day of my work, I was tasked to a list of assignments in which one of them is to organize a charity sale of some kind of menswear in Malaysian universities. Both the country manager & my supervisor told me that the actual cloths’ price of which they intend ‘to market’ is more than RM1000 and the NGO is happy to provide the public the chance of RM200 per piece as a gesture of a win-win fund raising event! That is to say, consumer/donor will buy branded cloths, NGO will raise some fund for the poor…and it looks good nah?

So get this:

I ‘myself’ looked at the samples from the stock and by the first glance, I realized that they are not genuine…They are Chinese stuff...But I had to prove it with strong evidence. Therefore, I started to check the manufacturer’s websites and they had nothing similar on their site! Then I found this:

An advertisement on a Malay e-shop in which the negotiable retail price of the exact products, in exact variety of colors! with precise size range! comes as RM300 only! Here are some facts:

Fact #1: Philanthropic donors do not like to be betrayed by their favorite charity organization. I had to inform my supervisor about my findings. This NGO can cause more damage to itself in promoting and selling fake products as branded stuff than to help the poor people. I mean people are not blind and they can easily distinguish the not real from the genuine one. I still wonder why they ‘lied to me’ about the origins of the materials and introduced it on the first day as “branded and worthy of thousand”!

Fact#2: As a future PR practitioner, I have to only suggest transparency in communicating the origins of the commodity. But is this NGO willing to tell the donors that these menswear are fake?? Imagine saying, “Would you buy some fake materials with a reasonable price for charity?!” Well, it sounds silly to me really.

Action: I emailed the advertisement link to my supervisor, to the gift/donation officer I am working with, and they both ‘noted’ it and guess what?

Reaction: A day after, the advertisement in that Malay website WAS BROUGHT DOWN!! Coincidence? Indeed! People look at me differently now! My supervisor said “But the price is still reasonable, isn’t it?” What she really meant by this, is that she was confessing on their insincerity regarding the menswear without bothering to fix it for the future matters even!

Lesson#1: Do not lie to your interns! Because it will only damage your organizational reputation (especially if you are doing charity and humanitarian relief on the world scale) and will create a bad memory that may linger on.

Lesson#2: Do not underestimate your interns! Nowadays very few secrets can remain in the closet, especially when the world is connected through all types of search engines and social networks as the image above also portrays!

Leson#3: Be honest and candid with your target public. It does not matter whether you want to do marketing or PR, transparency is the key to credibility and credibility leads to reputation. No transparency, no reputation.

What would you do, if you were in my position? Please share your views.

Ali.

LUCT.

Importance of PR in an NGO

Hi interns out there. I believe that most of you guys have finished doing the internship and I hope that it went well for you all. As for the rest of the interns, good luck and best wishes. I have been having some trouble signing in since the past week, so here’s my one very long over due post.

Reflecting on what I have learnt working in an NGO, I want to share the importance of PR in an NGO. Why are NGOs formed? I believe it is formed to address issues either at the local or global level, which are usually not given any attention to by the government. NGOs usually work to make the lives of the people better by giving information and services by bringing their cause to attention. They rely heavily on funds, donations, volunteers and help from public as well as the governements to make their organisations successful. I have read online that “among opinion leaders in both Europe and the United States, NGOs are now the most trusted institutions”and “In Europe, the most trusted brands continue to be NGOs” (the fourth edelman survey on trust and credibility, 2003).

However, most of the time, a lot of NGOs are unable to sustain their services and programs due to lack of funds, inadequate support from public or policy makers, which could come under one single reason: the lack of strategic communication of their causes to the stakeholders involved. In other words, the NGOs who does not have an effective public relations plan in place usually struggle the most in communicating their mission to the public.

I have noticed the same problem in the NGO I am working. Yes, the society does have a lot of volunteers and dedicated staff who are dedicated in promoting the NGOs cause as well as a PR/IEC section. However, I belive they take the role of PR as only fund-raising or implenting projects such as information disemination and media involvement in every workshop, seminar they hold. Maybe literature will show that such exposure in the media is a sure fire way to attract the public and communicate with them of our purposes, but I do not believe that even half of our target stakeholders are reached through this method of information bombardement. Instead of this, I believe that our NGO as well as any NGO for that matter, needs to realise that PR is not only about fund-raising and program implementation. They have to realise that it is about implementing strategies that will help to run programs smoothly, by explaining organization’s mission and vision, framing its ongoing goals and objectives in such a way that the mission and vision are achieved, being influential in the public forum and in front of policy makers by raising our viewpoints.

Most NGOs, including the place I work, do have the above mentioned vision, mission, strategies, goals and objectives. The only difference is that developing goals, objectives and strategies rarely come under PR. However, my personal opinion which I believe to be true (and this maybe because I am a PR student), is that without combining or bringing the PR sector of the NGO to the ‘dominant coalition’ the true essence of communicating these to the public through the media is often not understood. Not to be boasting or anything, I believe PR is one sector which could help NGO or any organization, company or corporation in understanding how the media works and the most effective way of reaching to the stakeholders via the media to explain its vision, mission and causes by bringing all the valuable news to them.

Well, hope this long post did not bore you guys.. Will be back later with a new post. Bye and have fun interning.

Imaan

Starting all over... comparison between corporate and NGOs

Hi all,

Here I am again after quite sometime.. but as the title says, I have started all over again.

As I have previously mentioned in my last post (which I made ages ago) I worked as an intern in a corporate PR agency in Malaysia. I was not too happy there, because I had not much to do there except for media monitoring everyday.. so I am not sure if it was luck or anything.. but I had to leave them after 24 uneventful days (with the exception of one event), due to a family emergency at home...

Now I am in Maldives, continuing my internship at the PR section of a national NGO. Though an NGO, it is one of the biggest non-profit organization in Maldives and is involved almost every possible health and social issue facing the country.

The work here is completely different from what I did before in Malaysia. The organization itself is the client in this case. The PR team has to deal with a variety of stakeholders such as investors, philanthropists, international organizations, government and the public, and come up with new strategies, proposals, events and such to attract the public and get them involved in what the organizationn does, as well as attract philanthropists and other sponsors so that the activities being carried out by the organization does not stop.

So far the past four weeks have been hectic. As an intern, I had not only done the usual media monitoring and brainstorming sessions, but written and sent project proposals to two International organizations so that funds could be generated, organized workshops for media and for school teachers (which also included the press kits, writing of releases), made questionair surveys and analyzed it to find out the public reception of the organization and its services and I am told more is to come.

I feel at home here compared to where I was before, and I feel that I am contributing to something worthwile and my efforts are appreciated. Having experienced both, I have to say the corporate world is not for me. Here, I am not only working on the events management side and technical level, but I am also working on the strategic level, actually generating ideas and project proposals not only for long term public health awareness and social services, but also as means of generating funds to keep the NGO going.

Well, thats all for now.. I promise to write more frequently with more news.. If anyone have any question about NGO work, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best Regards,
Imaan
LUCT Malaysia.