Welcomed to FACET... internship begins

FACET: Forum Advocating Cultural and Eco Tourism
www.facet.asn.au

With a double major in Tourism Management and Public Relations, I have chosen an organisation that is firstly, not for profit, secondly is tourism focused, and thirdly non-governmental. I wanted to work with an organisation that was not driven by government regulations and FACET also participates in advocacy which is an exciting part of the public relations field.

I was driven to return to university as a mature age student because of my interests in both ecotourism and cultural tourism so FACET seemed to be an obvious choice for my placement.

The first item on the agenda for my internship with FACET was to attend the Business Planning Strategy meeting with the Executive Board members of the association. It was a great privilege to be invited to this strategy meeting as the Board were creating their three year business plan for the association.

Whilst the actual meeting itself was more concerned with the wording of objectives, and seemed to be quite menial, this is an important process. Ultimately, this is what will define the business for the following three years. When it comes down to it, the words used are the words that describe the organisation.

The members of the Board represent a diverse spectrum of industry, academia and government bodies. I felt in awe of the people with which I was surrounded and their calibre of experience in the areas of both cultural and ecotourism.

As the organisation is reliant on the members acting in a volunteer capacity, and have only one paid employee, a number of sub committees were formed to allocate the workload. These were:
1. Communications and Marketing committee
2. Website committee
3. Forums committee
4. Conference committee
5. Golden Guide committee
6. Senior Executive committee

I will be working within four of these committees: communications and marketing, website, conference and forums.

The first priority I have is to create a report on how to improve the website. We are also looking for someone to assist in the development of the website in terms of design, so if anyone out there would like to help, or knows someone who has these skills, please let me know.
To check out the website: www.facet.asn.au

These are some of my ideas so far:
· Starting a blog!!!!!
· Generate all newsletters online (there seems to be some resistance to this at the moment); ·
· Creating a calendar of events. You can generate the link so that the event can be automatically uploaded to your outlook calender (which I think is fantastic!)
· Encouraging the use of online payments for events through Pay Pal

This is a very exciting to be part of the transition into the digital realm of PR and marketing for an organisation like. Being able to participate in the initial planning stages for the public relations strategy is an opportunity that I am very grateful to have.