“Coming together is a beginning.
 Keeping together is progress.
 Working together is success.”    Henry Ford                          

My latest project is trying to increase awareness of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The disorder relates to the risks drinking has to an unborn baby. The impact of drinking alcohol during pregnancy can create lifelong issues that are not curable. However FASD is completely preventable. The key message is that not drinking during pregnancy is the safest option.

Aiming to shift cultural norms and changes lifelong habits to improve public health is a big job, with a relatively small team and budget allocated to get the job done. My internship involves bringing people together and equipping them to make a change in the community.

It seems impossible that a team of two people could make a change but internal communications, partnerships with other health agencies and community involvement make this possible. Some examples include:

Internal communications

• Ensuring the message given by people in the agency is consistent: that not drinking during pregnancy is the safest option.
• Training doctors, nurses and those involved in pregnancy planning or testing to talk to clients about the risks of drinking while pregnant and provide strategies to ensure success.
• Supporting employees in having alcohol free pregnancies by providing non-alcoholic options at events and planning social group outings where alcohol is not the focus.

Partnerships with other health agencies

• Developing sustainable partnerships with a shared vision of reducing incidents of FASD and using the strengths of the different agencies to promote the message (that might be time, resources, skills and abilities).
• Recognising different backgrounds and use this diversity to support development of different initiatives. For example indigenous health groups can ensure messages are culturally appropriate and help reach areas of the population that may not be seen by traditional health care providers.
• Ensuring communication between partner agencies is effective, regular and timely so that a consistent message is presented to the community. This is especially important if new information is released or in times of crisis communication.

Community involvement

• Raising public awareness about FASD and influencing the target audience to change values and behaviours. Drinking can be a social norm and people have reported feeling isolated as they are not able to be involved in social activities if they don’t drink.
• Educating and equipping people for change through workshops, events, media releases and provision of information designed to provide options to support alcohol free pregnancies.

 

Through all this consideration needs to be given to ‘best practice’ and the strong ethical guidelines around health promotion. There are many social detriments to health and long lasting, community wide change involves strong strategic planning and a long term commitment by health promotion agencies to addressing the issue.

The scope of the project may seem large but I am encouraged by reading about Canada’s success at raising awareness, and reducing incidents of FASD. This can only be achieved through a holistic approach and by working together.

My degree in public relations has enabled me to be confident in engaging, working with the media and planning events but it is just the first chapter in making a difference in a health promotion setting.

What to do When Your Job Contradicts Your Own Faith

If you have read my two previous posts you might already know that I am doing my internship in a local television channel in Surabaya, Indonesia. As many might have known Indonesia has the largest Muslim population and July is the ‘Muslim holy month of fasting’. This also means jobs dealing with Muslim events are uncountable like fishes in the sea, and one of the main events that I contribute in is a Muslim event – Bazaar Ramadhan 2013.

So basically this event comprise of different segments. The event starts at 12pm opened by a religious band, continued with a demonstration on how to wear a fashionable ‘hijab’ or burqa, and not forgetting the ‘tausiyah’ or known in Indonesia as the Muslim preaching by an ‘ustadz or ustadzah’ (muslim cleric). The event itself is fine for me, the problem arise during the pre-event. I am a non-muslim, I believe in Christianity. I am familiar with Muslim values but still because I am a non-muslim there are several things that shocked me.

For this event the first task I was given is to brief my host. So I gave him a brief coaching on how the event will run, his costume and make-ups as well as other necessary information. The host asked me about who will give the tausiyah where during that time I myself did not know what tausiyah actually is. I told him that I would confirm the details (as I do not want to look foolish and embarrassed) by email. So right after I briefed him for the event, I went to see my supervisor, Yanuar, and asked him what the word tausiyah really means in order to be able to confirm the details.

The awkwardness has not end, the next day I was given the task to go to a Mosque – Muslim house of prayers – to settle the deal with the Muslim cleric, Ustadz Mochtar, who will give tausiyah to the audience. I went with a senior colleague from work and another intern.

So we arrived in the Mosque and saw my colleagues took off their shoes before entering the Mosque, so I did the same. We went up to see the cleric and settle the deal. After settling the deal we set goodbye to the cleric and wish to see him soon in the event. I saw him shaking hands with my male colleague and I give out my hand to shook his hand too because I was brought up in a family that teach me to always shook somebody’s hand to show politeness and respect. When I did that to the cleric my first crisis arouse!

He did not shake my hands back, at first I was heavily upset and insulted as I thought how could a Muslim leader be so arrogant. When I entered the car I asked my colleague what is the deal with that, turns out my colleagues told me that in Muslim teaching physical contact between male and females are not tolerable. Despite the fact that many Muslims did not follow that rule, but a Muslim Cleric will always follow Muslim rules, as they should act like so.

This was definitely a culture shock for me. Despite the fact that I am born and raised in Indonesia, this is totally foreign to me, as I have never made familiar with any of those in both my family and my religion. This is not the only culture shock I encounter, being in the event itself I was indirectly forced to listen and watch about Muslim. This is not a problem for me because I am quite a fair person. I am open minded, as personally I want to do this job professionally. This definitely reminds me on a class situation when Bridget Tombleson (PR International) asked us what will we do if we work for a company that contradicts our own belief. During the time I did not have an answer but now I do.

My answer is:

As long as it is not evil and it does not violates any law. I would try my best to be professional to do a job that does not conform to my beliefs.

My opinion might not apply to everyone but for those who are currently experiencing a job that contradicts your own beliefs, just stay PROFESSIONAL!

Good luck for all of your current and/or upcoming internship!

The Hectic Life of a PR Intern

This is almost the end of my first week of internship and I am feeling extremely exhausted! Working in a media company is definitely not an easy task to do, first two days of internship was not that hectic as I was still on the orientation mode. But entering the third day of internship there are heaps of things for me to do, and there is definitely no time to lay back.

In SBO TV I was responsible for two events as mentioned in my previous blog entry, the preparation for the first event ‘Bazaar Ramadhan 2013’ was okay but not for the second event, ‘YMMF’. YMMF is a huge regional event and I was given the responsibility to lobby and follow up with 48 schools across East Java, where this event will start on July 18, 2013. From 48 schools almost half has not confirm that they are available for the event, so every day since July 10, 2013 I spent my day in front of the office computer, fax machine and telephone. For four days I did a data recap on the school list and had to lobby various schools through phone calls.

This was a big challenge for me as back in University I was taught by my tutors that public relations practitioners should be able to communicate effectively with the message receiver. This should not be hard if I lobby the schools face to face, but doing this by phone create a certain degree of challenge that forced me to communicate my self as clearly as possible in order to get my message across and convince the schools to join the YMMF event. Within four days of hard work on sending fax, being on the phone and doing online research of the targeted schools, I managed to get 44 schools confirmed for the event and I came up with a bank data that will help SBO for future events as it comprise of schools contact list.

My work is not yet finished! I still got the Bazaar Ramadhan 2013 event. So for those four days, in the morning I woke up and prepare. I went to work to lobby heaps of schools and in the afternoon around 2pm I went to the Bazaar Ramadhan 2013 event until around 7 to 8 pm. It was definitely not an easy job to do! As the event run daily I work Monday to Saturday full time. 

In my mind I think to myself how tough it is to be a public relations practitioners, because yes it is a 9 to 5 job. But in reality being a public relations practitioner eats more time than how I think it would. So I told myself that for my future public relations career, I have to make sure that I really love the job because not only that it is exhausting but also because it consumes heaps of time.

PR from a Media Perspective

I was lucky enough to get myself accepted for an internship position in a television station based in Surabaya, Indonesia. SBO TV or ‘Suroboyo’ TV (Surabaya Media Television Pty Ltd) is a local Television channel, which covers various news and updates on East Java’s capital city, Surabaya, and its surroundings. SBO TV operates under a giant media company, Jawa Pos Group. Jawa Pos Group owns various media outlets such as national and local newspaper as well as regional and local television stations. My placement started July 8, 2013, where I was placed under SBO TV’s event and public relations department.

On my first day I was given a brief orientation on how the studio operates and the divisions of the TV station. I was also made aware of two major events to be held on July onwards, which I will be involved in. Through these events I was indirectly forced to see public relations from a media perspective.

The first event is “Bazaar Ramadhan 2013”. This event is held in partnership with local government as well as sponsored by a motor company, Honda. Bazaar Ramadhan 2013 is an event held in order to greet the Muslim ‘holy month’ of fasting. This event will be held in 10 different suburbs and comprise of: cheap ‘sembako’, live bands, tausiyah (muslim preaching), and hijabers (talkshow on how can muslim women wear a fashionable burqa). This is a big public relations event done by Honda in order to increase its existence in Surabaya suburban areas as well as to increase their sales.

The second event is “YMMF” or known as Yamaha Mio Music Festival. This is an event by a motor company, Yamaha, in conjunction with SBO TV. This is an annual event, which last for approximately three months. This event is a music competition event, but SBO TV is also in charge to do the pre-event. This refers to the main event’s socialisation, therefore SBO TV and Yamaha came up with a YMMF socialisation ‘school visit’. This school visit event comprise of visiting 48 schools in 24 different cities in East Java, Indonesia. The school visit event themes differ between schools. For private, Catholic and Christian schools the event socialisation’s theme will be about ‘the dangers of narcotics for teenagers’, where as for public and Muslim schools the theme will be a tausiyah or known as a Muslim preaching.

Both events are purposed for the benefit of both SBO TV and the two sponsors. Both Yamaha and Honda need media publications, which is why they approach SBO TV to be their partner. And likewise SBO TV is a regional television station, which many are still vague about what the TV station is all about. Furthermore in order for both parties to achieve publications SBO TV decided to do partnership events with both motor companies.

These events ran under a low budget, as a regional television station SBO TV got a limited budget. Therefore SBO TV delegate these tasks to the event and public relations department, and as the intern my first job was to find a host for Bazaar Ramadhan as well as to brief the host.

This is my first time of finding an appropriate host for a religious event, which differs from my own religion. I managed to contact the host for an appointment the next day and briefed him for the event itself. It was not an easy task as I was very nervous, additionally I personally think that this is something big to do for an intern as I was bringing and representing the company’s name to the host. As I was nervous, what I did was I tried to recall a second year PR unit: Media Relations. In the unit there is one task where students had to brief their speaker on a topic before the press conference start. So I used the same techniques to brief my host, Izaaq, the thing that differs is that I did not use a question and answer document.

My story shall continues...

Time To Say Goodbye: PR 393 Internship

They say we meet to part and part to meet. Until when you have bonded so much with an environment and suddenly have to leave, you don't know the true meaning behind that say.

Hi fellow interns!

After a short lived month, I finally had to come to the end of my enjoyed and educative journey. Time to say good bye to my fellow work mates at Office of The President arrived before I knew it.

It has been a very good experience putting theories I learnt in class in practice. I salute Curtin University for giving us this opportunity to prepare us for the harsh and tough world out there before we can actually face it all. Job hunting wont be easy but at least we all know what to expect.

Back to business though, the last of my days where more focused on planning upcoming events, in which one was going to be held on March 1st. I was asigned to help draft a media plan for that day which I did and later on my bosses went through it and told me it was indeed impressive and that they will make a few corrections before sending it in.

In that whole month, I realized PR was not only based on theory but it was in the  heart of an individual practitioner. If it feels right, then it definitely is right but if you feel its wrong then it is wrong on the next person as well. So it is basically the values and morals of an individual practitioner guiding them to do right by their stakeholders.

One more thing I came to uncover true is that the public are the ones who build an organization or company and they have the power to break it into pieces, that is to say, one good word that spreads around about a certain organization paints it 'good' but if one bad word spreads, the organization is doomed. That cleared, I realize it is good to communicate, keep the public in the loop and not darkness because once they start assuming, nothing goes right.

Am glad I had the chance to do this placement because then I saw Public Relations in different eyes and it was a great experience.

I should really say, I enjoyed my time with everyone and I do hope we meet again soon. 

It was indeed nice to share what I went through, done and learnt with you guys and I hope you have rather enjoyed my posts.

Neo here, thank you all.